Jerusalem: The Biography

Amid so much corruption, betrayal and incompetence, Jerusalem supplied the Arab heroes of the war. Anwar Nusseibeh, disgusted by the ‘sordid round of intrigues and debacles’, founded the Herod’s Gate Committee with other dynasts, the Khalidis and Dajanis, to buy arms. His cousin Abd al-Kadir Husseini, who had fought the British in Iraq in 1941, then had lain low during the war in Cairo, took command of the Arab headquarters called the Jerusalem Front.

Husseini emerged as the Arab hero personified, always dressed in keffiyeh, khaki tunic and crossed bandoliers, the revolutionary scion of Jerusalem’s aristocracy, son and grandson of mayors, descendant of the Prophet, a graduate in chemistry, amateur poet, newspaper editor and a warrior of proven courage. ‘As a child,’ says his cousin Said al-Husseini, ‘I remember seeing him arrive at a safe apartment in one of our houses and I can still remember his charisma and grace and that air of urgent heroic excitement that followed him everywhere. He was admired by everyone high and low.’ A teenage student from Gaza named Yasser Arafat, who was proud that his mother was related to the Husseinis, served on Abd al-Kadir’s staff.

Zionist gunmen in the Jewish Quarter fired over the Temple Mount; Arabs fired at Jewish civilians from Katamon. On 5 January, the Haganah attacked Katamon and destroyed the Semiramis Hotel, killing eleven innocent Christian Arabs. This outrage accelerated the Arab flight from the city. Ben-Gurion sacked the Haganah officer in charge. Two days later, the Irgun bombed an Arab outpost at the Jaffa Gate which was denying provisions to the Jewish Quarter. On 10 February, 150 of Husseini’s militiamen attacked the Montefiore Quarter; the Haganah fought back but came under fire from British snipers in the nearby King David Hotel, who killed a young Jewish fighter there. There was still four months left of British rule but Jerusalem was already mired in a full-scale if asymmetrical war. In the previous six weeks, 1,060 Arabs, 769 Jews and 123 Britons had been killed. Each atrocity had to be avenged twofold.

The Zionists were vulnerable in Jerusalem: the road from Tel Aviv passed through 30 miles of Arab territory and Abd al-Kadir Husseini, who commanded the 1,000-strong Jerusalem brigade of the mufti’s Holy War Army, attacked it constantly. ‘The Arab plan’, recalled Yitzhak Rabin, the Palmach officer born in the Holy City, ‘was to choke Jerusalem’s 90,000 Jews into submission’ – and it soon began to work.

On 1 February, Husseini’s militiamen, aided by two British deserters, blew up the offices of the Palestine Post; on the 10th, he attacked Montefiore again but was repelled by the Haganah after a six-hour gun battle. The British set up a command post below the Jaffa Gate to defend Montefiore. On 13 February, the British arrested four Haganah fighters and then released them unarmed to an Arab mob, who murdered them. On the 22nd, Husseini sent British deserters to blow up Ben Yehuda Street, an atrocity that killed fifty-two Jewish civilians. The Irgun shot ten British soldiers.

Trying to defend the Arab areas in Jerusalem, recalled Nusseibeh, ‘was like a worn-out water hose repaired in one place only to burst in two more.’ The Haganah blew up the old Nusseibeh castle. The former Arab mayor Hussein Khalidi complained, ‘Everyone’s leaving. I won’t be able to hold out much longer. Jerusalem is lost. No one is left in Katamon. Sheikh Jarrah has emptied. Everyone who has a cheque or a little money is off to Egypt, off to Lebanon, off to Damascus.’ Soon refugees were pouring out of the Arab suburbs. Katy Antonius left for Egypt; her mansion was blown up by the Haganah, but only after they had found her love-letters from General Barker. Nonetheless Abd al-Kadir Husseini had successfully cut off Jewish west Jerusalem from the coast.

Ironically the Jews, like the Arabs, felt they were losing Jerusalem. By early 1948, the Jewish Quarter in the Old City was under siege and defence was made more difficult by the number of non-combatant ultra-Orthodox Jews. ‘Well, what about Jerusalem?’ Ben-Gurion asked his generals on 28 March at his headquarters in Tel Aviv. ‘That’s the decisive battle. The fall of Jerusalem could be a deathblow to the Yishuv.’ The generals could spare only 500 men. The Jews had been on the defensive since the UN vote, but now Ben-Gurion ordered Operation Nachshon to clear the road to Jerusalem, the start of a wider offensive, Plan D, designed to secure the UN-assigned Jewish areas but also west Jerusalem. ‘The plan’, writes the historian Benny Morris, ‘explicitly called for the destruction of resisting Arab villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants’ but ‘nowhere does the document speak of a policy or desire to expel “the Arab inhabitants” of Palestine.’ In some places, the Palestinians remained in their homes; in some places they were expelled.