For a month talks went on with both sides. Count Berna—
547
dotte and his American aide, Ralph Bunche, working for the United Nations, were unable to bring the sides together. They could not break down in a month what had been building for three decades. Kawukji, in central Galilee, had been constantly violating the truce. Now the Egyptians broke faith by resuming fighting before the truce deadline was up.
It was a great mistake, for it triggered a new Israeli campaign. If the world’s military experts had been amazed by the ability of the Jews to withstand the invasion, they were stunned as the army of Israel went on the offensive.
The new phase of the war opened with the Israel air force bombing Cairo, Damascus, and Amman as a warning for the Arabs to quit similar attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Arabs did not bomb Jewish cities from the air again. Israeli corvettes carried the fight to the enemy by shelling Tyre, in Lebanon, one of the key ports for the entry of arms.
At Ein Gev kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee, the farmers, who had been under siege for months and who had broken a Syrian attack, now struck back. In a bold night maneuver, they climbed the Sussita mountain and threw the Syrians from it.
In the central Galilee, Ari Ben Canaan went after Kawukji and Nazareth. By pushing his troops to the limit of their endurance and by making brilliant use of his equipment he completely outmaneuvered and outfought the irregulars. The Mufti’s personal general took a sound licking and lost Nazareth. With the fall of Nazareth the hostile Arab villages in the central Galilee collapsed and Kawukji led a flight to the Lebanese border. The Israelis commanded the entire Galilee and all its roads.
In the Bab el Wad and the Jerusalem corridor the Hillmen Brigade widened the way and began moving south toward Bethlehem.
In the Negev Desert, the Israelis held the Egyptians in a stalemate. Samson once set fire to the tails of a thousand foxes and .turned them loose on the Philistine fields. Now lightning jeep units with machine guns, called “Samson’s Foxes,” made fierce attacks on Egyptian supply lines and Arab villages. The terrible siege of Negba kibbutz was lifted.
It was in the Sharon Valley facing the Triangle that the Israelis scored their most spectacular success. Using the jeep units to the fullest and led by the former Hanita Brigade of the Palmach, the Jews swept into Lydda and Ramie, Arab towns that had harassed the road to Jerusalem. They captured the Lydda airdrome, the largest field in Palestine, and then swung into the Samarian Triangle to develop a maneuver to encircle Latrun. On the way they brushed aside the Iraqi forces and relieved the siege of another children’s village,
Ben Shemen. Just as encirclement of Latrun was near accomplishment the Arabs, in unison, screamed for a second truce. All the Israeli victories had been scored in ten days.
As Bernadotte and Bunche conducted the second truce talks, the Arab world was frantic. Abdullah of Trans-Jordan was the first to see the handwriting on the wall. He went into secret negotiations with the Provisional Government and agreed to keep the Legion sitting and out of action. This would permit the Jews to turn their full attention to the Egyptians. In exchange, the Jews agreed not to go after the Old Gity or the Legion-dominated Samarian Triangle.
Again the brigand Kawukji broke the truce by attacking from Lebanon. As the second truce ended, “Operation Hiram,” named for the Lebanese King in the Bible, blew Kawukji and the Mufti’s dreams into smoke, once and for all. The Israeli Army swept over the Lebanese border on the heels of the shattered and fleeing irregulars. Lebanese villages showed an array of white flags of surrender. With Kawukji banished, the Jews pulled back to their own borders, although there had been little to stop them from going clear to Beirut and Damascus.
With the Galilee clear, the Sharon quiet, and a promise to Abdullah not to attack Jordan-held positions, the army turned its full attention on the Egyptians.
Meanwhile the Arab world scrambled to explain away the series Of Israeli successes. Abdullah of Trans-Jordan publicly blamed Iraq for the Arab failure: Iraq had failed to attack from the Triangle to cut the Jews in half and had generally made themselves look ridiculous. Iraq, which dreamed of ruling a Greater Arab Nation in its “Fertile Crescent” scheme blamed their overextended supply lines. The Syrians were the most vocal of alclass="underline" they blamed the Americans and Western imperialism. The Saudi Arabians, who fought in the Egyptian Army, blamed nearly everyone, each Arab country in turn. The Egyptians blamed Trans-Jordan for selling out by Abdullah’s agreement with the Jews. However, one of the most spectacular by-products of the War of Liberation was the manner in which the Egyptian press and radio translated Egyptian disasters as victories. So far as the Egyptian public was concerned, their troops were winning the war. The Lebanese and the Yemenites kept very quiet. They were not too interested in the fighting to begin with.
The myth of Arab unity exploded as the Jews continued to administer defeats on the combined Arab strength. The former kisses, handshakes, and vows of eternal brotherhood changed to knife pulling, haranguing, and, finally, political assassination. Abdullah was eventually murdered by Moslem
549
fanatics as he came from prayer in the Mosque of Omar in the Old City. Farouk was thrown out of Egypt by a clique of militarists who spoke the pages of an Arab Mein Kampf. Intrigue and murder, the old Arab game, raged at full force.
In the Negev Desert, the army of Israel, now balanced and coordinated, brought the war into its closing Stages. Suweidan, the Monster on the Hill which had tormented the Negba kibbutz, fell. It was at Suweidan that the Egyptians showed their greatest valor.
A bypassed Egyptian pocket at Faluja, which had been under Jewish siege, was later evacuated under truce talks. One of its Egyptian officers was a young captain later to lead the overthrow of Farouk. His name was Gamal Abdel Nasser.
The pride of the Egyptian Navy, the cruiser Farouk, had tried to shell a Jewish position a few hours before one of the truces to gain a tactical advantage. It was sunk by Israeli motorboats filled with dynamite which were driven out in the water, set, and rammed into the cruiser’s sides.
Beersheba-the Seven Wells, the city of Father Abraham Ś-fell in the autumn of 1948 to a surprise Israeli attack. The Egyptians dug in and built a deep and stacked defense for a stand below Beersheba. The defenses seemed impenetrable. Again the Jews called upon their intimate knowledge of the land. They found a Nabataean path, thousands of years old, which allowed them to encircle the Egyptian defenses and attack from the rear.
From then on it was a rout. The army of Israel lashed out after the fleeing Egyptians. They bypassed the Gaza area and crossed into the Sinai itself.
The Lord has mingled a spirit of perverseness in the midst of her; and they have caused Egypt to go astray in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit. Neither shall there be for Egypt any work which head or tail, palm branch or rush, may do. In that day shall the Egyptians be like unto women; and they shall tremble and fear because of the shaking of the Hand of the Lord of Hosts, which he shaketh over them.
The words of Isaiah had come true!
At the Suez Canal, the British became alarmed at the Egyptian debacle and the possibility of Israeli penetration near the canal. They demanded that the Jews stop or face the British Army. In warning, the British sent Spitfire fighters into the sky to gun the Israelis. It seemed only fitting somehow that the last shots of the War of Liberation were against the British. The Israeli Air Force brought down six British fighter planes. Then Israel yielded to international pressure by letting the