by Adam LeBor
North of Jaffa, the Haganah captured Haifa in late April, and most of its Arab population evacuated the city, despite the pleas of the Jewish mayor that they should stay. At this time the Haganah was still opposed to attacking Jaffa, which it felt posed no real strategic threat. Instead it planned to blockade the city, and capture it after the British withdrew on 14 May, when the Mandate formally came to an end and the Jewish state would be declared. The Haganah wanted to take only Manshiyyeh, the southern suburbs of Abou Kabir and Tel Arish. But the Irgun vehemently disagreed. Menachem Begin’s men wanted to take Jaffa, seeing it as a dangerous Arab enclave in the heart of the Jewish state. ‘The UN plan was issued on 29 November 1947. We Jews accepted it, but the Arabs said no, and that when the British leave they will invade and throw us into the sea,’ recalls Yoseph Nachmias, an Irgun veteran who fought in the battle for Jaffa. ‘Within less than twenty-four hours, the Arabs started shooting into Tel Aviv. They put snipers on every tall building. Within five months we had more than one thousand inhabitants of Tel Aviv, men, women and children, killed or wounded. The Irgun decided to crush this arm sending death into Tel Aviv. And we were worried that the Egyptians would land in Jaffa, and the war would start there.’
Born in Jerusalem in 1926, Yoseph joined the British Royal Engineers in 1940 at the age of fourteen by forging his birth certificate. He fought across north Africa, and at the same time was a member of the Irgun. After six and a half years, he went underground. Expert in explosives and fluent in English, Yoseph could pass for British. He led raids into army camps for ammunition and weapons. ‘The British didn’t know what they were preparing me for. They made me a good warrior, and then I had to turn it on them, but I had no choice.’ In early April 1948, Yoseph took part in a raid on a munitions train. It yielded many tons of arms and ammunition, including twenty thousand mortar shells. These munitions decided Jaffa’s fate, wrote Menachem Begin in his memoir, The Revolt: ‘Our plan was to attack Jaffa at the narrow bottleneck linking the main town with its Manshiyyeh quarter which thrust northwards, like a peninsula, into Jewish Tel Aviv. The tactical aim was to break the “neck of the bottle” and reach the sea, in order to cut off the bulk of Manshiyyeh from Tel Aviv. The strategic aim was to subjugate Jaffa and free Tel Aviv once and for all from the loaded pistol pointed at its heart.’11
On Saturday 24 April 1948, at the start of the Jewish festival of Passover, Menachem Begin addressed the troops at the Irgun’s headquarters in Tel Aviv: ‘We are going to conquer Jaffa. This will be one of the most decisive battles in the war for Israel’s independence. Know who is before you, remember those you have left behind. You face a ruthless enemy who intends to wipe us out. Behind you are your parents, our brothers and our children. Snipe the enemy. Aim well, conserve ammunition. Show no mercy in battle, just as the enemy has no pity for our people. Be compassionate with women and children. Whoever lifts his hand in surrender, spare him.’12 Amichai Paglin, known as Gidi, commanded the attack. Paglin had masterminded the bombing of the British military headquarters in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, when ninety-one people were killed, including fifteen Jews. His instructions to his troops were unequivocal: ‘To prevent constant military traffic in the city, to break the spirit of the enemy troops, to cause chaos among the civilian population in order to create a mass flight.’13 The Irgun onslaught would eventually succeed far beyond their dreams. Several years earlier Irgun fighters had captured two three-inch mortars from an RAF camp. The mortars were known as ‘orphans’, as there were no shells for them. The orphans would soon have parents: the tons of shells that the Irgun had taken from the British munitions train.
