Articles, Radio Addresses, and Interviews Recorded at the Time in My Own Papers - Part 6: Officers' Testimony on the 1948 Samakh Disaster and King Abdullah's Suspected Betrayal

A Conversation with Za'im Amir Shallash

Friday night, 21 September 1990, at his own home, from 7 to 8:30 in the evening. Major Sameh al-Sabai, brother of Za'im Shallash's own wife, had died in Rajab, where he had worked for a company for several years. Given the friendship between us, I went along with my own wife, and my brother As'ad and his wife, to offer our condolences, and the conversation soon turned to the painful events unfolding in the Gulf, following Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.

We then found ourselves questioning the point and meaning of sending 4,000 Syrian soldiers, later increased to 19,000, to Saudi Arabia, alongside Egyptian forces and the Western forces, which included some 150,000 American soldiers, a vast array of American fleet vessels (four aircraft carriers), and British, French, Senegalese, Nigerian, and Pakistani forces, along with French, British, and Italian naval fleets...

The conversation carried us back to the Palestine war, prompted by my own reading of the memoirs of the Zionist Moshe Dayan, in which he writes:

That the Jewish delegation used to meet with King Abdullah at his own palace in Shuneh, playing chess with him, listening to his own poetry and applauding it, then sitting down together at the dining table to discuss acceptable solutions...

Dayan recounts that the King told them: keep Gaza for yourselves, and give it to whomever you wish, but do not give it to the Egyptians (and yet they still call him "the martyred King")...

We turned to discuss King Abdullah's own role in the Palestine war, and Za'im Shallash, who had commanded the Syrian front with the rank of major, spoke, saying:

The Syrian army had numbered 25,000 soldiers, before falling to 5,000 under the influence of the British military adviser, Colonel Fawkes, who served as adviser to the defense minister, Ahmad al-Sharabati. His argument was: why maintain an army at all? Its costs are high, and you have no enemies. It is inconceivable that any Arab country would attack you, and should Turkey attack you out of its own ambitions, the United Nations would stand against it...

Some of our forces entered Palestine before 15 May 1948, and we handed over most of our weapons to the Arab Liberation Army...

Two battalions were placed under the command of Za'im Abdel Wahab al-Hakim...

Their task was to occupy the Galilee with the help of the local Arab population, but the majority of the army consisted of conscripts who had never fired a single shot in their entire lives...

At this point a telegram arrived from headquarters in Damascus (under the influence of King Abdullah, who had by then become supreme commander), ordering the Syrian forces to abandon their positions and head instead toward the position at Samakh, some five kilometers from al-Hima. The army had no vehicles to transport its tanks, so they moved on their own tracks across vast distances, until they wore out and some of them simply stopped.

He mentioned that Aleppo was the very first place from which the spark of liberation was struck, since its own people helped the soldiers and encouraged them to desert their barracks, after which the spark spread to the other fronts.

Za'im Shallash received orders to enter Palestine with his own forces, numbering 400 men, though he left the conscripts and the less experienced men behind with the equipment, marching in with only 150 men. There, Za'im al-Hakim gave him his orders: to occupy Degania A and Degania B, then occupy several other settlements, and press on toward Haifa. He laughed at this, given the sheer scale of the task set against how little he actually had. Al-Hakim rebuked him for it, calling him "a troublemaker." He replied: not at all, sir, I only laugh out of sheer joy at the honor you have bestowed on me.

Za'im Shallash said:

We had several artillery pieces positioned on the hilltops, capable of destroying the Zionist settlements outright, since they commanded a full view over them. Then Defense Minister Ahmad al-Sharabati arrived and ordered them brought down from their positions, to be closer to the battle, at which point they lost their own advantage of elevation entirely, finding themselves down in the valley, unable to see any target at all...

The officers had no maps at all, so when they looked out at the thickets before them, they had no way of knowing whether a fortified settlement lay behind them or nothing at all.

