Leon Uris (90 page)

David Ben Ami conducted the battle by sending out patrols to move street by street, house by house, to clean out pockets of resistance. The going was slow and bloody; these were houses built of stone, not mud, and those who remained fought it out hand to hand.

The day wore on. Ari Ben Canaan did not move from his position on the mountainside. The constant sound of gunfire and the bursts of grenades and even the screams of men reached his ears.

The Arabs of Abu Yesha fell back from position after position as the relentless attack cut off any co-ordination between groups or individuals. Finally all those left were squeezed into one street on the edge of town. More than seventy-five Arabs had been killed fighting to the end in the most dramatic defense the Arabs had made of one of their villages. It was a tragic fight; neither the Jews nor the Arabs wanted it.

The last eight men were pushed into the last stronghold, the fine stone house of the muktar which stood near the stream across from the mosque. David called for the Davidka. The house was blown to pieces. The last eight men, including Taha, were killed.

It was nearly dark when David Ben Ami walked up the road to Ari. David was battle weary.

“It is all over,” David said.

Ari looked at him glassy-eyed but did not speak.

“There were nearly a hundred of them. All dead. We lost ... fourteen boys, three girls. Another dozen wounded are up at Gan Dafna.”

Ari did not seem to hear him. He started to walk down the hill toward the village.

“What is going to become of their fields?” Ari whispered. “What will become of them ... where will they go ...?”

David grabbed Ari’s shoulder.

“Don’t go down there, Ari.”

Ari looked at the little sea of flat roofs. It was so quiet.

“Is the house by the stream ...”

“No,” David said. “Try to remember it as it was.”

“What will become of them?” Ari said. “They are my friends.”

“We are waiting for the order, Ari.”

Ari looked at David and blinked his eyes and shook his head slowly.

“I must give it then,” David said.

“No,” Ari whispered, “I shall give it.” He looked at the village for the last time. “Destroy Abu Yesha,” Ari said.

D
AVID SLEPT IN
Jordana’s arms.

She held his head tightly against her breast. She could not sleep. Her eyes were wide, staring into the darkness.

Ari had given her leave from Gan Dafna so the two of them could travel to Tel Aviv together and have a weekend alone. After tomorrow, the Lord only knew how long it would be before she saw him again, if ever. Jordana had known in her heart all along that David would volunteer for such a mission. Since the beginning of the siege he had been eating his heart out for Jerusalem. She saw that distant look of sadness and pain each time she looked into his eyes.

He stirred in his sleep. She kissed his forehead gently and ran her fingers through his hair and he smiled in his sleep and became still once more.

It would not be right for a
sabra
girl to tell her lover she was ill with worry for him. She must only smile and encourage him and conceal the fear in her heart. She felt weak with apprehension and she pressed him close to her body and wanted to hold him for a night without end.

It had begun the day partition was voted. The next day the Higher Arab Committee called for a general strike which erupted into the savage burning and plunder of the Jewish commercial center of Jerusalem. While the Arab mobs ran wild, British troops stood by.

The siege of the city began almost immediately with Abdul Kadar using Arab villages along the highway to blockade the Jewish convoys from Tel Aviv. While the titanic battles in the corridor raged for the heights, the Kastel and the other villages, the Jews in Jerusalem were frozen, hungry, and thirsty, and under direct cannonading from Kawukji and Kadar. While the Palmach Hillmen fought to keep the road open, the Yishuv organized the convoys which slugged their way along the Bab el Wad until the Judean hills were littered with wreckage.

Inside the city the fighting started with bombings and ambushes and erupted into full-scale war. The Haganah cleared a huge field of fire from King David Hotel to the Old City wall where the irregulars massed and the wreckage was called Bevingrad. The commander of the Haganah in Jerusalem was saddled with problems beyond mere military matters. He was burdened by a huge civilian population that had to be fed and protected in a situation of siege. He was further burdened by the fact that a large part of his population, ultra-Orthodox and fanatical Jews, not only refused to fight, but obstructed the efforts of the Haganah to protect them. In ancient Israel the commander of Jerusalem had been plagued by the same problems. In the siege against the Romans the fall of Jerusalem was hastened by a division of strength by the Zealots, and it led to a Roman massacre of 600,000 Jews. On that occasion the Jews had held out against the Romans for three years; it was unlikely that they could do it again.

