Six Days of War by Michael Oren

Author:Michael Oren [Oren, Michael B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-1185-7
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2002-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

In spite of his reluctance to accept either an open cease-fire or sanction retreat, the king was ready to relinquish his prerogatives and let Nasser decide. Yet, as the afternoon waned, no such decision arrived. In the interim, Israel’s offensive thundered on. Gen. Peled’s tanks around Jenin were now preparing to continue south to Nablus, as another Israeli column advanced on the city from Qalqilya to the west. Just outside Jerusalem, the 10th and 4th Brigades occupied Ramallah with its 50,000 inhabitants. In Jerusalem itself, the 163rd Infantry Battalion under Lt. Col. Michael Peikas attacked Abu Tor, a heavily fortified Arab neighborhood overlooking the Old City’s southern wall. The fighting was vicious: seventeen Israelis were killed, Peikas among them, and fifty-four wounded. But the IDF secured the area, thus severing the Old City from Bethlehem and Hebron to the south, while Israeli forces descending from Ramallah would soon cut the last open road to Jericho.

By the late afternoon of June 6, the bulk of Jordan’s army was in danger of being stranded on the West Bank. Riyad, usually calm and even-tempered—he never missed his afternoon nap, even during the fighting—now argued loudly with Hussein over the king’s refusal to approve evacuation. “My hardest job has been to play U Thant to you,” the general carped.

Exasperated, the king bolted out of his headquarters, commandeered a jeep, and raced down to the Jordan Valley. There he encountered the remnants of the 25th Infantry and 40th Armored Brigades, retreating from Jenin. “I will never forget the hallucinating sight of that defeat,” he later recorded. “Roads clogged with trucks, jeeps, and all kinds of vehicles twisted, disemboweled, dented, still smoking, giving off that particular smell of metal and paint burned by exploding bombs—a stink that only powder can make. In the midst of this charnel house were men. In groups of thirty or two, wounded, exhausted, they were trying to clear a path under the monstrous coup de grâce being dealt them by a horde of Israeli Mirages screaming in a cloudless blue sky seared with sun.” Hussein thought to inquire about ‘Ali ibn ‘Ali, a cousin serving with the 40th, but loath to exploit his station, the monarch kept silent.21

While their sovereign fretted, Hussein’s troops continued fighting. Behind the Old City walls, ‘Ata ‘Ali was determined to hold out. Though he had only two heavy mortars left, there were rations and ammunition to last him and his men for two weeks. He set up headquarters in the Armenian Quarter, placed fifty soldiers at each of Jerusalem’s seven gates, and waited for the Israeli attack.

It came just after 7:00 that night, though the Israelis’ target was not yet the Old City but, yet again, Augusta Victoria ridge. Fradkin’s 28th Battalion, aiming to reach the ridge via Wadi Joz, took a wrong turn and found itself under the parapets of the Lions (St. Stephen’s) Gate. Murderous fire rained down on the attackers. Four Sherman tanks, caught on the narrow bridge linking the Garden of Gethsemane

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