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Updated: May 22, 2025
One brigade of the 53rd Division was to advance from the Bethlehem-Beit Jala area with its left on the line drawn from Sherafat through Malhah to protect the 60th Division's flank, the other brigade marching direct on Jerusalem, and to move by roads south of the town to a position covering Jerusalem from the east and north-east, but and these were instructions specially impressed on this brigade 'the City of Jerusalem will not be entered, and all movements by troops and vehicles will be restricted to roads passing outside the City. The objective of the 60th and 74th Divisions was a general line from Ras et Tawil, a hill east of the Nablus road about four miles north of Jerusalem, to Nebi Samwil, one brigade of the 74th Division holding Nebi Samwil and Beit Izza defences and to form the pivot of the attack.
The enemy drew off, but to save the remnants of his storming troops kept our positions from near Ras et Tawil, Tel el Ful to the wadi Beit Hannina under heavy gunfire for the rest of the day. The Turk was hopelessly beaten, his defeat irretrievable. He had delivered thirteen costly attacks, and his sole gains were the exposed outpost positions at the Tawil and the quarries.
The first house he visited was that of Hemid et Tawil of Tous, whom he found seated on a mat and before him singers and players, with lutes and hautboys and other instruments of music in their hands. El Mamoun sat with him awhile, and presently he set before him dishes of nothing but flesh-meat, with no birds among them.
On the 19th the Division occupied a front of about fourteen miles from near Muntar, close to which the ancient road from Bethlehem to Jericho passes, through Ras Umm Deisis, across the Jerusalem-Jericho road to Arak Ibrahim, over the great chasm of the wadi Farah which has cliff-like sides hundreds of feet deep, to the brown knob of Ras et Tawil. The line was not gained without fighting.
Shortly before midnight the Turks began their operations against the line held by the 60th Division across the Nablus road precisely where it had been expected. They attacked in considerable strength at Ras et Tawil and about the quarries held by our outposts north of that hill, and the outposts were driven in.
The fourth phase was an advance astride the road to Ras et Tawil. As will be seen hereafter all these objectives were not obtained, but the first, and chief of them, was, and the inevitable followed Jerusalem became ours. Let us now picture some of the country the troops had to cross and the defences they had to capture before the Turks could be forced out of Jerusalem.
The next day they pushed the enemy still farther eastwards, and by the night of the 10th held the line from the well at Azad, 4000 yards south-east of Jerusalem, the hill 1500 yards south of Aziriyeh, Aziriyeh itself, to the Mount of Olives, whence our positions continued to Ras et Tawil, north of Tel el Ful across the Nablus road to Nebi Samwil.
Adaseh, a hill between Tel el Ful and Tawil, in the early hours of December 23, and the 181st Brigade was to seize a height about half a mile north of Beit Hannina. The latter attack succeeded, but despite the most gallant and repeated efforts the 180th Brigade was unable to gain the summit of Adaseh, though they got well up the hill.
The Turks did not oppose us at Muntar the spot where the Jews released the Scapegoat but there was a short contest for Ibrahim, and a longer fight lasting till the afternoon for an entrenched position a mile north of it; Ras et Tawil was ours by nine in the morning. Tawil overlooks a track which has been trodden from time immemorial.
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