The forces found themselves positioned at Samakh, some 190 meters below sea level. The attack on the Jews had been set for 4:30 in the morning, but an order came down postponing it, and when the assault finally began at 3 in the afternoon, they were caught off guard by Jewish artillery that had arrived to relieve the settlements...

The Syrian artillery was supposed to bombard the Jewish positions, but it could no longer even see its own targets.

The tanks then advanced, or so they intended, but managed only two kilometers before grinding to a halt, disabled where they stood. One of them carried the officer Ihsan Kanaan al-Maz, who stood exposed, firing his own machine gun from the turret, making himself an easy target, and was killed a martyr.

Eighty-six men from Shallash's own battalion alone were killed.

Samakh became a graveyard for the Syrian army, whose men were scattered to the wind.

His own view was that King Abdullah had deliberately placed the Syrian army in this position to annihilate it, so that he might then seize Syria itself and take its own throne.

Ahmad al-Sharabati was dismissed, and Jamil Mardam Bey succeeded him as defense minister. He went out to visit the front, where he struck the officer Tawfiq Bishur across the hand with his own riding crop, in front of the soldiers, knocking his own headdress from his head, and the morale of officers and soldiers alike collapsed as a result.

He spoke of the Syrian army's own poverty in weapons, and its dismal condition overall.

In this same battle, Qasim al-Khalil stood at the head of his own forces when a bullet struck him, tearing through his throat, and Za'im Shallash himself was wounded and spent four months in the hospital.

Za'im Shallash spoke highly of Major General Abdullah Atfeh, who served as chief of staff at the time.

He was later removed from his post, and Husni al-Za'im was appointed in his place, who went on to carry out his own coup.

From a Conversation I Had Yesterday, 21/9/1990, with One of the Senior Retired Officers of the Syrian Army, on His Own Memories of the War of 1947 [sic]

He held the rank of major at the time. I gathered the following information from him:

First: The Syrian army, on the day Syria took it over from France, numbered around 25,000 men. Defense Minister, the engineer Ahmad al-Sharabati, took on as his own military adviser the English Colonel (Fawkes), whose own wife was a German Jewish woman, a close friend of al-Sharabati's own German wife. Fawkes convinced Defense Minister al-Sharabati that Syria had no need of a large army, since Syria was surrounded by Arab countries not expected to attack it, and the only real danger Syria might face would come from Turkey, but the United Nations today would never permit anyone to assault a member state such as Syria. And so al-Sharabati set about discharging soldiers and refusing to renew the contracts of those whose service was ending, since compulsory conscription had not yet been established in Syria, and by the time Syria entered the Palestine war in 1948, the Syrian army's own numbers had fallen to around five thousand officers, soldiers, and cooks combined...

Second: Al-Sharabati had imposed a kind of aloof dictatorship within the Ministry of Defense, cutting himself off from his own officers and no longer allowing anyone to meet with him, to the point that he even barred Chief of Staff Abdullah Atfeh, one of the most capable Syrian officers, from requesting a meeting with him, telling him: if there is ever anything I wish your own opinion on, I will summon you myself. He contented himself instead with the advice of his own military adviser, Fawkes.

Third: The officer speaking with me, then a major, commanded one of the Syrian army's six battalions, stationed in southern Lebanon, tasked with attacking, once the order came, the Galilee region, which stretched out flat as a plain before the southern Lebanese border. It was expected that the Palestinian Arab forces in the villages of the Galilee, the majority population in the region, would join up with the Syrian army's own forces. (The battalion this officer commanded numbered around 600 infantrymen.) All the Arab forces together were to advance on the few Jewish villages in the region, occupy and clear them, then push onward to link up with the Arab forces advancing from the east and south...

Fourth: Two days before the battle, set for 15/5/1948, the battalion commander speaking to me received an order from Syrian general headquarters (issued on the orders of the Arab forces' own commander, King Abdullah) requiring the Syrian battalion to abandon its positions in southern Lebanon and move instead to its newly designated positions in the Kafr Harib area (near al-Hima and the Sea of Galilee), from which the battalion was to advance to occupy the village of Samakh, then head toward the Jewish villages in the region to occupy them.

