“I have asked this meeting with you to see if there is some basis for closer cooperation between our forces,” Avidan said.
“You mean you want us to come under your jurisdiction?” Ben Moshe asked suspiciously.
“I have long given up the idea of trying to control your group,” Avidan said. “I merely think the times call for a maximum effort. You have strength inside the three cities and are able to operate with a greater degree of freedom than we can.”
“So that’s it,” Akiva snapped. “You want us to do your dirty work.”
“Hear him out, Akiva,” bis field commander said.
“I don’t like the whole idea. I didn’t approve of this meeting, Ben Moshe. These people have betrayed us in the past and they’ll do it again.”
Avidan’s bald head turned crimson under the old man’s words. “I choose to listen to your insults tonight, Akiva, because there is too much at stake. I count on the fact that despite our differences you are a Jew and you love Eretz Israel.” He handed a copy of the “Haven-Hurst Report” to Akiva.
The old man gave it to Ben Moshe, who turned his flashlight on the paper.
“Fourteen years ago I said the British were our enemy. You didn’t believe me then,” Akiva whispered.
“I won’t argue politics with you. Will you or won’t you work with us?” Avidan demanded. . “We will try it out,” Ben Moshe said.
After the meeting liaison groups went to work to plot out a joint Haganah-Maccabee action. Two weeks after the explosions the British received their answer for the destruction of the Zion Settlement Society building and the attempted destruction of the Yishuv Central.
In one night the Haganah completely wrecked the railroad system, stopping all rail traffic to and from Palestine.
The next night the Maccabees broke into six British embassies and consulates in Mediterranean countries and destroyed records used in the fight against Aliyah Bet.
The Palmach branch of the Haganah wrecked the Mosul oil pipelines in fifteen places.
With this done, the final measure was plotted by the Maccabees-the elimination of General Sir Arnold Haven-Hurst. Maccabees observed the Schneller compound twenty-four hours a day. They charted all movement in and out, logged each car and truck, and diagramed the entire compound.
After four days it began to look like an impossible task. Haven-Hurst was locked in the center of a fortress surrounded by thousands of troops. No one but British personnel was allowed anywhere near his quarters. When Haven-Hurst did move out of the compound it was in secrecy and he was guarded by convoys so heavy the Maccabees would lose a hundred men by attacking it.
Then the first flaw was spotted.
A civilian automobile was logged as leaving the Schneller compound area between midnight and one o’clock in the morning about three times each week, returning to the compound just before daylight. There was only a driver in the car and he was dressed as a civilian. The regularity of the movement of this automobile during such unusual hours made it automatically suspect.
The Maccabee team went to work to find the registry of the owner, who turned out to be a wealthy Arab family. Thereupon the Maccabees decided that the car must belong to someone working with the British on the Arab side and gave it up as a possible device for getting to Haven-Hurst.
Meanwhile reports on Arnold Haven-Hurst’s personal background, conduct, and habits were compiled and studied. The Maccabees knew he was an ambitious man who had made an important marriage. The marriage gave him station as well as money and he had never endangered it. Haven-Hurst was considered the epitome of a proper gentleman in his social life; he was considered, in fact, a rather dull bore.
Probing beneath this apparent circumspect surface, the Maccabees discovered that Haven-Hurst had had not one, but several, extramarital affairs. In the Maccabees were people who had served in the British Army under Haven-Hurst years before. Camp rumors always had him with a mistress.
A theory developed that Haven-Hurst could well have been very lonely locked in the compound. Because of his marriage and position he would not dare to bring a woman into the camp. He could possibly be going out to a mistress. The idea was put forward that Haven-Hurst was an unseen passenger in the mystery car and was regularly traveling between the compound and a woman.
It seemed preposterous even to the Maccabees, yet until the mystery car was properly identified it could not be cast away. Who could the mistress of Arnold Haven-Hurst be? There were no rumors to be checked upon. If he had a love nest he had concealed it with great skill. No Jewess would risk living with him, and there were no Englishwomen available. This left only an Arab woman.
To attempt to follow the car would have risked detection and alerting of the quarry. It would have been possible for the Maccabees to waylay the single car traveling late at night, but the command decided that if there were the least chance that Haven-Hurst was a passenger it would be better to discover his destination and catch him at an indiscretion.
They worked from the other direction, the owner of the car. In this family of Arab effendis was a young woman who in beauty, education, and background could qualify as an attraction for a man like Haven-Hurst. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together.
The Maccabees watched the Arab family house and constantly trailed the girl. On the second night, their persistence paid off. The girl left her home at midnight and made for a house in the rich Arab El Baq’a section of Jerusalem near the Hebron-Bethlehem Road. A half hour after she arrived the mystery automobile pulled up and the Maccabees were able to catch a fleeting glimpse of General Arnold Haven-Hurst rushing from the back of the car to keep his rendezvous.
At three o’clock that same morning Haven-Hurst was awakened by a voice in the darkness which shouted out a bloodcurdling quotation, “Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel!”
He leaped from the bed. The Arab woman shrieked as Maccabee bullets raked the room.
Later that morning British headquarters received a phone call from the Maccabees. The British were advised where they could find their late commander. They were further advised that the demise of Arnold Haven-Hurst had been well photographed. If the British brought undue retribution against the Yishuv, the Maccabees would publish the pictures.
Headquarters speculated on the effect of the scandal of one of their generals being murdered in the bed of his Arab mistress. They decided to cover up the entire affair with public announcements that he had died in an automobile accident.
The Maccabees agreed that Haven-Hurst indeed was the victim of an automobile accident.
With the general gone from the scene the terrorist activity
dwindled. The pending arrival of the United Nations committee lay an uneasy calm over the land.
In late June of 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, known as UNSCOP, arrived in Haifa. The neutrals represented Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Peru, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Iran, and India.
The odds were long against the Jews. Iran was a Moslem country. India was partly Moslem and its delegate was a Moslem as well as representing a British Commonwealth nation. Canada and Australia were also of the British Commonwealth. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, in the Soviet bloc, had a traditional history of anti-Zionism. The South American representatives, Uruguay, Peru, and Guatemala, were Catholic in predomination and could possibly be influenced by the Vatican’s lukewarm feeling toward Zionism. Only Sweden and the Netherlands could be considered fully nonpartisan.
None the less, the Yishuv welcomed UNSCOP.
The Arabs opposed the presence of the United Nations. Inside Palestine a general strike of the Arabs was called, demonstrations were held, and the air was filled with oaths and threats. Outside of Palestine the Arab countries began riots and blood pogroms against their Jews.