56 Friday, April 21, 1919
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
The Battle for Jerusalem Was the High Water Mark
in Fight That Created an Independent State of Israel
.
skirmishes occured in all
precarious position.
In order to accomplish parts of Palestine, includ-
this the Hagana had infil- ing Jerusalem, between
JERUSALEM — The his-
trated a handful of soldiers the Jewish settlers and
tory of military campaigns
among the residents, in- Arab irregulars. Several
is dominated by what is
cluding a few young women. Arab neighborhoods in
called "the high water
Since time immemorial the New City fell to com-
mark." The high water
the most effective way of de- bined regiments of
mark in the 1948 war was
feating a walled city has Hagana, Palmach and
Jerusalem, heart and soul of
been through siege. Like Irgun troops. Meanwhile,
the newborn Jewish state.
their Hebrew ancestors less the Jewish garrison in
No one understood this
than 2,000 years before the Old City continued to
better than David Ben-
them,
this is what the Jews resist.
G-urion, commander-in-
of Jerusalem were to face.
chief of the, as yet, unde-
It must be remembered
This time, however, not that all this was before the
clared Jewish state's armed
only the walled section of state of Israel was officially
forces. The early days after
the city was to be blockaded, declared. The declaration of
the United Nation's Nov.
but the other sections as the state in Tel Aviv on May
29, 1947 partition _ an-
well.
nouncement were heady
'14, 1948 opened the flood-
By the end of March gates through which the
ones for the 600,000 Jews of
1948, the vital artery lead- armies of five Arab coun-
Eretz Yisrael. But the danc-
ing to Jerusalem past tries poured in. The soldiers
ing in the streets that ac-
Bab el Wad was blocked of the Jewish state, out-
companied the United Na-
by Arab irregulars. The manned and lacking suffi- -- A Palmach jeep is shown during the 1948 cere-
' tions decision was prema-
last convoy to slip cient war material, stub- monies dedicating the Burma Road — Road of Valor
ture. Included in the parti-
through and reach the bornly withstood their foes that broke the Arab seige of Jerusalem. Prime Minis-
tion agreement was a clause
ter David Ben-Gurion can be seen at left reviewing the
city was wiped out on re- on four fronts.
that called for the Holy City
troops.
turning from the Etzion
to be, in the language of the
In the meantime, the
corpus
Bloc. Without supplies
"a
lawyers,
tive route to Jerusalem
Jerusalem would starve. siege of Jerusalem entered combat.
separatum" — "a separate
Abdul Khader Husseini, its fourth week. Even
body," to be administered by
On May 28, the ghetto successfully built al-
the Arab guerilla chief- though the Egyptians were fell, Abdullah Tell, com-
most under the eyes of
an international regime for
tain who had vowed to advancing on Tel Aviv and mander of the Arab Legion, the Arabs) in winning the
a period not exceeding 10
strangle Jerusalem, was fierce fighting ensued in the surveyed the motley group struggle for Jerusalem
years.
making good his threat. - Galilee, the Israeli High of men and women who had was eloquently ex-
This bitter pill was swal-
lowed by the Jewish Agency
For the Hagana leaders Command, under Ben- been defending the Jewish pressed by Prime Minis-
Executive when it accepted
the situation was untena- Gurion's prodding, were presence there and then ter Ben-Gurion at a dedi-
the resolution. At the outset
exclaimed to Moshe cation ceremony in De-
ble. Until the end of March preoccupied with the dan-
it appeared that they had
they had refrained from gers facing Jerusalem. For Russnak, the Hagana com- ceinber 1948. "The road
been forced to renounce
mander, "If I had known you that we are dedicating
making large scale assaults the time being, the be-
what was most dear to all of
on the guerilla armies. This leaguered Jewish remnants were so few I would have today embodies the
them. Yet it was to turn —
come after you with sticks, height of our war effort
time they had no choice. in the Old City were still
for homeland and hide-
and perhaps they felt this
Ben-Gurion remarked, weathering the Jordanian not guns."
pendence, for it is bound
that the most predictable of
"The High Commissioner Legion's mortar attacks.
Without
food
and
without
factors, Arab intransigence,
gave us a solemn promise to • Once again, Ben-Gurion guns the fate of the New up inextricably with the
would hand them what they
keep the road open (to was determined to hieak City would be identical to most glorious chapter of
could not take for them-
Jerusalem) and he has through the Arab blockade. that of the Jewish quarter our struggle — that for
selves. This was how the re-
failed to keep his word. Now Years later he wrote, "At in the Old. Only two mira- Jerusalem. This was ,the
focal point of our War of
strictions of the partition
it is up to us to open it."
last we had a state, but we cles • could prevent the
resolution were to be cir-
The twin operations, one were about to lose our capi- Jewish state from being Liberation."
