Jerusalem: The Biography

Nasser already believed he had won a bloodless victory but the Egyptians continued to plan their attack in Sinai. The Jordanians, backed by an Iraqi brigade, drew up Operation Tariq to encircle Jewish west Jerusalem. The Arab world, now fielding 500,000 men, 5,000 tanks and 900 planes, had never been so united. ‘Our basic aim will be the destruction of Israel,’ said Nasser. ‘Our goal’, explained President Aref of Iraq, ‘is to wipe Israel off the face of the map.’ The Israelis fielded 275,000 men, 1,100 tanks and 200 planes.

At 7.10 a.m. on 5 June, Israeli pilots surprised and wiped out the Egyptian air force. At 8.15, Dayan ordered the Israeli Defence Forces into Sinai. In Jerusalem, General Narkiss waited nervously, fearful that the Jordanians would take the vulnerable Mount Scopus and encircle the 197,000 Jews in west Jerusalem, but he was hoping that the Jordanians would make only a symbolic contribution to the Egyptian war. Just after 8 a.m., the air-raid sirens rang. The Dead Sea Scrolls were securely stored. Reservists were called up. Three times, Israel warned King Hussein, through the US State Department, the UN in Jerusalem and the British Foreign Office, that ‘Israel will not, repeat not, attack Jordan if Jordan maintains the quiet. But if Jordan opens hostilities, Israel will respond with all its might.’

‘Your Majesty, the Israeli offensive has begun in Egypt,’ King Hussein’s aide-de-camp informed him at 8.50 a.m. Telephoning headquarters, Hussein learned that Field Marshal Amer had smashed Israeli forces and was successfully counter-attacking. At 9 a.m., Hussein entered the headquarters to find that his Egyptian general Riyad had ordered attacks on Israeli targets and the seizure of Government House in south Jerusalem. Nasser called to confirm Egyptian victories and the destruction of the Israeli air force.

At 9.30, the sombre king told his people: ‘The hour of revenge has come.’

5–7 JUNE 1967: HUSSEIN, DAYAN AND RABIN

At 11.15 a.m., Jordanian artillery launched a 6,000-shell barrage against Jewish Jerusalem, hitting the Knesset and the prime minister’s house as well as the Hadassah Hospital and the Church of Dormition on Mount Zion. Following Dayan’s orders, the Israelis responded only with small arms. At 11.30, Dayan ordered a strike against the Jordanian air force. Watching from the roof his palace with his eldest son, the future King Abdullah II, Hussein saw his planes destroyed.

In Jerusalem, Israel offered a ceasefire but the Jordanians were not interested. The muezzin loudspeakers on the Dome of the Rock cried, ‘Take up your weapons and take back your country stolen by the Jews.’ At 12.45, the Jordanians occupied Government House: it happened to be the UN headquarters but it dominated Jerusalem. Dayan immediately ordered it to be stormed, and it fell after four hours’ fighting. To the north, Israeli mortars and artillery fired on the Jordanians.

Dayan revered Jerusalem, but he understood that its political complexities could threaten Israel’s very existence. When the Israeli Cabinet debated whether to attack the Old City or simply silence the Jordanian guns, Dayan argued against the conquest, anxious about the responsibilities of governing the Temple Mount, but he was overruled. He delayed any action until Sinai was conquered.

‘That night was hell,’ wrote Hussein. ‘It was clear as day. The sky and earth glowed with the light of rockets and the explosions of bombs pouring from Israeli planes.’ At 2.10 a.m. on 6 June, Israeli paratroopers mustered in three squads, encouraged by General Narkiss to ‘atone for the sin of ’48’ when he himself had fought for the city. The first squad crossed no-man’s-land towards Mandelbaum Gate to take Ammunition Hill – where Allenby had stored his arsenal – in a fierce battle in which seventy-one Jordanians and thirty-five Israelis were killed. The paratroopers advanced swiftly through Sheikh Jarrah past the American Colony towards the Rockefeller Museum, which fell at 7.27.

The king still held the commanding Augusta Victoria Hospital between Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives, and he desperately tried to save the Old City by offering a ceasefire, but it was too late. Nasser called to tell Hussein that they should claim that the US and Britain had defeated the Arabs, not just Israel on its own.

Hussein sped in a jeep down into the Jordan Valley, where he encountered his troops retreating from the north. Within the Old City, the Jordanians, who had had their headquarters in the Armenian Monastery since 1948, posted fifty men at each of the gates and waited. The Israelis planned to capture the Augusta Victoria, but their Sherman tanks took a wrong turn down into the Kidron Valley and were fiercely attacked from the Lions’ Gate, losing five men and four tanks close to the Garden of Gethsemane. The Israelis sheltered in the sunken courtyard of the Virgin’s Tomb. The Old City was still not surrounded.