The battle for Jaffa began in the early hours of Sunday 25 April. Irgun gunners directed a steady rain of mortar fire onto the city. In theory the gunners were not supposed to target hospitals, religious sites or consulates. In practice the shells fell indiscriminately across Clock Tower Square, smashing into the markets, and south into the heart of Ajami, killing and wounding large numbers of civilians. Panic and hysteria swept through the city. ‘There were six hundred Irgun fighters. I was a company commander,’ says Yoseph Nachmias. ‘We opened the barrage, started firing and we began to advance.’ Two Irgun companies were deployed, one heading towards the railway tracks, and Yoseph’s, trying to break through to the sea. Jaffa’s defenders were reinforced by Bosnian Muslims, Palestinian Germans from the old Templar colonies of Sarona and Walhalla that dated back to the late nineteenth century, and by Syrian and Iraqi volunteers. The narrow lanes and cramped alleys of Manshiyyeh gave them good cover. The Irgun had Bren light machine guns, but the Arab fighters had heavy Spandau guns.
The Irgun quickly discovered that a frontal urban attack demanded different military skills, and weapons, from guerrilla warfare. They had no tanks or artillery. Their mortars bounced off the houses where the Arabs were dug in. The Spandau machine guns laid down heavy fire. ‘In the bottleneck of Manshiyyeh we learnt what all the armies had learnt in the Second World War: there are few better defensive positions than a row of ruined buildings… Jaffa’s defence line was thick and very deep. The Arabs were working under trained and skilful advisers,’ wrote Begin.14 Behind the Arab fighters stood the British army, with tanks and heavy artillery, ready to repulse any attempt by the Jews to capture Jaffa, territory that was not granted to them under the UN Partition plan. Yoseph Nachmias and his fighters pulled back. ‘They had such firepower and we had strict orders to conserve ammunition. That afternoon we withdrew, to lick our wounds, and bury our dead. We had lost about six soldiers.’
* * *
Ahmad Hammami was downtown by Clock Tower Square when the mortars began falling. He never told his children what he saw as they exploded around him, but it was enough to change his mind about staying in Jaffa. Fadwa remembers: ‘In one day my parents decided to leave. But not for good, because we left everything in the house. They said we are going on holiday, to Lebanon, for a month, and then we will come home. We were just escaping the bombardment. We took what was in the house, some bread, special holiday cakes my mother had just baked with dates inside, and some boiled eggs. We did not have anything with us, except the clothes on our back. My mother and her sisters brought their jewellery, my father had some money and some Persian rugs. He rolled up some of our belongings in them, including some blankets. The road to Jerusalem was closed, and the airport was shut, so we took a taxi to the port. The strangest thing was that my mother took her iron, I don’t know why.’
Fadwa, then eleven years old, understood the reality of what was happening better than her younger siblings. Mustafa Hammami was nine that fateful day. At first it all seemed like a great adventure, especially when his parents told him the family would be travelling on an Italian cruise ship, the SS Argentina. ‘The taxi came and I pleaded with my mother to take our cat, Ferooze, with us, but to no avail. We all sat in the back of the taxi in front of our house. Our cleaning lady was sitting nearby, weeping and waving to my mother,’ recalls Mustafa, who now lives in Toronto. ‘I looked at my mother and I noticed that she too was weeping and waving back. My father was sitting in the front passenger seat. He looked grim and tense, staring straight out at nothing. I still did not understand. Then suddenly the car moved.’ Mustafa’s days of skipping school to go fishing, and bringing home a catch of skinny ‘Bolshevik’ fish were over for ever.
The journey to the port took just a few minutes. The Hammamis were swept up in the chaos. Thousands of refugees were pouring down to the waterfront, trying to find a place on the armada of boats bobbing in the water, jammed with passengers, as they went back and forth from the harbour to the larger ships moored out to sea. The Hammami children are grown now, with children and grandchildren of their own. But they all remember the scene at Jaffa’s port clearly. ‘The port looked so different from my idyllic visits in the summer, watching the boats go in and out and staring at the big cargo ships lined up out in the distance,’ says Hasan. ‘People were crammed into boats of every size and shape. Felucca
s with their sails, launches, tugs and lighters were all full and all heading out to the open sea. We boarded a long boat that took us out to a sailing ship.’
