Operation Yiftach

The Palmah defined the aim of Operation Yiftach as "the destruction of bases of the enemy ... and to destroy points of assembly for invading forces from the east [and] ... to join the lower and upper Galilee with a relatively wide and safe strip." Chaim Herzog viewed Operation Yiftach as part of Plan Dalet. Plan Dalet aimed at securing the areas allocated to the Jewish state in the UN partition plan before the end of the British Mandate in Palestine. Benny Morris, citing IDF and Haganah archival material, wrote that Plan Dalet had not been activated. He viewed some actions taken as piecemeal implementations of the plan, with commanders thinking they were handling particular local challenges in a non-orchestrated fashion. With the ending of the Mandate in sight, British forces had begun to withdraw from less strategic areas such as north-eastern Galilee. In these areas there was a scramble by both sides to occupy abandoned police and military facilities. Local militias and Arab volunteers had taken over the Palestine Police forts in Safed and at al-Nabi Yusha'. On 17 April the Haganah launched an attack on the fort at al-Nabi Yusha', which failed. A second attack on 20 April resulted in the deaths of twenty two of the attackers. As a result of this defeat Yigal Allon, the Palmach C.O. was given command of the operation. Al-Nabi Yusha' was finally taken on 20 April in an attack in which planes dropped incendiary bombs on the fort. On 21 April, Allon surveyed the area in a spotter aircraft. On 22 April, Allon wrote the Haganah General Staff recommending a series of operations to brace for invasion in the Eastern Galilee. Benny Morris saw these as inline with Plan Dalet. The army camp at Rosh Pinna was handed over to the Haganah/Palmach by its British commander on 28 April. Allon's initial orders had the objective "taking control of the Tel Hai area and its consolidation in preparation for [the] invasion." Allon recommended that the way to do this was for the Eastern Galilee "to be pacified" and the towns of Beit Shean (Beisan) and Safad to be cleared. This campaign and a later Operation Dani in July, where "he left no Arab communities in his wake" led Morris to conclude that he had "no doubt let his officers know" what he wanted and they probably knew anyway. Safed had a prewar population of 10,000–12,000 Arabs and 1,500 Jews, and was the base for 700–800 local and foreign irregulars. The attack on Safed was similar to the attack on Arab Tiberias on 16–17 April, in that it began with a particularly destructive attack on a neighbouring village resulting in loss of morale in the town. ==Operation==

On 1 May 1948, the Palmach's 3rd Battalion attacked the village of Ein al-Zeitun, 1 km north of Safed. It began shelling the village at 03:00 in the morning, using one of the first Davidka mortars as well as two 3-inch and eight 2-inch conventional mortars. The Davidka was a homemade mortar that fired an oversized shell and was nearly useless due to its inaccuracy, but was useful because of the loud noise of the projectile when it flew and detonated. Although hardly capable of causing casualties, the weapon actually was quite effective in demoralizing defending Arabs, some of whom reportedly even thought the explosions were "atomic bombs", which they knew Jews had helped to develop. Once they entered the village most of the 'young adult males' fled but 37 were taken prisoner and were probably amongst the 70 men executed in a valley between the village and Safed two days later. Those who remained in the village were rounded up and expelled. Over the next two days Palmach sappers blew up and burnt houses in the village. There followed a sub-operation, Operation Matateh, starting on 4 May, which cleared five Bedouin tribes from the Jordan Valley south of Rosh Pinna." following the failed attack on Safed On 6 May the Palmach launched a ground attack on Safed, but failed to take the citadel. The failure was blamed on insufficient bombardment. Despite Arab attempts to negotiate a truce and the British Army being authorised to intervene, a second attack was launched on night of 9–10 May. It was preceded by a 'massive, concentrated' mortar bombardment in which the Davidka was used again. An Israeli account describes the final assault as occurring in heavy rainfall, with Palmach forces fighting "all night, attacking in waves up the hilly streets of the town, fighting from house to house and from room to room." File:Safad police station.jpg|Safad police station, May 1948 File:Hotel Safad.jpg|Hotel Safad, May 1948 File:Safed bombardment.jpg|Safed after the bombardment, May 1948 Following the capture of Safed, Palmach units moved north to secure the borders with Lebanon and Syria. On 14–15 May the Palmach's 1st Battalion was involved in a clash with Lebanese units at Qabas. In his later writing Allon claimed that a 'whispering' campaign he launched was of great importance. This involved local Jewish mukhtars who had contacts in local Arab communities being told "to whisper in the ears of several Arabs that giant Jewish reinforcements had reached Galilee and were about to clean out the villages of the Hula". An IDF intelligence report attributed success to this tactic in the case of ten villages, though it suggest that some may also have been bombarded. There is some evidence that 'Syrian officers or Arab irregular commanders' ordered women and children be evacuated from villages north-east of Rosh Pinna. ==Aftermath==

In the words of Chaim Herzog, on the morning of 11 May "the Palmach forces fought all night, attack in waves up the hilly streets of the town ... By the morning of the next day, the strongpoints were in Jewish hands and the by-now-familiar mass Arab evacuation from the town began. With the imminence of invasion by the Arab armies, the capture of Safed had been vital to maintain the Jewish position in north-east Galilee" The only civilians who remained in Safed were "about" 100 Muslims, "average age 80" and "34-36 elderly Christian Arabs". In late May or early June the Muslims were "expelled" to Lebanon and on 13 June the Christians were removed by lorry to Haifa. 4–5,000 Bedouin and villagers who remained in the Hula area after the creation of the state of Israel were trucked across the Syrian border during the 1956 Suez War. ==Arab communities captured during Operation Yiftach==