The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan Page A

weapons, they did not appear equipped to defend the town against an invading force and were belittled by some locals as the "barefoot brigade." King Abdullah, however, had promised "enough force to defend Arab lives," and people in al-Ramla were hopeful that the Bedouins were simply the advance guard of a much larger force. There was reason to worry, however. Elsewhere internal Arab frictions were causing logistical problems: In Haifa, a mixed Arab-Jewish city along the northern coast of Palestine, arms intended for one Arab militia were being intercepted by another. In Jaffa, an Arab town ten miles west of al-Ramla, two military coordinators were each giving separate and sometimes conflicting sets of orders. Divisions among the Arabs, both within and outside of Palestine, were weakening them. On May 13, Jaffa fell, and refugees began filling al-Ramla's streets.
    A short time later, scores of other families began drifting into al-Ramla from the south. They had fled Na'ani, a village of orange groves and watermelon fields a few miles away, after a Jewish farmer had galloped into the village on horseback, shouting, "The Jewish army is coming! You must leave, or you will all be killed!" The people of Na'ani knew this man as Khawaja Shlomo—Shlorno the Stranger. He was a neighbor from Na'an, the kibbutz next door. They had never seen him in such a state of agitation, and at first they didn't take his warnings seriously. But they were on good terms with this Jewish neighbor, and he was insistent, yelling from his horse, "No, no, no! If you stay, they will kill you!" The villagers were well aware of the horrors of Deir Yassin, which had already caused panic and flight from villages across Palestine. They felt they had no choice but to believe Shlomo. They arrived in al-Ramla carrying virtually nothing, assuming they would return to Na'ani as soon as the danger had passed.
    By now Ahmad Khairi found himself living in a town he scarcely recognized. Refugees slept under trees in Khairi orchards, crowded the coffee shops and markets, and choked the streets near Ahmad's furniture workshop.
    Ahmad was growing increasingly nervous about allowing Zakia and the children to remain in al-Ramla. He began to consider a temporary safe haven for them. Within forty-eight hours, the British would be leaving Palestine for good, and whatever little order their presence provided in al-Ramla would be gone. Local Arab merchants were hurriedly buying surplus pants, uniforms, and shoes from the British army as the colonial forces packed up their garrison and prepared to sail north toward England.
    On May 14, in the nearby coastal city of Tel Aviv, David Ben-Gurion declared Israel's independence in an address to the Jewish Provisional Council. "It is," he proclaimed, "the self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own Sovereign State." The next day, Ben-Gurion broadcast word of the new state of Israel by live radio to the United States; in the background, listeners could hear the rumble and explosion of Egyptian planes bombing Tel Aviv. The Jewish leader would describe the conflict as "seven hundred thousand Jews pitted against twenty-seven million Arabs—one against forty." More relevant were the fighting forces on the ground, and there, in fact, all Jewish and Arab forces were relatively even as the war officially began. Only days before, American diplomats had expressed skepticism that the Arabs would put up more than a "token" fight. President Harry Truman wrote to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel: "I sincerely hope that the Palestine situation will work out on an equitable and peaceful basis."
    Truman had barely signed his letter when Egyptian ground forces were attacking Israeli settlements in the Negev and advancing toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; Syrian and Iraqi forces were entering Palestine from the east; and soldiers of King Abdullah's Arab Legion were