Summary
Valley of fifteen villages connecting the coast near Hadera with the eastern corner of Marj Ibn Amir near Afula, which Israeli forces repeatedly failed to occupy in 1948 — its villages held out with Iraqi help and escaped expulsion — until King Abdullah ceded the area to Israel in 1949, in Pappe’s account.
Details
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The Carmeli Brigade was ordered to capture Wadi Ara but took only Jalama (23 April 1948) and Kabara nearby and never entered the valley, although the Israeli command regarded the route as a crucial lifeline (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.171).
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The fifteen villages held out because the Iraqi troops stationed in the northern West Bank defied their politicians’ orders to only defend the area allocated to Abdullah; the villages were ceded to Israel by the Jordanian government in the summer of 1949 as part of the bilateral armistice agreement (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.161).
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In September 1948 Operation Autumn, a third attempt to occupy Wadi Ara and the northern tip of the West Bank with special orders to capture Qalqilya and Tul-Karem, was again repelled; every one of the fifteen villages showed resilience and bravery, aided by Iraqi officers from the nearby contingent — among them Captain Abu Rauf Abd al-Raziq at Taytaba and Qalansuwa, Major Abd al-Karim and Captain Farhan at Zayta and Jat, and Khalid Abu Hamud at Attil (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.209-210).
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Pappe notes the irony that many Israelis today favour transferring the area back to the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank, while its people prefer second-class citizenship in Israel, suspecting, as in the past, that Israelis want the territory without the people (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.210).
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A fifth Israeli attempt to occupy the Wadi Ara villages in November-December 1948, codenamed ‘Hidush Yameinu ke-Kedem’ (‘Restoring our Glorious Past’), failed again against volunteers, Iraqi units and local villagers; in Umm al-Fahm the villagers, with some Iraqi training, organised a force they called the ‘Army of Honour’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.229).
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Manna’s Chapter 5 (part 6) sets the ‘Ara shootings of 23 June 1952 in Wadi ‘Ara: villagers gathering near ‘Ayn al-Sahla on Eid al-Fitr to see relatives on the Jordanian side were fired on without warning, two killed and five wounded (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.211-212).
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Amir Abdullah, Arab Liberation Army