Battles of Negba

Kibbutz Negba was founded in 1939 by settlement groups formed by the Hashomer Hatza'ir movement.[1] Originally called Givat Ganim, it was renamed Negba a year after its founding.[1] Built as a "tower and stockade" settlement, it was among the southernmost Jewish settlements in the country, situated between what would become Kiryat Gat and Ashkelon and close to the Gaza border.[1][2]

When Egyptian forces crossed the border on 15 May 1948 and advanced northward along the coastal road and southeast toward Beersheba, Negba lay directly in their path.[3] The kibbutz was isolated, surrounded by Arab villages, and subject to prolonged observation and fire from Egyptian-held positions.[4] A JCFA glossary describes Egyptian troops as repeatedly trying to subdue the settlement in order to open the road to the north.[5]

The Givati Brigade, established as the 5th Brigade in early December 1947 under the command of Shimon Avidan, was the primary Israeli military formation responsible for the southern coastal sector.[1] Its units, together with elements of the Negev Brigade, fought alongside Negba's kibbutz members throughout the campaign. The nearby Ibdis Hill and the Iraq Suweidan police fort — a former British police station held by Egyptian forces — dominated the surrounding terrain and shaped much of the fighting around the kibbutz.[4][6]

May 1948: First Attacks

On 21 May 1948, an Egyptian armored column attacked Negba and strafed the kibbutz from the air.[3] On 22 May, Egyptian regulars who had replaced Muslim Brotherhood irregulars at the Iraq Suweidan fort launched a further attack; this too was repelled, and Negba remained a focus of Egyptian attention through the First Truce.[6] Yitzhak Dubno, who headed Negba's defense, was killed in battle on 21 May 1948.[7]

During this period, reinforcements arrived from outside the kibbutz. A memorial account records that some sixty young men were sent to bolster the local defenders; on 2 June 1948, Zeev Virobnik volunteered to keep watch from the water tower and sound the alarm during a heavy Egyptian bombardment, and was killed there by a volley of bullets.[8]

June 1948: The Egyptian Assault

On 1–2 June 1948, the Egyptian First Battalion launched a major assault on Negba, deploying hundreds of infantry, fighter-bombers, a company of light tanks, a company of armored cars, and three batteries of field artillery.[6] Seventy kibbutz members, reinforced by seventy Givati troops, met the attack. Egyptian armor broke through the perimeter fence at one point, but defenders drove it off with Molotov cocktails and a PIAT anti-tank weapon.[6] Machine-gun-mounted Negev Brigade jeeps arrived at a critical moment and struck the Egyptian forces from the flank.[6] The assault was repelled with eight Israeli defenders killed and eleven wounded; Egyptian casualties exceeded one hundred.[6]

In a separate late-May episode, photographer Robert Capa traveled to the Negev to document the kibbutz's defense. The Jewish Review of Books reports that hundreds of Egyptian shells flew overhead, but does not identify the exact battle or provide casualty figures.[9]

To prepare for further Egyptian assaults, a Haganah sapper from Battalion 53, Oded Nagbi, was assigned to mine the perimeter. Working approximately eighteen hours a day — mostly at night — over fifty-seven days, he laid 2,202 mines around Negba: anti-personnel mines weighing 2.5 kilograms each and anti-vehicle mines weighing about 8 kilograms.[4] Fifteen-year-old girls from the kibbutz helped carry mines and fuses from storage to the fence line.[4]

July 1948: The Decisive Battle

Fighting resumed on 8 July 1948 after the expiry of the first truce.[10] During the Ten Days of fighting (9–18 July), Givati units attacked Egyptian positions from the north and captured several villages, including Ibdis, while also working to defend kibbutzim along the Egyptian line.[11] A fierce battle near Negba was described in Knesset records as part of this renewed campaign, during which the Egyptians again closed the main road to the Negev and an alternate route was opened for Jewish transport at night.[10]

A JewishGen memorial account records that Raziel Rosenthal fell on 10 July 1948 during fighting at Ibdis village, adjacent to Kibbutz Negba, having incapacitated several Egyptian weapons before he was killed.[12]

The decisive battle at Negba itself took place on 12 July 1948 — coinciding with the ninth anniversary of the kibbutz's founding.[2] Nagbi's account describes approximately 72 kibbutz members and 66 fighters from his battalion facing an Egyptian brigade he placed at some 4,820 soldiers, supported by tanks and artillery.[4] Seven Egyptian tanks drove onto the minefield, and five Israeli defenders were killed.[4] The Egyptian attack was broken. Nagbi recalled hearing an estimate of around 400 Egyptian soldiers killed, though he presented that figure as something he had heard rather than a verified count.[4]

