2 Iyar 5708 – May 11 1948
Safed
Palmach forces completed the conquest of Safed. The city numbered 1,500 Jews –all crowded into less than a quarter of a square kilometer in the town’s Old City – and 11,000 Arabs (with another 9,000 in the surrounding villages). During the night of May 9, three days after a failed attack, the Palmach’s third unit and Haganah defenders inside Safed launched an offensive with heavy fire (but mostly noise) from the famously makeshift Davidka mortar. Two days later, the city was theirs.