On June 11, the Arab ar-
cumvented by circum-
taking place near the tal." He instructed Yigael stillborn as far as
stances. It would thus be-
entrance to Bab el Wad, Yadin, then chief of opera- Jerusalem was concerned. mies agreed to a cease-fire,
come possible in response to
code-named Nakhshon, and tions officer of the Hagana, One was the building of an enabling the newly created
Arab policies of aggression
the other concentrating on to prepare an attack on the alternative route to Israel Defense Forces to
against the UN decision to
the Arab villages that con- Latrun police fortress. Jerusalem. The other was a bring ammunition, supplies
mould by force of arms a vi-
trolled the highway on the Yadin, who was more con- cease-fire. Neither of them and reinforcements to
able frontier that-would in-
heights at the approach to cerned about the imminent seemed particularly likely Jerusalem in great quan-
elude the 100,000 Jews of
Jerusalem, were successes. loss of the last Jewish out- to occur in the last days of tities. The heart was out of,
Jerusalem.
The order of the day pub- post before Tel Aviv and May. Both of them were to danger. The infant state
At a meeting of Hagana
lished for the men before the about the events in the be realized just over two would survive. Jerusalem,
although divided, became
commanders in a
battles illustrates the ex- north, hesitated. "If we fol- weeks later.
the capital of Israel. Two de-
' Jerusalem high school in
tent of the stakes riding on low his (Ben-Gurion's)
December 1947, Ben-
The importance of the cades later, it was also to be
their effort: "If Jerusalem ideas," he is reported to
Gurion spoke prophetic
remains cut off this will haVe said, "we will save our Burma Road (the alterna- reunited.
words to his men. He told
have a fateful effect on the capital and lose our state."
them that if the Arabs
whole war."
were able to conquer the
But the commander-
On April 17, 300 trucks
_vrP,-J\
- (-) r N
bringing 1,000 tons of food in-chief remained ada-
and goods rolled into tie be- mant. He dismissed his
- C p
rack;"\Q;x
\
sieged city. Even though it yo'ung officer, later to be- _
0_ 0 I \./ ) YYup
c
Th e,-,14
was already Shabat, men in come Israel's foremost
prayer shawls rushed into archeologist and today
- ea
j.D - 1 h C.. il
n GS t - 4■ .) L EL *
( •)
the street to greet the deputy prime minister,
.
`saviors.' An old rabbi with two words, "Take
kr.
tm 4 L - A ∎
shouted, "These men hallow Latrun."
-czA.k DA, 4•t,it_
kNLA
heaven and earth."
The two attempts to over-
The Jerusalemites' re- power the strategic' Latrun
a./D
joicing was to be short- police station overlooking
lived. In a few days the the Tel Aviv - Jerusalem
Arabs once more retook highway ended in a dismal
- -\\)- t\&rM 2-1
the strongholds guarding and costly failUre. Hun-
the "gate of the valley." dreds of young Jews, many
From the end of April of them having arrived in
Units of Israel's Defense Forces are shown at In-
until the middle of May the country only a few days
dependence Day ceremonies in 1951.
previously directly from
British detention camps in
Cyprus, and possessing no
Former U.S. Army Col. David Marcus, alias Mic-
military experience, lost key Stone, Israel's commander of the Jerusalem front,
their lives there. At the sent the above letter (partially shown) urging re-
same time as these young newed attacks on the Arab position of Latrun. The
men were dying on the attacks failed and Latrun remained in Arab hands for
parched fields of Latrun, the 20 years, until the Six-Day War, but construction of
last defenders of the Jewish the Burma Road ended the seige of Jerusalem. Mar-
quarter in the Old City were cus was killed a few weeks later when a Jewish sentry
perishing in house-to-house did not recognize him in the dark.
From the World
Zionist Organization
--
city, "they can end us,
and our state will be
finished before it is
born."
The decision to defend
Jerusalem, while easy to ar-
rive at, was extremely dif-
ficult to implement.
Perched as it is on the main
spine of the Judean hills,
the city was tenuously con-
nected to Tel Aviv by one
road. This ran through
mountainous terrain over-
looked for the most part by
Arab villages.
It ended in a bottleneck at
Bab el Wad, "gate of the val-
ley," near the Trappist
monastery at Latrun. At
this juncture the road
curved northward, passing
close by a police station
which was occupied by the
Arab Legion and their
British sponsors.
Even in relatively peace-
ful times Jewish convoys
plying the trail to
Jerusalem were subject to
Arab snipers. And this road
transported not only men
and munitions but also the
produce of Jewish farms to
feed Jerusalem.
Another factor com-
plicating the defense of
Jewish Jerusalem was its
water supply system.
Most of the life-giving
liquid came from the
springs at Rosh HaAyin,
situated 10 miles east of
Tel Aviv, and fed by
pipeline to the Holy City.
It was vulnerable to
sabotage and the spring's
proximity to Arab vil-
lages increased its
strategic importance.
The demographic distri-
bution within Jerusalem
contributed to the hard-
ships involved in defending
it. Jewish neighborhoods
were inextricably mixed
with Arab ones. The more
than 2,000 Jews living in-
side the Old City walls were
cut off from direct contact
with their New City breth-
ren. Although many Jews
had fled the confines of the
walled q9arter, the philos-
ophy of holding on to every
piece of Jewish land made it
imperative to defend its
-
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