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 cooperated 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 ojd 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.
539
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 gome 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, O 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 540
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.”