In addition to the problem of the ultra-Orthodox and fanatics who refused to fight, the Maccabees only co-operated part of the time and were frequently concerned with carrying on a private war. When they did support the Haganah, it was not with particular distinction. The Hillmen Brigade of the Palmach was overextended and overworked in the Judean hills and quite reluctant to take orders from the Haganah commander of Jerusalem. It added up to a desperate situation in which the Haganah commander could do no right.

Beautiful Jerusalem became battle scarred and bloody. The Egyptians attacked from the south and shelled the city and bombed it from the sky. The Arab Legion used the sacred walls of the Old City as a stockade. Casualties mounted to the thousands. Again uncommon valor and ingenuity were the keynotes of the Jews’ defense. Again the Davidka mortar did yeoman’s work. It was moved from place to place to make the Arabs think there were many of them.

Outside Jerusalem, when the Arab Legion took Latrun fort they promised to keep the water pumping station open so that the civilian population would have enough to drink. Instead the Arabs blew up the pumping station and cut off the water supply. Cisterns two and three thousand years old were known to exist under Jerusalem. The Jews located them, tore the covers from them and discovered that, as if by a miracle, they still held water. Until emergency pipelines could be built, these ancient cisterns were all that kept the Jews from dying of thirst.

The days passed into weeks and the weeks into months and still Jerusalem held out. Every home became a battlefield. Men, women, children daily girded to battle with a spirit of defiance that would never be conquered.

David Ben Ami’s heart ached for Jerusalem. The siege was on his mind all day and all night.

He opened his eyes.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he asked Jordana.

“I have enough time for sleeping when I am away from you,” she answered.

He kissed her and told her that he loved her.

“Oh, David ... my David.”

She wanted to beg him not to ask for this mission. She wanted to cry out and tell him that if anything happened to him there could be no life for her. But she held her tongue as she knew she must. One of his six brothers had died at
kibbutz
Nirim fighting the Egyptians and another was dying from wounds received in a convoy to relieve besieged Negba in the Negev Desert. David’s brother Nahum of the Maccabees had chosen to go into the Old City.

David heard the rapid beating of Jordana’s heart.

“David, love me ... love me,” she pleaded.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, the Arab mobs surged in behind the Legion to destroy a score of synagogues and holy places, and they pillaged and looted every Jewish house that fell.

The pious ones and their Haganah and Maccabee defenders were squeezed back and back until they held only two buildings, one of them the Hurva Synagogue. It could only be a matter of days before they were all wiped out.

Jordana was awakened by the light of day. She stretched and purred with contentment, for her body was pleased with love. She reached out for David. He was not there.

Her eyes opened with alarm and then she saw him standing over her. David, for the first time, was dressed in the uniform of the army of Israel. She smiled and lay back on the pillows and he knelt beside her and touched her hair, which was a scarlet disarray.

“I have been watching you for an hour. You are very beautiful when you sleep,” he said.

She reached out and opened her arms and drew him close and kissed him.

“
Shalom
, Major Ben Ami,” she whispered in his ear, and kissed it softly.

“Darling, it’s late. I have to be going,” he said.

“I’ll get dressed right away,” she said.

“Why don’t I just go right now by myself? I think it will be better this way.”

Jordana felt her heart stop. For a fraction of a second she meant to seize him, then she quickly masked her shock and smiled.

“Of course, darling,” she said.

“Jordana ... Jordana ... I love you.”

“
Shalom
, David. Go quickly ... please.”

She turned her face to the wall and felt his kiss on her cheek and then she heard the door closing.

“David ... David,” she whispered. “Please come back to me.”

Avidan drove with Major Ben Ami to the flat that Ben Zion, the chief of operations, kept near headquarters. General Ben Zion, a man of thirty-one, was also a Jerusalemite. His aide, Major Alterman, was present when they arrived.

