The final column led by Major Joab Yarkoni traced Ari’s steps in the wide circular route on the goat trails. His men were able to move faster because they did not have the weight of the Davidka and its ammunition. However they had a greater distance to travel as they had to pass the first village where Ari hid, pass Fort Esther and get near the second of the villages. Again the Bedouins met Yarkoni’s column on 534
the mountaintop and led them undetected to their objective.
At nightfall of the second day Ari sent the Bedouin leader to the near village with a surrender ultimatum. Meanwhile Ari moved his men out of the Crusader fort and crept close to the village. The muktar and some eighty of Kassi’s soldiers thought it was a bluff: no Jews could have got up the mountains and behind them without detection. The Bedouin returned to Ari with the report that the village needed convincing, so Ari had two rounds of the Davidka fired.
Two dozen of the mud huts were blown to pieces. The Arabs were convinced. With the second mortar shot the officers of the irregulars were leading a stampede across the Lebanese border and an array of white flags was going up. Ari acted quickly. He dispatched a small part of his column into the village to guard it and sped on to the second village where Yarkoni had already opened an attack.
Twenty minutes and three Davidka rounds after Ari arrived, the village fell and another hundred of Kassi’s men fled to Lebanon. The awesome Little David had again done its job of inflicting terror and destruction. The two villages had fallen so quickly that Fort Esther was completely unaware of it. They assumed the distant sound of the Davidka shells and the firing were their own men firing for pleasure.
At dawn of the third day, David Ben Ami moved his column out of hiding at Gan Dafna and set up an ambush outside Abu Yesha where Kassi had another hundred men. With Ben Ami’s men in position to cut off reinforcements from Abu Yesha, Ari and Yarkoni’s forces, moved to. the rear of Fort Esther. When the Little David opened fire Kassi had only a hundred men in the fort. The rest were in Lebanon or Abu Yesha. Round after round of the buckets of dynamite swished and sputtered through the air and exploded against the concrete blockhouse. Each round came a little closer to the mark, the iron rear gate. By the twentieth round, the gate was blown off its hinges, and the next five rounds fell into the courtyard of the fort.
Ari Ben Canaan jumped off with the first wave of attackers, who crawled forward on their bellies beneath machine-gun fire and intermittent blasts of the Davidka.
The actual damage to Fort Esther was superficial, but the noise and the sudden swiftness of the attack was too much for Kassi and his dubious warriors. They made a feeble defense, waiting for reinforcements to come. The only reinforcements left moved out of Abu Yesha and walked right into David Ben Ami’s trap. Kassi saw it through his field glasses. He was cut off. The Jews were at the rear gate. The white flag of surrender went up over Fort Esther.
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Yarkoni took twenty men into the fort, disarmed the Arabs and sent them packing to Lebanon. Kassi, now quite docile, and three of his officers were led to the jail as the Star of David was raised over the fort. Ari took the rest of the men down the road to where David had set the ambush. They were ready for the final phase of the end of Abu Yesha as an Arab base.
The people of Abu Yesha had seen and heard the fighting. They knew, surely, their village was next. Ari sent a truce team in to give those who were left twenty minutes to evacuate or face the consequences. From his vantage point he could see many of his lifelong friends trudging out of Abu Yesha toward the hills of Lebanon. Ari felt sick in his stomach as he saw them go.
A half hour passed and then an hour.
“We had better start,” David said to him.
“I … I want to make sure they are all out.”
“No one has left for a half hour, Ari. Everyone is out who is coming out.”
Ari turned and walked away from his waiting troops. David followed him. “I’ll take command,” David said.
“All right,” Ari whispered.
Ari stood alone on the mountainside as David led the men down to the saddle in the hill where Abu Yesha nestled. He was pale as he heard the first sounds of gunfire. David deployed the men as they approached the outskirts. A clatter of machine-gun and small-arms fire went up. The Jews dropped and crawled forward in a squad-by-squad advance.
Inside Abu Yesha a hundred Arabs led by Taha had chosen to make a determined stand. The fight for the village was a rare situation for this war; the Jews had superior numbers of men and arms. A withering barrage of automatic fire was followed by a rain of grenades on the forward Arab positions. The first Arab machine gun was knocked out, and as the defenders fell back the Jews gained a foothold in the town itself.
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 coordination between groups or individuals. Finally all those left were 536
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.
CHAPTER TWELVE: David 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
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ran her fingers through his hair and he smiled in his sleep and became still once more.