The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (47 page)

The sinking of the
Altalena
is recounted in
Brother Against Brother,
pp. 17-32. Israel's ability to break the arms embargo is described on pp. 204-05 of
Clash of Destinies.
The weapons included artillery, Messerschmitt fighter aircraft, Czech-made Beza machine guns, and millions of rounds of ammunition in a "shuttle service of arms and planes to Israel" from the "Haganah's main base in Europe."

Glubb describes Abdullah's position vis-a-vis war, the Arab League, and the end of the truce on pp. 151-52; see also
The Road to Jerusalem,
p. 175. The "don't shoot" quote comes from
A Soldier with the Arabs,
p. 150.

Israel Gefen was eighty-two years old and in possession of a vivid recollection of detail when I interviewed him. The details of the weaponry conform with the materiel secured by Israel in the aforementioned Czech arms shipments; additional details were verified by Alon Kadish, coauthor of
The Conquest of Lydda.
Gefen and Kadish confirmed the firing rate of the machine guns.

Kadish also provided me with the first name of Dr. Ziegfried Lehman, who was recalled only by his last name in Spiro Munayyer's account of the Ben Shemen story ("Fall of Lydda," p. 85). Interestingly, the Kimche brothers note
(Clash of Destinies,
p. 74) that Ben Shemen was not simply a peaceful settlement before the outbreak of the war; it was used as a training site for the Haganah.

The battle plans for "mobility and fire" employed by Dayan were described to me by Alon Kadish, who said that Dayan had heard about the tactic of overwhelming force from an American tank commander during a trip to the United States. This plan and the account of Dayan's trip to the United States were confirmed in an interview with Yohanan Peltz, who was for part of 1948 Dayan's second in command.

Newspaper accounts of the attack on Lydda corroborate and in some cases expand on the description by Gefen; details are in the July 11 and July 12 editions of the
New York Herald Tribune,
the
Chicago Sun Times,
and the
New York Times.
Additional details are described by Yoav Gelber in
Palestine 1948
on p. 159 and by Benny Morris in his 1986 article in the
Middle East Journal,
"Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and Ramla in 1948," pp. 82-109, and in his
1948 and After,
pp. 1-4. The attack was part of Operation Dani, one side of what Kadish described as a "pincer movement" hitting Ramla and Lydda (including the airport) from two sides, cutting it off from Arab Legion positions to the east. The direction of Dayan's convoy was described by Kadish in the 2004 interview and in
Clash of Destinies,
pp. 227-28.

The next morning, July 12, an incident occurred that would help shape events of the coming forty-eight hours. Israeli army units had entered Lydda after Dayan's Battalion Eighty-nine (conversation with Kadish, June 2004). Most of the civilian population of Ramla and Lydda remained, and shooting had died down in both towns. Just before noon, three Arab Legion armored cars appeared along the border between Ben Shemen and Lydda
(A Soldier with the Arabs,
pp. 161-62). Apparently they were there on a scouting mission. But the Israelis, and Arabs of Lydda, thought the cars were the advance guard of a counterattack. Fighters in Lydda began sniping from the buildings
(1948 and After,
p. 1). One eyewitness I interviewed recalls someone from Lydda throwing a hand grenade, wrhich he believes killed several Israeli soldiers. It was, everyone thought for a moment, the beginnings of an uprising, but it didn't last long. "Soon it became apparent that the armoured cars were unsupported," Glubb would write in
Soldier with the Arabs,
p. 161. The trucks and their soldiers were "obliged to withdraw."

Israeli troops opened fire. Eyewitnesses I interviewed who claim to have been inside a mosque at the time recall indiscriminate machine-gun fire (interview with Abu Mohammad Saleh Tartir, Amari refugee camp, T3ecember 2003). When the shooting stopped, about 250 people were dead, including many unarmed men in the Dahmash mosque. Four of the dead and about twenty of the wounded were Israelis. Morris, on p. 1 of
1948 and After,
referred to what happened in Lydda as a "slaughter"; Gelber, the Israeli historian, called it a "massacre" and "probably the bloodiest throughout the war"
(Palestine 1948,
p. 162); numerous Palestinian sources also call it a massacre and focus on the deaths at the mosque, which may have exceeded eighty.

According to Firdaws Taji, word of the killings in Lydda spread quickly to Ramla, prompting discussions of surrender and flight.