They exchanged greetings and condolences for the death of David’s brother at Nirim.

“Avidan tells us you have something of interest,” Alterman said.

“Yes,” David answered slowly. “Ever since the partition vote, the ‘lament of the exiles’ has been running through my mind, night and day, ‘If I forget thee, a Jerusalem.’ ”

Ben Zion nodded. He shared David’s feeling for Jerusalem. His wife, his children, and his parents were there.

David continued. “We control the road fairly well up to Latrun. Beyond Latrun, in the Bab el Wad, the Palmach had cleared most of the heights.”

“We all know that Latrun is our greatest stumbling block,” Alterman said crisply.

“Hear him out,” Ben Zion snapped.

“I have been thinking ... I know that area around Latrun like my mother’s smile. I have been going over the ground in my mind, inch by inch, for nearly six months. I am absolutely certain Latrun can be bypassed.”

There was a stunned silence for a moment.

“Just what do you mean?” Ben Zion asked.

“If you draw an arc around Latrun from road to road, it is sixteen kilometers.”

“But this sixteen kilometers is merely a line on the map. There is no road. Those hills are wild and impassable.”

“There is a road,” David said.

“David—what on earth are you talking about?” Avidan demanded.

“Over part of the way there is an ancient Roman road. It is two thousand years old and it is completely covered by brush and slide and washout, but it is there. The bed runs through the wadis for about eight kilometers. I know as surely as I stand here that I can follow the wadis for the balance of the distance.”

David walked to the wall map and drew a semicircle around Latrun, linking the roads.

Avidan and Ben Zion stared for several moments. Alterman looked cynical. Avidan, who had already heard some of the plans from Ari Ben Canaan, was critical.

“David,” Avidan said coldly, “say you are able to find this alleged Roman road and suppose you are able to find a goat path through the wadis—what then? You are still a long, long way from relieving the siege of Jerusalem.”

“What I propose,” David said without hesitation, “is that we build another road atop the Roman road and eliminate the need for capturing Latrun by going around it.”

“Come now, David,” Ben Zion said. “According to the route you have drawn on the map we will have to build this road right under the noses of the Arab Legion at Latrun.”

“Exactly,” David said. “We don’t need much more than a trail. Just enough to accommodate the width of a single truck. Joshua made the sun stand still at Latrun. Perhaps we can make the nights stand still. If one task force builds from the Jerusalem end and another from Tel Aviv and we work quietly by night, I know we can complete the bypass in a month. As for the Arab Legion, you know damned well that Glubb won’t bring them out of Latrun to fight. He is keeping them where they are safe from open battle.”

“We aren’t so sure of that,” Alterman said. “He may fight for the road.”

“If Glubb wasn’t afraid of committing the Legion to battle, then why hasn’t he attacked from the Triangle and tried to cut Israel in half?”

It was a question no one could answer. It could only be assumed that David was right. The opinion of the staff was that Glubb was overextended and had no intention of fighting beyond the areas of Jerusalem, the corridor, and Latrun. Besides, the Israelis would welcome the chance to meet the Legion in the field.

Ben Zion and Avidan sat quietly and mulled over David’s proposal.

“What do you want?” Ben Zion said at last.

“Give me a jeep and one night to drive through.”

Avidan was worried. In the early days of Haganah, it pained him every time he drew a casualty. It was like losing a son or daughter. In a small, close-knit community like the old Yishuv, each loss was a personal tragedy. Now, with the war, the Jews had casualties in the thousands and for a small country it was a devastating number. Most of them were the cream of the nation’s youth, men and women. No nation, no matter how large or small, had David Ben Amis to spare, Avidan thought. It seemed like a suicide task that David was taking upon himself. Maybe David only thought he knew of a route into Jerusalem because he wanted to believe that one existed.

“A jeep and twenty-four hours ...” David pleaded.

Avidan looked at Ben Zion. Alterman shook his head. What David wanted to do was impossible. The burden of Jerusalem weighed every heart; it was the life beat, the very breath of Judaism, yet ... Ben Zion wondered if it had not been madness to try to hold the city from the very beginning.