Operation Ha-Har

Operation Ha-Har (Hebrew: ההר‎‎, The Mountain), or Operation El Ha-Har, was an Israeli Defence Forces campaign against villages southwest of Jerusalem launched at the end of October 1948.

The Operation lasted from 18 to 24 October and was carried out by troops from the Harel and Etzioni Brigades. The villages were defended by units from the Egyptian army. By the end of the campaign over a dozen villages had been captured. It coincided with Operation Yoav which attacked Egyptian positions further south.

The objectives of the military campaign known as Operation El Ha-Har have been described by the former commander of the Har’el Brigade, Joseph ("Yosefle") Tabenkin, as follows: “The military campaign, which later became known as 'Operation El Ha-Har ', was intended originally to make the road accessible. In the first stage, [it required] the occupation of the south bank of Nahal Sorek, clearing the way for the capture of Bayt Jala (Bethlehem), and from there, on one-side southward, the liberation of Gush Etzion, and the conquest of the entire mountain, while northward, the occupation of Arab Jerusalem on its south side.”

In mid-October 1948, the Har’el Brigade published a combat ordinance, which read: "The enemy is planning to cut-off the well-springs of immigration and [Jewish] settlement, to build a nest of war conspiracies against us and against all those who love peace in the world, to cut-off from Israel the Negev; to inflict harm to the capital, the center of yearnings of the generations of Israel; to subjugate the Hebrew element of Jerusalem; to dismantle Jewish industry; to block-off the sea; to deny the independence of Haifa and its port. These schemes will be eradicated on the battlefield." Up until that time, the Brigade had been active in capturing infiltrators who sought to carry-out attacks against Jews and their property, as also in securing the public transportation to Jerusalem.

The Regimental Operations Department initiated patrols south of the Jerusalem Corridor. They assumed that when fighting resumed, the task of the Brigade would be to expand the corridor southward. Thus, before Operation: El HaHar (Unto the Mountaintop) was approved, "Raanana" (Eliyahu Sela), the Officer in charge of Regimental Operations, had informed the Fourth and the Fifth battalions about the plan to take military action in the area of Beit Jimal and Dayr al-Hawa, and gave orders unto them to carry out reconnaissance missions with a view of watching enemy movement in that territory and to prepare an operational plan for the conquering of those villages if and when the fighting should be renewed.

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