The actions of Dr. Rasem Khairi are described by Firdaws Taji. The aerial bombing of Ramla on July 9 and 10 is described by Firdaws and corroborated by Morris in his review of military archives in "Operation Dani,"
Middle East Journal
P- 86. One communique referred to the "great value in continuing the bombing," as it was, in Morris's words, "designed to induce civilian panic and flight," which Gefen, in his interview with me in June 2004, reported seeing from his convoy: "Soon after, every path leading to the east . . . people walking, children, women, people with bundles. . . ."

Firdaws Taji, in an interview, described leaflets dropped from the air by Israeli planes, as did Busailah in the
Arab Studies Quarterly
article, p. 133, and Morris in the
Middle East Journal p. 76.

The condition of the towns of Ramla and Lydda were described by Firdaws Taji and in interviews with current and former Arab citizens of Lydda (now the Israeli city of Lod), including Adla Salim Rehan at the Amari refugee camp in Ramallah and Mohammad Saleh Tartir of the Lydda Society at Amari. Khanom Khairi described Sheikh Mustafa's emergency trip to secure bullets in Transjordan.

The state of the defenders of Ramla is described by Taji and Reja'e Busailah
(Arab Studies Quarterly,
pp. 127-35). Writing more broadly about the Palestinian Arabs during 1948, the Kimche brothers stated:

The local Arabs, who had only the haziest of notions concerning the strength of the Jews, knew even less about the nature of their own forces. . . . No one told the Palestinian Arabs in their villages—until it was too late—that the Arab countries were not fulfilling all they had promised and that many of the weapons they had sent were old, decrepit and useless.
(Clash of Destinies,
pp. 81-82)

Sheikh Mustafa's desire to keep Ramla residents from fleeing is described by Firdaws Taji Khairi, who recalls a series of meetings on the elegant patio of her father-in-law-to-be. The chaos of people going back and forth between Ramla and Lydda is described by Taji and by Busailah. Busailah also reports the urgent telegrams and the promises of a "flood of gold" and is a source for the surrender talk and the Bedouins' departure. Glubb writes about the departure of the Arab Legion in
Soldier with the Arabs,
as does Abu Nowar in
The Jordanian-Israeli War,
p. 206.

The account of Sheikh Mustafa sending his son to Kibbutz Na'an is also from Khanom Khairi. Alon Kadish told me his understanding was that some of the "notables" of the town were actually trying to leave when intercepted by Israeli troops and taken to the kibbutz to sign the surrender documents. The surrender terms and signature were taken from a copy of the original document in Hebrew and translated by Israeli journalist Ian Dietz. Copies of the surrender were provided by Yonatan Tubali, city manager of Ramla, and by Hava Enoch, the archivist at Kibbutz Na'an.

Galili B's quote on Ben-Gurion's orders to "evacuate Ramla" come from his handwritten note, which is deposited in the Na'an archives. Kadish, whose book was published by the Israel Defense Forces, confirms that the populations of Lydda and Ramla were expelled. David Kimche, former Israeli intelligence officer and coauthor of
Clash of Destinies,
wrote that "Lydda fell on July 11th and its Arab population of 30,000 either fled or were herded on to the road to Ramallah. The next day, Ramla also surrendered, and its Arab population suffered the same fate. Both towns were sacked by the victorious Israelis." The Israeli historian Gelber, in
Palestine 1948,
writes that "Yigal Alon [commander of the Palmach, or Israeli army] had ordered that all males of military age be detailed as prisoners-of-war and the rest be deported across the lines." Morris, in
1948 and After,
p. 2, and "Operation Dani"
(Arab Studies Quarterly,
p. 91), cites Israeli military communiques issued from Dani headquarters, including the order by Rabin. A similar order, Morris writes, was issued shortly afterward. For a detailed discussion of the July 1998 expulsions from al-Ramla and Lydda, with extensive citation from Israeli military and civilian archives, see Morris's
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited,
pp. 423-436.

Firdaws Taji's recollections of soldiers yelling, "Go to Abdullah," are echoed in perhaps a dozen interviews I have done with 1948 Arab residents of al-Ramla and Lydda, many of whom now live in the Amari refugee camp in Ramallah; Reja's Busailah also mentions this in the
Arab Studies Quarterly
article, p. 140.

Shitrit's arrival in the al-Ramla/Lydda area is mentioned in Tom Segev's
1949: The First Israelis,
pp. 26-27; Morris's article in
Middle East Journal,
pp. 92-93; and Gelber's
Palestine 1948,
p. 161.

