couldn’t believe their eyes. "OK, you are not really so important," laughed Aryeh, "but the two expensive jeeps!"
"What happened to your Cassiopeia?" I asked Reuven. I couldn’t help myself. "If all our scouts were like you, we would long since be in heaven."
"Me?" asked Reuven with surprised naivety, "without me you would never have got out of that hole."
That night our armored units, together with some infantry companies, attacked the villages oflbdis, Iraq Suweidan, and BeitAffa. All of them quickly fell. Only the Palmach unit that attacked the police fortress of Iraq Suweidan failed. And as long as this key position remained in the hands of the enemy, there was no point trying to hold the villages of Beit Affa and Iraq Suweidan. They were abandoned in the morning. Only Ibdis, where an Egyptian battalion HQ was wiped out, remained in our hands.
* * *
In the morning the Egyptians launched a massive counter-attack, based on the fortress of Iraq Suweidan. The scale of this attack showed that they had originally planned to start their great offensive there. Their aim was to break through our lines and join up with Egyptian forces which should have preceded them at the front near Beit Daras. If they had succeeded in this plan - the way to Tel Aviv would have been wide open.
Two obstacles stood in their way: the position at Ibdis and Kibbutz Negba. The whole of the enemy’s force was concentrated on them.
The greatest battle in the history of this war had begun.
A trench near Sawafir
The battle for Ibdis and Negba
An apricot orchard near the village of Sawafir. My comrades are lying in small, freshly dug foxholes, next to the camouflaged jeeps. Their snores can be heard from far away. They are tired. Yesterday they helped to repel the heavy attack on Beit Daras. In the night they harassed Hatta and Karatiyya with their machine guns. When they got back in the early morning, they had to work hard: They dug