TROOPS MOVE IN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 132, 1 December 1938, Page 28

TROOPS MOVE IN

JERUSALEM ENTERED

AN EYE-WITNESS'S STORY

FEW CASUALTIES ,

A lightning4ike blow delivered after very careful preparation and with adequate forces put! the military within two hours in complete control of the greater part of the Old City with surprisingly few casualties so far, telegraphed the special correspondent of "The Times" on October 19. One Guardsman and.two British constables were wounded. Nine Arabs were killed and 18 wounded. The Britishwere engaged by snipers and bombs were thrown, buf there was no organised resistance in spite of the fears that the Arabs would make a determined and costly struggle. After the long suspense a sigh of relief has gone up all over Jerusalem. After the Black Watch had been busy all day replying to the fire of snipers shooting from various parts of the Old City the first step was taken at sundown yesterday. A cordon was drawn round the whole of the Old City and the area for 1000 yards round it carefully cleared. In the, evening troops marched in through the Zion Gate in the south-west corner and strongly reinforced the British police who were guarding the Jewish Quarter from Arabs in the adjoining Moslem sQuarter. A SHARP ENGAGEMENT. At 5 a.m. aeroplanes began to circle over the Old City and at 6.30 a.m. the 3rd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, which had come up from Surafand, entered through the Dung Gate in the south, and, after having advanced right through the Old City, reached the Damascus Gate in the north. Here there was a sharp engagement before the Coldstream Guards could drive back the Arabs and remove the barricade with which they had blocked the gate on the inside. Meanwhile the Ist Battalion, The Northumberland Fusiliers, had come in through the Zion Gate and other troops through the Jaffa Gate in the west and the New Gate in the northwest corner. British police acted as guides. Troops advanced to St. Stephen's Gate in the east and removed the internal barricade with which the Arabs had blocked it. During these operations aeroplanes reported that many armed Arabs were withdrawing into the Haram-esh-Sherif in the south-east corner of the Old City. A cordon has been drawn round this, cutting it off from the Moslem Quarter and the rest of the Old City, but the troops made no attempt to enter it. THE TROOPS' TASK. The task of the troops is now to drive those armed Arabs in the Moslem Quarter, who have been cut off from the Haram-esh-Sherif by the cordon established between Damascus Gate Street and St. Stephen's Gate,, into the small area of gardens and more or less open ground inside the north-east corner of the walls between Herod's Gate and the Burj el Laklak (Stork's Tower).. •At 8:15 a.m. British police and troop* began house-to-house searches in the i occupied area, and soon after that it was considered that the greater part of the Old City was under control. The houses just inside the Damascus Gate, from which the rebels had been busy sniping of late, were most deserted, but the Coldstream Guards found some children who had been left behind. The problem now arises what is to be done with fhe Haram-esh-Shenf, the sacred area more than eight acres in extent, which contains,the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque, and is flanked along its western and northern sides by almost continuous buildings. Underneath it are the vast substructures miscalled "Solomon s Stables," and p. honeycomb of minor passages, cisterns, and water channels. During' the last few days the Arabs were reported to be taking their casualties into this area, and many of, them were seen to be withdrawing to it during today's operations. THE ESTIMATED STRENGTH. It is estimated that there were several hundred armed Arabs in the Old City. For some time they had been coming in from outside unarmed and passing inconspicuously am6ng ordinary Arab civilians, as all alike now wear the keffiyeh or head-scarf and camel's hair agghal or rope-like bands to hold it in pbsition. These intruders once inside were provided with arms which had previously been smuggled in and were ready for service. Within the occupied area of the Old City, which is cut off from the rest by a cordon of troops and barbed-wire entanglements, the inhabitants were allowed to circulate Ita order to buy food, and arrangements have been made by the Government for distributing bread to the poor. Further searches are being carried on, a task of great difficulty as the Old City abounds with underground passages of great antiquity. The troops have^een advised as to the location of these by an eminent archaeologist. That the clearing of the occupied area is not yet quite complete was shown this evening after dark when a sniper began to fire from the minaret of a mosque not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There was also some other rifle and machinegun fire. Of today's casualties Constable