Mustafa and his younger siblings were still excited, swept up in the drama. ‘It all seemed very romantic and adventurous that we were boarding a sailing ship. When our boat came to the side of the ship there was a narrow rope ladder dangling and swinging in the breeze. With some pushing and heaving we all managed to get on board. The ship was already loaded with cargo and we sat on a crate of timber boards. The decks were packed.’ Fadwa, however, understood that this journey was not an adventure, but something far more profound. ‘When we got on it was full of people but they kept letting more on board. Wherever you looked on the boat there were people. We knew many of them. One of my teachers sat next to me, some of my mother’s friends and father’s colleagues were nearby. There were no chairs, no shelter, nothing. We just sat on the stacks of wood. I will never forget that day. Never.’
Eventually the ship began to move. The Hammamis stared at Jaffa’s harbour, its familiar yellow sandstone buildings now wreathed in smoke. ‘We slowly sailed out to sea in the late afternoon. As we passed by Tel Aviv the water kept spouting and popping to our side. The Jews were firing shells at us, to ensure that we really left, and to wish us “bon voyage”,’ says Mustafa.
For Ismail Abou-Shehade, too, the memories of the exodus are unforgettable. ‘If you ask me about this time, I can tell you about it, like it happened an hour ago. I can still see the people leaving, the women and children shouting, “To the sea, to the sea!” I carried my friends on my back and I buried them. The ones who saw don’t like to remember, and those who cannot forget are suffering all the time.’
The Irgun was satisfied with the results of the mortar bombardment. Jaffa had not fallen, but the attack had cut communications and electricity, flooded the water mains and pinned down the enemy, wrote Menachem Begin. ‘Confusion and terror, deepened by the noise of the battle raging at no great distance from the central streets, reigned in the town. Thus the morale of the enemy was broken and the great flight began, by sea and by land, on wheels and on foot… Jaffa was in utter confusion. The streets were flooded, the houses gaping and tottering, looting and murder were rife.’15 Jaffa’s inhabitants were fleeing, but its defenders had not. They were holding their ground, while the Irgun were taking increasing numbers of casualties. Irgun commanders decided on a new tactic: groups of sappers would advance to an enemy position, blow it up and hold the new ground while reinforcements arrived. The Arab gunners picked them off one by one. ‘We tried to reach the Arab positions but we were not successful. Sometimes three or four of our fighters were killed on the way,’ says Yoseph Nachmias.
On Monday 26 April, the Irgun and the Haganah temporarily settled their differences over whether or not to take Jaffa. The disagreement was symbolic of a greater split, over who would govern the Jewish state once it came into being. The Irgun, the right-wing Zionists, were maximalists, who sought control of all of Mandate Palestine, even across the River Jordan into the Kingdom of Transjordan. The Haganah drew their support from the Socialists, who were more ready to reach an accommodation with the Arabs – inside and outside Palestine – albeit on their terms. There was bad blood too, over the Haganah’s ‘Hunting Season’, when in 1944 the Haganah had handed over Irgun members to the British. The two militias signed an agreement under which the Irgun would operate only under Haganah command and the battle for Jaffa continued. Each time the Irgun fighters began to advance into Manshiyyeh, they could not hold the ground they captured and fell back. At the end of the second day of fighting Begin called for a halt, and ordered a retreat, but his officers wanted to fight on. Yoseph Nachmias recalls: ‘Begin wrote in his book that it was a mutiny, but we did not want to revolt. We said we cannot move back, and we know we can overcome the enemy.’ Amichai Paglin, the commander of the attack, pleaded for more time, and explained his new tactic. Eventually Begin was persuaded and the attack was back on. Yoseph continues: ‘Gidi asked us for our most courageous men. He demanded twenty-seven of my guys. When I decided who was going now to the fighting, and who would remain in reserve, the ones staying behind started crying like babies, calling me names, saying that they had stood behind me in fire and water, and now I was betraying them.’
