45

POCKETS OF RESISTANCE REMAIN. But because the country is essentially judenrein, the few bands that form in the wake of the invasion, largely composed of IDF soldiers and escapees from the cities, can find no shelter among the indigenous population. Outside of Tel Aviv, there is none. But in the north, deep forests provide cover, as do the caves penetrating the cliffs of the Mediterranean coastline from Binyamina north to Mount Carmel. The south, being mostly flat if not outright desert, provides little natural cover—Bedouin bands seeking bounty would certainly pick off any Jews foolish enough to try this inhospitable terrain. To the east, in Judea and Samaria, the country is hilly, which offers possibilities for harassment and sabotage, but once this is achieved escape is difficult. Movement must be by foot or, in several instances in the cattle-grazed Golan Heights, on horseback. Non-military vehicles remain banned from the roads. Even should civilians—whether Israeli Arabs or Jews disguised as same—manage to seize the kind of transportation that can get by the ever-present roadblocks manned by Arab machine gunners, such as UN-marked buses or enemy jeeps, no gasoline is to be had outside of the Muslim military bases, which are of course former IDF bases with fresh signage.

Worst of all, like the anti-Nazi partisans in Eastern Europe, these makeshift bands find themselves working in isolation. Command and control does not exist for the same reason the units themselves cannot contact one another: the sophisticated and extensive IDF wireless network almost immediately fell into the hands of the Iranians, whose Hebrew-speaking intelligence officers monitor it for any sign of organized resistance. Israel’s civilian phone companies, wired and cellular, no longer function. At best each group of holdouts eventually must find its way to Tel Aviv, there only to discover their own lack of capability mirrored in a leaderless, hungry, fearful, and dispirited population.

Though scattered small groups continue to move about with the intention of harassing the enemy, these have enough on their hands finding sufficient food to survive. Some bands stage attacks on Arab supply lines, but the weaponry they grab comes with little ammunition.

The last of the larger groups, close to one hundred men and women, mostly paratroopers whose unit lost its way in the initial fighting and then was bypassed by the enemy surge, manages to find a large cache of mortars, sten guns, and ammunition hidden in a cave on Mt. Carmel. In 1941, aware that then British-governed Palestine was the next target for Rommel’s Afrika Korps, the Jewish leadership hid the weaponry for a last stand. Instead, Rommel was stopped in Egypt.

Though primitive by modern standards, the cache might have provided sufficient firepower for large-scale resistance. But the cave leaked rainwater for decades. The cosmolite-soaked rags that were meant to preserve these armaments remain in place, but the guns they embraced have long since rusted away.

Traveling by night in groups of ten, seventy of the Mt. Carmel partisans make it to Tel Aviv. The rest are never heard from.