Battle of Beersheba re-enacted a century on to mark Australian PM’s Israel visit

A century to the day after Australian horsemen broke through Ottoman defences in a First World War victory, nearly two hundred re-enactors, including descendants of the soldiers who fought that day, participated in a memorial to those killed in a battle that helped turn the tide of the war and shape the modern Middle East.

Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and New Zealand governor-general Patsy Reddy joined Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at Tuesday’s ceremony marking the centenary of the Battle of Beersheba, paying tribute to the 171 British troops killed.

Some 175 members of the Australian Light Horse Association were participating.

The battle was a crucial, if largely forgotten, victory in the campaign that enabled the Allies to break the Turkish line in what is now southern Israel and capture Jerusalem weeks later.

The victorious campaign redrew the map of the Middle East.

In the autumn of 1917, Allied forces with General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force advanced on Gaza as part of a campaign to knock the Ottoman Empire, Germany’s ally, out of the war.

To outflank the Turkish troops entrenched around Gaza, a detachment made a manoeuvre through the Negev Desert to capture the strategic biblical town of Beersheba, known both in antiquity and in modern times for its wells.

On October 31 1917, Allied troops launched their assault, but by late in the day, the critical water sources remained in Turkish hands.

In a desperate gambit, mounted infantrymen with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps drew their bayonets, charged the Turkish trenches cavalry-style, and stormed into the town.

Had they been turned back, the entire campaign might have been lost.

“We learned about the ethos of courage of Australian and New Zealand’s soldiers,” Mr Netanyahu said.

“It was an example of the spirit of fortitude and courage and the willingness to act in the defence of our people and our values.”

“These are the values that guide us today as well,” he added.

“We saw here in Beersheba 800 cavalry go against 4,000 embedded Turks with machine guns, with bunkers, the few ones against the many.

“That’s the spirit of the army of Israel. It stands today.”

The Light Horse charge also proved decisive for the Zionist dream of a future Jewish state.

Two days later, after word of the victory reached London, Britain’s foreign minister Lord Arthur Balfour issued a declaration calling for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

“They spurred their horses through that fire, those mad Australians, through that fire, and took the town of Beersheba, secured the victory that did not create the State ofIsrael but enabled its creation,” Mr Turnbull said.

“Had the Ottoman rule in Palestine and Syria not been overthrown by the Australians and the New Zealanders, the Balfour declaration would have been empty words,” he added.

“But this was a step for the creation of Israel.“