1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (56 page)

Operation Dani, Lydda and Ramla, July 1948

Things turned difficult later that afternoon, however, when the Legion's First Regiment reached Beit Nabala and engaged the Eighth Brigade outside Deir Tarif, giving it a bloody nose. But the regiment made no subsequent effort to push toward Lydda: Glubb still refused to commit troops to defend the towns (and, indeed, the handful of Legionnaires in Lydda withdrew eastward on the night of 11-I2 July).

The IDF renewed its advance on ii Julyy The (Palmah) Third Battalion pushed from Daniyal toward Lydda itself but failed to penetrate the defenses. Allon threw in the Eighty-ninth Battalion (Eighth Brigade), under Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Dayan. Its half-tracks, an armored car, and machine gun-mounting jeeps sped southeastward down the road from Ben Shemen, into Lydda, turned south, reaching the outskirts of Ramla-and then turned around and drove back around Lydda to Ben Shemen. The raid lasted forty-seven minutes.84 The troops appear to have shot at everyone in their path. One participant, "Gideon," later recalled: "[My] jeep made the turn and here at the ... entrance to the house opposite stands an Arab girl, stands and screams with eyes filled with fear and dread. She is all torn and dripping blood.... Around her on the ground lie the corpses of her family.... Did I fire at her? ... But why these thoughts, for we are in the midst of a battle, in the midst of conquest of the town. The enemy is at every corner. Everyone is an enemy. I ill! Destroy! Murder! Otherwise you will be murdered and will not conquer the town."85

The raid, which left dozens of Arabs (and nine Israelis) dead, coupled with the Yiftah attack on the Lydda defense line, sent the irregulars into shock;se they lost the will to fight. Their morale also probably suffered from having been abandoned by the Legion. That evening, in the Eighty-ninth Battalion's wake, the Third Battalion at last entered Lydda and took up positions in the town center after minor skirmishing.87 The following morning, Kiryati's Forty-second Battalion moved into Ramla; its notables had surrendered the town the previous night without a fight. In both towns the troops began rounding tip young adult males.

The battle for the two towns appeared to be over. But things abruptly turned sour. At around noon, iz July, a squadron of Legion armored cars drove into Lydda, either to reconnoiter or to look for a stranded officer.88 They came up against surprised Third Battalion troopers, who thought the town had been pacified. A firefight ensued, and locals joined in, sniping from windows and rooftops. The jittery Palmahniks responded by firing at any thing that moved, throwing grenades into houses and massacring detainees in a mosque compound; altogether, "about 250" townspeople died, and many were injured, according to IDF records.89 Ben-Gurion then authorized Allon to expel the population of Lydda, which had "rebelled," and Ramla. From the first, Ben-Gurion and the IDF commanders had thought in terms of depopulating the two towns.90 Already on io July, the relevant units had been ordered "to allow the speedy flight from Ramla of women, old people, and children."9' Just after noon, 12 July, Allon's operations officer, Yitzhak Rabin, issued the orders. Yiftah was instructed that "the inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age. They should be directed toward Beit Nabala";92 a similar order reached Kiryati regarding Ramla93-despite the surrender instrument that implicitly allowed Ramla's inhabitants to stay (it stated: those "who wish may leave")94-though the brigade was instructed to take "all army-age males" prisoner.95 Yiftah and Kiryati troops methodically expelled that day and the next the towns' fifty thousand inhabitants, and the refugees encamped in them-though, to be sure, many, having endured battles, a massacre, and Israeli conquest, were, by then, probably eager to leave for Arab-controlled areas.

From Lydda, the inhabitants left on foot, some being stripped of money and jewelry by IDF troops at checkpoints on the way out 96 From Ramla, the population was trucked to a point near the village of al-Qubab, from which they proceeded eastward on foot.97 During the following days, suffering from hunger and thirst, dozens probably died on the way to Ramallah. An Israeli trooper later described the spoor of the refugee columns, "to begin with [jettisoning] utensils and furniture and in the end, bodies of men, women, and children, scattered along the way. Old people sat beside their carts begging for a drop of water-but there was none. "98 Another soldier recorded vivid impressions of how "children got lost" and how a child fell into a well, and presumably drowned, ignored as his fellow refugees fought over water.99 "Nobody will ever know how many children died" in the trek, wrote the Legion's commander, John Glubb.100