The battalion abandoned its positions in southern Lebanon, and moved out with its own small number of tanks, meant only for training, while most of its soldiers marched on foot from southern Lebanon all the way to Kafr Harib, to reach the designated positions before the scheduled time of battle. The soldiers grew exhausted and fell ill, and of the battalion's own roughly 600 men, only 180 actually arrived, including the battalion commander and three officers. The tanks traveled the entire distance on their own tracks, since there were no tank transporters available, and so they arrived at the battlefield already disabled and unable to move.

Fifth: The battalion commander positioned his own artillery behind the positions his battalion had occupied on the high ground overlooking al-Hima and the Jewish villages, and began fortifying his positions in preparation for battle. (The speaker notes that the Syrian artillery, however few in number, consisted of field guns with a range of ten kilometers, while the Jews had nothing but mortars with a range of only three kilometers.)

Sixth: Ahmad al-Sharabati visited the front a few hours before the battle, together with his own English adviser, husband of the German Jewish woman, and ordered the battalion commander to bring the artillery and tanks down into the valley, since this position did not suit them. Carrying out this order proved extremely difficult, since the descent to al-Hima required travel along paths that were exceptionally winding, steep, and difficult. The battalion worked to bring its guns and tanks down these steep paths, and they arrived only with great difficulty, the tanks left disabled and unable to move. That night, a Jewish commando unit, coming from the settlement of Ein Gev, attacked the Syrian artillery and disabled all of it. Hours later, an order came from al-Sharabati to bring the artillery back up to the high ground, but by then the guns had already been completely destroyed.

Seventh: A Syrian army commander, Abdel Wahab al-Hakim, arrived at the front. He was an officer who had been tasked with setting up an equestrian club for al-Sharabati's wife and Fawkes's wife to enjoy, and he issued orders to the battalion commander that the battalion's mission was to occupy Samakh, then move on to occupy Tiberias, then advance toward Haifa. The battalion commander laughed and told him: with a hundred and eighty soldiers, you want me to carry out all these missions, when I have neither equipment nor ammunition enough to last me even a single hour, or less. Al-Hakim told him: these are the orders. Manage as best you can.

Eighth: The battalion commander asked al-Hakim to provide him, or have headquarters provide him, with maps of the area his battalion was to operate in, but he was told, apologetically, that the maps were kept by the defense minister himself, who would not hand them over to anyone, and that he would simply have to manage on the ground with the positions before him, since the battlefield itself, with all its objectives, lay right in front of him.

And so the fighting battalions were denied the aid of military maps for identifying enemy objectives, to guide their own work with proper knowledge and insight. The speaker asks: what could the defense minister possibly need with these maps?

Maps, he notes, were supposed to be held by the operations branch at headquarters, to be distributed to the commanders of the fighting battalions.

Ninth: The battalion advanced to carry out its own mission, but found dense, tangled trees before it, blocking any view of what lay behind them, leaving it unclear whether the river lay before Samakh or beyond it. When the battalion advanced, gunfire and mortar rounds rained down on it, killing and wounding more than eighty of its own men, leaving only a small handful behind.

It was forced to retreat to the positions it had set out from, without achieving any notable success.

Tenth: The speaker said that another nearby battalion was commanded by the officer, "the gentleman" Bashir al-Hawasli, a graduate of the non-commissioned officer ranks, who stationed himself in a tank three kilometers behind his own soldiers' positions. When asked why he was standing so far behind the lines, he said he was positioned there to prevent his soldiers from fleeing. And so operations were carried out under commanders who were incompetent, incapable of true leadership, and lacking the courage to face the enemy.

Eleventh: The speaker said the Syrian army was made up of six active battalions, each numbering around 600 soldiers.

Twelfth: The speaker said that a great deal of the Syrian army's own weapons and ammunition had already been handed over, before this, to the forces of the Arab Liberation Army, to fight with instead.

Thirteenth: The speaker closed his account by saying that the Arab forces' own command, meaning King Abdullah, had placed the Syrian army in this particular sector of the front for several reasons, among them:

First: so that Jewish forces in the Galilee would not be breached, attacked, or occupied by the Arabs.

Second: so that it would be impossible for the Syrian army to advance or accomplish anything at all in this exceptionally fortified region, since the Eden Line, built by the Allies a few years earlier to confront the Germans there should the Egypt-Libya front collapse, ran directly through this same area, and the shells falling on the line's own fortifications simply bounced off, like rubber balls, leaving no trace behind.

He said the Eden Line encompassed the villages of Degania A and Degania B, Mishmar HaYarden, and Ka'awad. For this reason, it was impossible for a force as weak as the Syrian army's own to accomplish anything in tearing down these fortifications and driving the Jews out of their own fortified positions there.

The officer then spoke of Ahmad al-Sharabati's successor, Jamil Mardam Bey, saying that he too had imposed his own dictatorship over the army, and recounted the following story:

Minister Mardam visited the front, where the front commander, the officer Tawfiq Chatila, received him and set about briefing him on conditions there, explaining the true state of affairs. In the course of the conversation, the officer raised certain demands with the defense minister, at which Mardam grew furious, and, holding a riding crop in his own hand, struck the officer across the head with it, knocking his headdress to the ground, an act that left a deep mark on the morale of officers and soldiers alike, given how little regard the politicians showed the army.

He closed his own account of King Abdullah's order transferring the Syrian army to the fortified Samakh region by saying:

That the King had wanted to destroy the Syrian army outright, so that he might then move to occupy Syria itself, once its army had been annihilated. But God preserved us.

A Conversation That Took Place on Sunday Evening

16/12/1990, at the home of Judge Majed al-Ghazi

(His own turn hosting our fortnightly gathering)

Abdel Nasser and Nazim al-Qudsi

Mr. Rafiq al-Sayoufi spoke, and said:

Dr. AbdulWahab Homad once did me a favor I will never forget, agreeing to let me leave the Ministry of Finance, where I served as secretary-general, so that I could join Intra Bank as general manager of its own branches in Syria.

He recounted the following: that Dr. Homad told him President Abdel Nasser used to constantly ask him about the old politicians, their own financial circumstances, and whether it might be within our power to do them some service. He would single out Nazim al-Qudsi by name in particular...

Dr. Homad asked me: Rafiq, could you find some work for Nazim Bey at your own bank?

One day the opportunity arose. The founders of the Arab World Bank had gathered, and I, Rafiq Bey, put forward the idea that Nazim Bey be brought in, and if he agreed, whether he would prefer to meet them in Aleppo, where they would come to visit him from Beirut, or in Damascus, where he himself would come to them. He said he would come himself. The meeting took place, and Nazim Bey then traveled to Beirut, where they held a grand reception for him, inviting Lebanon's own political and economic elite, and shone the brightest of lights upon him...

He was then appointed to the post.

I (Homad) added: the bank's own board members visited me at my office at the Ministry of Finance, and asked whether the state would look favorably on Nazim Bey's appointment.

I told them: the state supports it with full conviction, and his appointment would greatly ease matters, since it would give us a channel of contact through him.

I told them, too, that Nazim Bey, back in the days of the union, once invited me to dinner at his home in Dummar, at a time when I had a cabinet session scheduled to discuss the budget. Out of respect for him, and given how insistent he had been that I attend, I excused myself to the vice president, claiming illness, and asked that the cabinet meeting be postponed.

I attended the dinner.

Nazim Bey was deeply touched by this gesture...

I then told them of my own meeting with him on the morning of 9 March 1963, at his own palace in Abu Rummaneh...