Jeavons was severely woundei by a ricochetting bullet, and Constable Hallet and Guardsman W. G. Brown were slightly wounded by,bomb-splinters; 15 of the 18 Arab wounded, among whom is Dr. Attallam, a Christian, are only out-patients. One of the nine Arabs who were killed was a woman. It is explained that yesterday's transfer of powers to the military does not constitute martial law, but has the effect of introducing the system which has long been in force in the Northwest Frontier Province of India. The District Commissioners, who are still responsible for the civi] administr tion, will act as political advisers to the military commanders who have taken over from them the special powers formerly vested in them under the Defence Regulations. This long overdue step, which gives LieutenantGeneral Haining the powers which for some time past he has been exercising only by courtesy, should greatly help in restpring order in this distracted country where the civil arm is paralysed. Outsid£ the walls at Jerusalem, which is crowded with troops, lorries, and armoured cars,1 is under curfew between 10 p.m. and 6- a.m. After the Military Governor's proclamation issued this morning and dropped from aeroplanes warning those outside the walls to keep under cover during the operations the ~*itish and Arab streets were deserted, but the Jews appeared to regard the warning as not applicable to them and thronged the streets in their suburbs more than usually. BEFORE THE ADVANCE. British residents in the scattered villas in the quarter outside Herod's Gate were told to withdraw yesterday to hotels as a measure*of precaution. After Monday night's alarms and excursions with rifle and machine-gun fire breaking the unnatural stillness of a Jerusalem anxious under curfew I observed the Old City yesterday from the sandbagged machine-gun post on the roof of the Government Offices. I This solid German-built structure, which was formerly. the Hospice of St. Paul, stands outside the Damascus Gate a few score yards from the yel-lowish-grey north walls of the Old City, rising unencumbered from their antique foundations. The Damascus Gate boldly painted with a star and crescent/ stood shut, barred by the police from without and barricaded by the rebels from within. To right and left the long walls were fully under observation, and as all the streets adjacent to the walls of the Old City had been closed to traffic they were deserted. On the observation tower a dozen soldiers in steel helmets and a few police officers stood behind parapets further protected by sandbags, with Lewis guns and rifles trained Cjn the city. Under the clear but tempered autumn sun the greater part of the Old City lay before us, and out to the south-east the misty hills of Judaea on this side of the Dead Sea melted into the blue hills of Moab beyond it. , Being well above the top of the walls we were able to overlook a large sector of the city from the Dome of the Rock down in the Haram-esh-Sherif on the east, up past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the tower of the Franciscan Convent of the Terra Santa on the west. The mass of huddled and flattened domes of the Arab houses made an undulating grey field from w(hich rose large conventual buildings, church towers, and minarets-, from the rusty green of the graceful Dome of the Rock to the half-scaffolded black dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with synagogues in the background. Smoke rose lazily from the ruins of the police station in the Old City, which was burned on Monday with all its important criminal records. Sometimes for several minutes all would be quiet except for occasional shots from the far side of the city where British police were guarding the Jewish quarter. Then we heard rifles and machine-guns busy on the similar look-out post to the left which dominates another sector outside the north-east corner of the walls by the Burj-el-Laklak. Roofs were scanned for snipers, and an armed man, spotted on a roof in front of us, was promptly fired upon. GOVERNMENT WORK GOES ON. While the troops confined their fire to armed men actually seen and to counter-fire, their task was extremely delicate because the snipers were making use of obviously occupied houses, and, moreover, there was no angle at which some hospice, convent, or church would not be in an almost direct line of fire and might be hit should a bullet be slightly deflected. In such circumstances a wholesale attack upon the rebels was unthinkable. An observation aeroplane crossed above the city, drawing the fire of rebels from all parts. ? Meanwhile, below in the Government Offices, which expose their long southern flank to the walls, work was going on as usual, but with all desks drawn away from the windows. butside, the walls, where the Jews had resumed work after their holiday, curious crowds were gathered along the edges of curfewed areas, watching the. military. The feeding of the Old City, which is filled mostly by very poor people, is already a serious problem. Where the rebels were in control people are able to scuttle through the lanes to shops and bakeries unobserved, but owing to the Arab strike on top of the curfew the Old City had then been for five days without fresh vegetables and milk other than from the few goats which normally,,live within it. One large Eastern convent with a population lately of nearly 1000 persons who have inhabited the pilgrims' quarters since the war had no more bread and had received permission to send out for some.

On the observation tower a dozen soldiers in steel helmets and a few police officers stood behind parapets further protected by sandbags, with Lewis guns and rifles trained qn the city. Under the clear but tempered autumn sun the greater part of the Old City lay before us, and out to the south-east the misty hills of Judaea on this side of the Dead Sea melted into the blue hills of Moab beyond it

Being well above the top of the walls we were able to overlook a large sector of the city from the Dome of the Rock down in the Haram-esh-Sherif on the east, up past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the tower of the Franciscan Convent of the Terra Santa on the west.