An Israeli commander, probably Allon, later explained that clogging the roads with needy refugees served Israel's strategic purposes by cluttering the main axes against a possible Legion advance westward, by burdening the Legionnaires with tens of thousands of people in dire need of succor, and by generally causing demoralization. 101 Making such military use of refugees was later criticized by Mapam's coleader, Meir Ya`ari.102

Without doubt, the refugee wave caused the Legion immediate major logistical problems.'()-' The Fourth Regiment reported: "Some 30,000 women and children from among the inhabitants of Lydda, Ramla, and the area are dispersed among the hills, suffering from hunger and thirst to a degree that many of them have died."104 Legion transport collected and ferried the refugees to Ramallah.105 A week later, the Legion was reporting that "seventy thousand souls are dispersed in the streets [of Ramallah], most of them poor; they are suffering from a lack of basic goods and water [and] represent a serious health problem." The Ramallah city council appealed to King Abdullah to remove them. 106

But Abdullah's (and Glubb's) troubles went beyond the refugees' supply problems. The towns' fall, compounded by the inrush of refugees, some of them crossing the river and reaching Amman itself, and the attendant shortage of ammunition, were to trigger a major military and political crisis; Glubb even spoke of the impending destruction of his army or, alternatively, of resigning or pulling back to the East Bank.107 In Nablus, Salt, and Amman there were unprecedented street demonstrations. In Amman, "wives and parents" of Legionnaires tried to break into the king's palace; Glubb himself was subjected to spitting and catcalls of "traitor" as his car passed through West Bank villages.'" In Nablus, the Palestinians in effect drove out the Jordanian governor, Ibrahim Pasha Hashim, and the Iraqi army had had to use force to suppress the demonstrations.109

Alec Kirkbride later graphically described the events in Amman on 18 July: "A couple of thousand Palestinian men swept up the hill toward the main [palace] entrance ... screaming abuse and demanding that the lost towns should be reconquered at once.... The king appeared at the top of the main steps of the building; he was a short dignified figure wearing white robes and headdress. He paused for a moment, surveying the seething mob before, [then walked] down the steps to push his way through the line of guardsmen into the thick of the demonstrators. He went up to a prominent individual, who was shouting at the top of his voice, and dealt him a violent blow to the side of the head with the flat of his hand. The recipient of the blow stopped yelling ... [and] the I ing could be heard roaring: `so, you want to fight the Jews, do you? Very well, there is a recruiting office for the army at the back of my house ... go there and enlist. The rest of you, get the hell down the hillside!' Most of the crowd got the hell down the hillside." 110

Glubb and Kirkbride regarded the Palestinians as ungrateful. The Legionnaires, at that very moment doing battle "from Latrun to Deir Tarif," had suffered one in four dead or wounded of those who had crossed the river on 15 May-and here were the Palestinians maligning them as "traitors." 111

But Glubb became the butt of pan-Arab anger. The Political Committee of the Arab League was in session in Amman during 12-13 July. Some participants, including the Iraqis, charged that Glubb was serving Britain, or even worse, the Jews, and that his arguments about ammunition and troop shortages were merely excuses. 112 And, at the same time, the "Syrian and Iraqi au thorities and . . . Azzam" were busy berating Britain for helping the Jews by withholding supplies from the Arab armies.' la "Many" Iraqi expeditionary force officers seemed to feel that "both branches of the Hashemite house" (that is, in Jordan and Iraq) were "in the pay of the British and even working with the Jews." 1 i4 Non-Jordanian Arab politicians seem to have been happy at last to have a stick with which to beat Abdullah and his army, the only one to have registered a substantial success against the Israelis. "One cannot help feeling that many of the Arab leaders would rejoice in the downfall of Jordan," commented Kirkbride.ii5 Egyptian journalists at Cairo airport later assailed Glubb-who immediately after the Ten Days went on extended leave to England, perhaps ordered byAbdullah-with: "Why did you betray the Arab cause?" and "Why did you give Lydda and Ramla to the Jews?"116

Abdullah, though aware of the true situation, bowed before the storm and summoned Glubb to a meeting of the Council of Ministers, where he was roundly upbraided. The king found it politic to shoulder him with the blame for the loss of the two towns. Talk of ammunition shortages was flippantly dismissed and Glubb's resignation was suggested (though not actuall), requested): "If you don't want to serve us loyally, there is no need for you to stay," was how Abdullah reportedly phrased it.117 But the Legion was still in the midst of battle; Glubb couldn't simply walk away. Besides, London pressed him to soldier on. 118