Rabin recalled the meeting with Ben Gurion in his memoirs. Although this portion was censored in its Hebrew version, the translator, Peretz Kidron, later published the memoirs in English and leaked the quote to the
Neiv York Times.
(See the
New York Times,
October 23, 1979.) Gelber, in
Palestine 1948,
p. 162, challenges Rabin's interpretation, arguing that "Ben-Gurion's habit was not 'waving' his orders but formulating them clearly and expressing them verbally or in writing . . . Ben-Gurion might have waved his hand to get rid of a fly."

Yigal Allon's strategy for using the expelled populations of Ramla and Lydda to clog the roads and prevent the Arab Legion from retaking the towns is outlined in the
Palmach 67
(July 1948): 7-8 (in Hebrew, reference provided by Alon Kadish, coauthor of
The Conquest of Lydda).

The newspaper quotes from Currivan and others are from the July 12 and July 13 editions of the
New York Herald Tribune
and the
New York Times.
The recollections of men who boarded the buses come from Michail Fanous, in an interview in Ramla, who heard the story from his father, and from Mohammad Taji, also of Ramla.

The heat of mid-July 1948 in the central plain of Israel/Palestine is mentioned by Glubb on p. 162 of
A Soldier with the Arabs
and by Busailah in his
Arab Studies Quarterly
report, p. 142. Evidence that thousands had already left al-Ramla and Lydda by July 14 comes from numerous interviews with eyewitnesses, including Mohammad Taji, Firdaws Taji, Abu Mohammad Saleh Tartir in the Amari refugee camp, 1998 interviews with the Reverend Audeh Rantisi, and Busailah, p. 140.

The items the Khairis and others of al-Ramla left behind come from numerous interviews with family members and other former and current residents of Ramla and Lydda and years of observation and visits with Palestinians in the West Bank, Lebanon, Gaza, and Jordan.

Numerous interviews I have done over the years, including with the late Reverend Audeh Rantisi of Lydda, describe the confiscation of rings and other gold jewelry by Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of the towns. Morris, in the
Middle East Journal
article, pp. 97-98, reports, "In general, the refugees were sent on their way unmolested," but adds that in July 1948, Israeli cabinet minister Aharon Cohen alleged that Israeli troops "at the checkpoints on the way out of Lydda had been 'ordered' to 'take from the expelled Arabs every watch, piece of jewelry or money . . . so that arriving completely destitute, they would become a burden on the Arab Legion.' " The extent to which this happened is not clear, but it is consistent with interviews and other written accounts.

The account of the Taji and Khairi families' flight and the landscape they crossed comes from Firdaws Taji and is echoed by numerous other interviews, including those with Mohammad Taji, Abu Mohammad Saleh Tartir, and Rantisi. A similar account is given by Busailah, p. 141.

The "donkey road" reference is from an interview with Khamis Salem Habash of al-Ramla, the details of whose journey during the same period are consistent with Firdaws Taji's. The description of cactus and Christ's thorn near al-Ramla during this period comes from various sources, including Israeli landscape architect Ya'acov Golan. The actual distance the group traveled is unclear, though it is certain the people of Ramla did not journey as far as Busailah and the others from Lydda.

The figure of thirty thousand refugees and the terrain they crossed come from estimates by Glubb
(A Soldier with the Arabs,
p. 162) and from Ben-Gurion's diaty of July 15, 1948 (quoted in Segev's
1949,
p. 27). Morris
(Middle East Journal,
p. 83) and Kadish (interview with me, June 2004) estimate that there were between fifty thousand and sixty thousand Arabs in the two towns of Lydda and Ramla in July 1948, including refugees who had arrived from Jaffa and nearby villages. ("Maybe thirty-four thousand [in Ramla and Lydda combined] without refugees," Kadish told me. "So you're talking about fifty-five to sixty thousand people.") Postwar Israeli figures for the Arab populations of both towns are fewer than five thousand; hence it appears Ben-Gurion and Glubb's figure of thirty thousand refugees is reasonable, if not conservative.

Ben-Gurion's "demanding bread" quote comes from
1949,
p. 27.

Ramallah's past as a Christian hill town is understood through numerous interviews and documents, including an interview with Nicola Akkel in Ramallah and Palestinian scholar Naseer Aruri in Boston.

That tens of thousands of refugees were in Ramallah in mid-July is verified by
U.S.
government cables, including one dated August 12, 1948, and sent from the American consulate in Jerusalem to the State Department in Washington. That the refugees were already thinking of return is documented in dozens of interviews with refugees in camps in the West Bank and elsewhere, including in Ramallah. Morris, in his
Middle East Journal
article, p. 98, included the account of Shmarya Guttman, an officer in the Palmach and a resident of Kibbutz Na'an, who described the walk of the refugees: