Word: arabization
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Cabled TIME Correspondent Eric Gibbs, who watched the battle of the Jerusalem roads last week: "I stood on a high escarpment amid a crowd of Arab soldiers, watching their 105-millimeter Schneider howitzer lob big shells into Jewish convoys trying to round a perilous bend in the road, two miles away. A Haganah truck or armored car looked like a tiny beetle as it climbed slowly and unsuspectingly towards danger. As the howitzer fired, Arabs waited tensely for the shell to land, bony brown hands clutching at rifles, eyes narrowed to slits. Another instant and a black mushroom of smoke...
...Again & again the gun fired. The Arabs claimed three armored cars, two trucks for the morning's shooting. An antiquated Jewish biplane, painted yellow, chugged high over the Arab gun position but dropped no bombs...
...Kastel fighting there were Britons on both sides. The Arab forces included five deserters from the Palestine police. In the confused close-in fighting at the end, two of these Britons heard a shout from the Jewish side: 'Come on, you Arab bastards!' They recognized the man as another police deserter and shouted back: 'Bastard yourself! What are you doing over there?' As the Haganah Briton went to throw a hand grenade in reply, one of the Arabized Britons killed him with his Bren...
...Very Worried." But the real battle was still the battle for the roads. For the Jews in Jerusalem, it was a matter of survival. Each day food grew scarcer, bread lines longer. Those most immediately threatened by the Arab stranglehold were 1,500 Orthodox Jews living in the Old City, surrounded by blockading Arabs. What food they got was coming through in British convoys...
Said Sheik Yaseen el Bakri, head of some of the Old City's Arab forces: "We understand the food situation is very bad in the Jewish quarter. It will be no more than two weeks before they have to surrender. After the 15th of May, if there is no foreign interference, it will take no more than three months to solve the Palestine problem...