Without doubt, the Ten Days severely undermined Britain's position. As Kirkbride later put it: "I am struck principally by the extreme precariousness of our position in Transjordan.... We have reached a degree of unpopularity which I would have described as impossible six months ago.""9

Be that as it may, the Israelis believed that they had solved a strategic problem. Or as Ben-Gurion reported to the Cabinet-while completely failing to hint that he had authorized, or that there had been, an expulsion-"in Ramla and Lydda not one Arab inhabitant has remained."120 Of course, this was wishful thinking-hundreds of Arabs had remained in hiding and hundreds more were to infiltrate back into the two towns during the following months121 (and, today, the two towns have substantial Arab-and socioeconomically-minority populations).

Meanwhile, to the northeast,Alexandroni (in a suboperation ofDani, Operation Barak) captured Iraqi-held Majdal Yaba and Ras al-'Ein, north of Qula. An effort on i i July to take Deir Tarif from the Legion's First Regiment failed. So similarly did an effort that day by the Legion's Third Brigade, driving northwestward from Bir Main, to dislodge Yiftah from Jimzu. During the following days, Alexandroni conducted a bloody seesaw battle with units of the Legion's First Brigade-sent to secure the seam area at the southern end of the Iraqi zone of control in western Samaria-over Qula, retaking the village for the last time on 18 July, just before the Second Truce came into effect.122 In place they found the bodies of sixteen Alexandroni troopers left behind when the Legion took the position two days before. One Israeli report read, "On most of them were signs of severe mutilation: stab wounds, some had had their genitals cut off, some were missing ears. One body was cut into many bits with its genitalia stuffed in its mouth. Without doubt some of the dead fell into Arab hands while alive and were killed subsequently.... Their trousers [and] shoes were missing." 123

The IDF advances of 9-13 July seem to have spent Operation Dani's offensive energies. Most of Israel's tanks and much of its other armor was in disrepair, and some units had taken serious casualties. The Israelis were also hamstrung by the expectation of a new UN-imposed truce and fear of a major Legion counterattack: "Where is the Legion?" Ben-Gurion asked his diary.124 From the start, IDF intelligence had overestimated Legion strength, had no inkling of the Legion's severe ammunition shortages, and was oblivious to Jordan's decision to pursue a "phoney war" and abandon Lydda and Ramla to their fate.

So IDF operations from 13 to 18 July were desultory and localized: the idea of pushing on to Ramallah was, in effect, abandoned. Although on 14-17 July Yiftah and Kiryati forces made small additional gains, taking the undefended villages of Barfiliya and Salbit southeast of Jimzu, and al-Burj and Shilta, a renewed effort by Harel troops on the night of 15-16 July to take the hilly ridge to the east of Latrun, around Yalu village, failed, as did a lastminute frontal effort an hour or two before the start of the Second Truce led by two Cromwell tanks (driven by British defectors) to take the Latrun police fort. A series of lapses, crowned by a direct hit on one Cromwell's gun,125 or a stuck shell casing,126 put paid to the effort. Once again, the IDF had failed to take Latrun. To the north, Yiftah troops suffered a serious reverse-suffering forty-five dead-at Khirbet Kureikur, east of Shilta.127

Meanwhile, in a series of parallel, minor attacks, the Harel Brigade's Second and Fourth battalions expanded Israel's holdings in the Jerusalem Corridor south of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, taking a series of villages-Suba, Sataf, Khirbet al-Lauz, Khirbet Deir Amr, and Aqqur (13-14- July) and K'asla, Beit Umm al-Meis, Beit Thul, Sara, Deir Rafat, `Islip, Ishwa, and Artuf (17-18 July). At the eastern end of the corridor, on the southern and western peripheries of Jerusalem, units of the IZL and the `Etzioni Brigade took the villages of Beit Safafa, 'Ein Karim, and al-Maliha. But a combined IDF-IZL-LHI attack on the Old City on 16 -17 July failed, despite the temporary capture of a position adjacent to the New Gate. The failure was due partly to a major starting delay and the short time left before the start of the truce in Jerusalem, which was a day earlier than in the rest of the country. 128 The failed attack on the Old City had been initiated by `Etzioni Brigade (and Jerusalem district) OC David Shaltiel, contrary to orders by the General Staff, which had preferred that he take Sheikh Jarrah. He was dismissed a few days later and replaced by Dayan.