Gidi’s innovation was to advance through the buildings. The Irgun had no tanks, but it did have hammers and chisels. ‘The houses were linked together like wagons in a train. We broke through, making holes in one room after another, like a hidden tunnel. We started on Tuesday morning. What we could not achieve in two days, we did in two hours. We got under the Arabs’ positions, and put the explosives in. The explosives blew up, there was a cloud of dust and smoke and we stormed in and took their positions.’ The Irgun fighters also built tunnels of sandbags to give them cover as they crawled towards the front line, passing down each sack by hand as they inched forward. ‘It was the work of ants,’ says Yoseph. The Arab gunners rained down fire on the sandbags. The dead and injured Irgun fighters were dragged clear, and others immediately took their place. Eventually the tunnels were long enough for the sappers to place their charges. The Arab fighters began to fall back. When Manshiyyeh police station was taken the battle was almost over. By 7 a.m. on Wednesday the Irgun fighters had broken through the Arab lines, and could see the sea in front of them. ‘There were thirty of us and as soon as we saw the sea we started running towards it, shouting “ha-yam, ha-yam” (the sea, the sea). The Arabs ran away. We captured two of them, they said they thought hundreds of Jews were coming,’ says Yoseph. The last pocket of resistance at Hasan Bey mosque was mopped up, and the blue and white Zionist flag hoisted from the minaret.
In London, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin was furious. British prestige, already diminished by the fall of Haifa and the Arab exodus, was being further battered by the hated Irgun’s advance. Britain would take full responsibility for the defence of Jaffa. Reinforcements arrived from Cyprus and Malta. Bevin ordered the British General Staff to ‘see to it that the Jews did not manage to occupy Jaffa, or if they did, were immediately turned out’. The High Commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, ordered the Irgun to withdraw from Manshiyyeh. Israel Rokach, the mayor of Tel Aviv, was warned that if the Irgun did not stop fighting, Tel Aviv would be shelled by tanks, bombed by the Royal Air Force and bombarded by the Royal Navy. Spitfires buzzed Tel Aviv and Manshiyyeh. Royal Navy ships moored offshore, guns pointed at the Irgun positions. Begin ignored the British ultimatum. British forces shelled the area around the Irgun headquarters. Tanks opened fire on the new Irgun positions in Manshiyyeh. Irgun sappers blew up more buildings, spreading the rubble across the road to block any British advance.
‘The British gave us hell. We lost forty-one in the fighting for Jaffa, and eighty per cent of those were killed by the British. They shelled us and shelled us, and when they thought we were exhausted they advanced in tanks,’ says Yoseph. ‘We had four rounds of anti-tank ammunition. When we saw the first tank we fired, but it missed. The second one hit, and they pulled back, and left the tank there. I talked to them through a loud-hailer, I told them, I said, “Why should you die, this is not your war. In two weeks you are going back to Old Blighty. We would like to see you walking back to Old Blighty and not in coffins.” It helped, they pulled back the tanks but they kept shelling us.’
Meanwhile, the Irgun’s high command informed the British that if their attack did not cease, it would launch a mortar barrage at the British headquarters in Jaffa’s Templar colony, and at other British camps across Palestine. The Palestine Mandate would end on 14 May. British officials were torn between destroying their most hated enemy, and sacrificing further troops in a cause they all knew was now hopeless. Britain blinked first. It no longer insisted on a complete evacuation of Manshiyyeh. The new terms were that the Irgun evacuate the police station and hand it over, and that the Irgun positions be handed over to the Haganah. The Irgun responded by blowing u
p the police station and more houses. Only then did it surrender its positions to the Haganah.
Apart from Manshiyyeh, Jaffa stayed in Arab hands, protected by British troops. By now, 30 April, perhaps twenty thousand people remained, less than a quarter of the population. Among them was Hussein Abou-Shehade, father of Ismail, who had helped pull out the bodies from the rubble of the New Seray. ‘My father refused to leave because he knew how difficult it is to move to a foreign country. He had already emigrated once, so we stayed.’ Tragically for Jaffa, its mayor, Yousef Heikal, had shown less fortitude. ‘At first he told us not to leave. He said that he was leaving the country only for three days in order to get some news about what was going on,’ recalls Ismail. Heikal returned on 28 April. ‘Then he gathered us again. He said that Jaffa was going to be occupied by the Jews soon, since there was no defence, no weapons and nothing could stop them from taking our dear Jaffa. He then gave people permission to leave the country if they wished. He said that he himself was leaving with his family. People then started to leave by ships and trains. All the routes to the Arab countries were opened, and people could leave for free. The Arab countries were responsible. After a week there was nothing left but cats and dogs. We few families who stayed went to live in the orange groves.’