The Raid on Ibdis Hill

Running parallel to the defense of the kibbutz itself, Givati's 53rd Battalion conducted a nighttime raid on the Egyptian outpost at Ibdis Hill, north of Negba, which on a clear day commanded views as far as the Gederah area.[1] The raiders surprised the Egyptian garrison and captured the hill, seizing equipment, but at severe cost. Michah Netzer of the 54th Battalion recalled: "And despite the surprise, fewer than half the soldiers made it back on foot. There were many wounded and dead. But they succeeded. They succeeded in conquering the hill and also seized a lot of equipment."[1]

The following night, a relief force arrived to replace the raiding party. Volunteers from nearby settlements helped dig communication trenches and defensive positions sheltered from shellfire.[1] Yisrael Galili, then Deputy Defense Minister, joined the digging that night and told the soldiers: "I saw the thin ranks, but the spirit fills in the breaches. That spirit is the spirit of Givati."[1]

Soldiers of the Givati Brigade's 51st Battalion subsequently seized Egyptian military equipment abandoned at the Ibdis outpost; photographs of the capture, taken by Benno Rothenberg, are held in the Benno Rothenberg Archive at the Israel State Archives.[1]

The Water Tower Under Fire

Negba's water tower served as an observation post during the fighting and was a prime target for Egyptian artillery.[2] It was struck by approximately 150 Egyptian shells; a description from June 1948 noted that the stone and concrete buildings, along with the tower, were "completely perforated."[2] After the second truce began on 20 July 1948, an assessment warned that the heavily damaged tower might collapse; notices were posted warning people not to sit near it or park vehicles beside it.[2] The kibbutz initially sought to keep the tower standing because it remained useful for observing enemy movements.[2]

The battles left Negba extensively damaged. In early 1949, a temporary structure beside the damaged reservoir supported two water tanks with a combined capacity of 12 cubic meters, replacing the original tower as a functioning water reservoir.[2] The story of Negba's recovery has been described as a "double victory": surviving the military campaign and then rebuilding the settlement.[2]

The nearby Iraq Suweidan fortress, which had controlled the roads around Negba and served as an Egyptian stronghold throughout the campaign, was not captured until 9 November 1948 — after seven failed attempts — in an assault by the armored corps' 8th Division under Yitzhak Sadeh with Givati assistance.[13] The fortress was subsequently renamed after Yitzhak Dubno, whose Haganah nickname was Yoav.[13]

Unlike Yad Mordechai, which fell after five days of fighting, and Nitzanim, which surrendered, Negba endured the full course of the Egyptian campaign and was never captured or abandoned.[2][14]

The memory of the battles was marked from the earliest years of Israeli statehood. In 1949 and 1950, 12 July was observed as "Yom HaMa'aracha" ("Day of the Campaign") and celebrated as an event of national significance.[2] By 1950, a proposal described it as a movement day commemorating the decisive battle; by 1952, the observance had become an event within the kibbutz itself, dedicated both to those who fell and to the anniversary of the kibbutz's founding.[2]

A military cemetery was established at the place where the fallen had initially been buried during the fighting.[2] A monument to the kibbutz's defenders, created by sculptor Nathan Rapoport, was inaugurated behind the cemetery in November 1953.[2][15] On Memorial Day 1955, an Egyptian tank that had broken through Negba's outer defenses during the battle was unveiled near the cemetery as a permanent memorial to the stand.[2]

The damaged water tower became a central element of the commemoration. In April 1949, kibbutz movement institutions proposed leaving it standing as a visible reminder of the battles, though kibbutz members were more immediately focused on repairing the settlement and restoring the water supply.[2] A 1952 description captured the tower's symbolic weight: "The wounds of the war have not yet healed. The perforated water tower stands as a silent witness."[2]

Academic analysis situates the memorial landscape within a narrative linking settlement, defense, sacrifice, and rebuilding: the captured Egyptian tank represented the enemy's destructive power and defeat, the damaged water tower represented damage to the settlement itself, and the rebuilt kibbutz represented survival through reconstruction.[2] The same study groups Negba with Yad Mordechai and Be'erot Yitzhak as sites where damaged water towers became focal points of commemorative landscapes combining history and geography.[16]

Negba's open-air memorial landscape preserves the shell-punctured water tower, Egyptian tanks, a reconstructed hut, and the military cemetery containing 37 fallen soldiers.[13][15]

The available sources do not provide a complete casualty roster for the battles as a whole, and some details rest on commemorative or memoir accounts rather than independent verification. The estimate of approximately 400 Egyptian soldiers killed in the 12 July battle derives from Oded Nagbi's recollection of something he had heard, not from an officially verified count.[4] Memorial biographies from the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project are similarly valuable as personal records but should not be treated as comprehensive battle histories.[8][12]

The early fighting includes several separately dated episodes. An armored-column and air attack is dated to 21 May 1948.[3] Yitzhak Dubno's death is also dated to 21 May, while Morris dates a further regular-army attack to 22 May.[6][7] These records may describe successive moments in the fighting rather than a contradiction.