The British pointed out to the Arabs that it would be wise to accept, because the area allotted to the Jews couldn’t hold many more immigrants. But the Arabs wanted nothing more or less than that every Jew be thrown into the sea. Haj Amin el Husseini was the treasure of Islam and the martyred victim of British and Zionist injustice. From Beirut he renewed the rebellion.
Taggart, who had built the British system of forts, erected an electrified barbed-wire wall along the Lebanese border to stop the Mufti’s thugs and arms runners. At intervals he constructed more blockhouse forts to interlace with the wall.
One of the forts on the Taggart wall was erected above Abu Yesha and Yad El at the site believed to be the burial ground of Queen Esther. It became known as Fort Esther.
The Taggart wall slowed the Arab infiltration but could not stop it.
The Haganah, which had contained itself so long, became very restless and the Yishuv began to wonder when the Yishuv Central would let the Haganah fight. Under this growing pressure, Ben Gurion finally agreed to listen to a plan advanced by Avidan. In turn the Zion Settlement Society purchased a piece of land on the northern extremity of the Galilee, right on the Lebanese border, at a point where Haganah intelligence suspected most of the Arab infiltration to be taking place.
Shortly after the land purchase Ari Ben Canaan and two other top young men in Haganah were called to Tel Aviv to Avidan’s secret headquarters.
The bald-headed leader of Jewish defense unfolded a map and pointed out the new parcel of land. Its importance to the continuation of the Arab revolt was obvious.
“I want you three boys to take command of a unit to go up to this land and build a kibbutz there. We are carefully picking eighty of our top men and twenty women to go with you. I don’t have to tell you what to expect.” They nodded.
“We know the Mufti is going to stop everything else in an effort to run you out. This is the first time we have picked a spot for a kibbutz because of its strategic value.”
Sarah Ben Canaan was sick at heart. For years she had not seen her son without a whip or a gun near at hand. Now she feared this mission as she had feared none of the others. A hundred of the best members of the Yishuv were being put into a suicidal position. Ari kissed his mother and brushed away her tears and in his simple way said that it would be all right. He shook his father’s hand and said nothing, for the understanding between them was complete.
Dafna knocked on the door and they said good-by to her too.
Dafna and Ari walked out the gates of Yad El and turned to look back briefly at the fields and at the friends who had gathered. Barak sighed and put his arm on Sarah’s shoulder as the younger couple disappeared down the road.
“They want so little from life,” Sarah said. “How long . . how long must we go on giving him?”
Barak shook his great head and his eyes narrowed to catch a last glimpse of his boy and Dafna.
“God asked Abraham to give his son in sacrifice. I suppose we of the Yishuv live in that shadow, We must keep giving Ari so long as God wills it.”
A hundred of the finest young men and women of the Yishuv went up to the border of Lebanon and placed themselves in the path of thieves and murderers. Ari Ben
Canaan, at twenty-two years of age, was second in command. They called the place Ha Mishmar, the Guardpost.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Ten trucks carrying a hundred Haganah boys and girls and their equipment sped along the coastal road past the last Jewish settlement at Nahariya in northern Galilee and penetrated into territory where no Jew had gone before. A thousand pairs of Arab eyes watched the convoy as it moved up into the foothills of the mountains on the Lebanese border below the Taggart wall.
They stopped, set out guards, and unloaded the trucks quickly. The trucks rushed back to Nahariya before dark. The hundred were alone. Above them the hills were filled with Arab marauder gangs. Behind them were a dozen hostile Arab villages.
They erected a small stockade, dug in, and waited out the night.
By next morning the word had spread from Hebron to Beirut … “The Jews have moved into the hills!” Haj Amin el Husseini in Beirut was enraged. It was an open challenge. He swore by the beard of Allah that the Jews would be thrown into the sea.
During the next few days the Haganah force worked themselves to exhaustion tightening the defenses of the base camp at the bottom of the hill against the attack that had to come. Each night when they weren’t standing guard, Dafna and Ari fell into exhausted slumber in each other’s arms.
On the fourth night the attack camel
The Jews had never undergone anything like it. A thousand Arab riflemen flanked with machine guns poured a steady tattoo of fire into the Jews’ stockade for five consecutive hours from the top of the hill. For the first time the Arabs used mortar fire. Ari and bis forces lay low and waited for the Arabs to try an assault.
The attack came when Arab thugs began slithering along the ground with knives between their teeth.
Suddenly––
Half a dozen searchlights darted out from the stockade and swept the field. The light caught the Arabs in close. The Jews poured on a deadly counterfire and in the very first burst shot sixty Arabs dead.
The Arabs were paralyzed with fear Art led half the Haganah force out from the cover of the stockade in a fierce counterattaek which littered the field of battle with Arab dead and wounded. Arabs who survived fled back to high ground screaming in terror.
The Arabs did not attack again for a week. Nothing the Mufti could say or do could make them attack. Kawukji could not make them attack.
In that first night three Haganah boys and one girl were killed in the fighting. One of them was the commander. Ari Ben Canaan stepped up to assume command.
Each day the Haganah moved up the hill a few feet, consolidated the position, and waited out the night. The Arabs watched from their positions above but never attacked during the daylight hours. By the end of a week Ari abandoned the first base camp and had established a second camp midway up the hill.
The Arabs resumed their attacks, but the lesson of the first night was still fresh. They did not try a direct assault but were content to fire at the camp from long distances.
While the Arabs remained indecisive, Ari decided to take the offensive. At the end of the second week at dawn he made his move. He waited until the Arabs were tired from firing all night and their guard was lax. He led twenty-five crack men and ten women in a dawn attack that threw the sleepy Arabs off the top of the hill. The Jews dug in quickly while the Arabs got their bearings and reassembled for a counterattack. Ari lost five soldiers but he held his position.
Quickly he fortified a lookout post on the top of the hill which commanded a view of the entire area. By daylight they worked feverishly to build their foothold into a fortress.
The Mufti was nearly insane with rage! He changed commanders and assembled another force of a thousand men. They attacked, but as soon as they came into close range they broke and fled.
For the first time Jews commanded a hilltop position and the Arabs were not going to dislodge them.
Although the Arabs would not fight at close quarters and would therefore not be able to run the Haganah out, ihey did not intend to make life easy for the Jews. Ari’s troops were constantly harassed by Arab rifles. His force was completely isolated from the rest of the Yishuv. The closest settlement was Nahariya. All supplies and even water had to come in through hostile territory by truck, and once there everything had to be carried up the hill by hand.
Despite the hardships, Ha Mishmar held fast. A few crude huts were erected inside the stockade and a road was started to the bottom of the hill. Ari began night patrols along the Taggart wall to catch infiltrators and arms runners. The Mufti’s underground highway into Palestine was being squeezed shut.