Israel Journal: June, 1967

by Dayan, Yaël

  After hearing the speech and leaving the desert capital behind, arriving in Shivta had a new meaning. We were instructed to drive with dimmed lights. It was late and cold and the darkness was most welcome. I fumbled for my sleeping bag and cuddled to the inner wall of the shallow trench. The North Star shone above Beer-Sheba, Tel-Aviv, over Paris and London; the sand felt humid. Whatever the political leadership, I knew that the army was strong in itself; and here, in its lap, I felt a security that, paradoxically, did not leave me until I had returned home. A feeling of safety in action, the closeness of people certain of victory because of their ability, professionalism, and true spirit. I fell asleep. Someone shook me. “Turgeman, your time to watch.”

  “I am not Turgeman,” I said. Perhaps I was in the wrong trench.

  Monday morning found us with new instructions. We no longer believed that it was a matter of “any moment now.”

  Arik issued new instructions. The spontaneous, rather casual behavior and appearance of the troops were to disappear, to be replaced by an established military routine. Next to the check post, small tents were erected in which the barbers cut the soldiers’ hair. Shaving was compulsory, and walking around without weapon or helmet resulted in punishment. Prisons were built and M.P. platoons arrived from Beer-Sheba. Training was to resume in all units. The new orders were executed immediately. Whether looking for an answer in the face of a commander, searching the roads, or scanning the sky whenever an aircraft droned above us, in the eyes of the soldiers a new expression of stubborn responsibility was growing. The key words now were “patience” and “a deep breath,” and for some reason we all talked about “a two weeks’ wait.” The immediate task now had to do with ability to last out in this no-man’s land of time—a problem also for the economy of the country now evacuated of its manpower, for the families of the soldiers and reservists, but most of all for the men themselves, who had to be in a state of readiness while adjusting to a new routine, to long marches, and the growing sense of separation from home.

  The sand and the dust now stopped being an overnight hardship and became permanent phenomena; our helmet and our rifle new natural limbs. An army of reservists was to be transformed into a body of regulars, united, trained, patient. The first doubts were beginning to be heard. “We are used to fast action, we shall not be able to survive like this for long,” “the high morale will not last the week,” “the economy will collapse,” and the like. On Tuesday afternoon I drove to some units to see if the change had affected them.

  It was a sad day. Somehow the army began this toughest week of all. The tension was slackening and the men began to look around and wonder, to ask questions, and sense the heat, the average cooking, the flies during the day and the mosquitoes at night. They had been ready to go, and now they were beginning to think.

  Many of the reservists could speak Arabic. Occasionally they tuned in to Radio Cairo, and what they heard was far from the cautious tone of their own prime minister. Colonel Nasser was inviting them to meet a failure; he bragged and boasted and fanned the hatred of his troops. “If we aren’t going to move, why do they keep us here?” I was asked on Tuesday. The general feeling was disappointment. That same day Nasser had declared, “If we have succeeded in restoring the situation to what it was before 1956 there is no doubt that we shall restore the situation to what it was prior to 1948.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” I was asked, and I found myself asking the same question.

  By that afternoon all the soldiers had shaved and had their hair cut. Where before there had been fortification work, now platoons were seen marching and singing and the Nitzana area looked like a huge camp in its daily training routine. Training was not done just for the sake of keeping the army busy. A variety of possibilities was properly analyzed and the training involved executing some of the details. Coordination between army and infantry, physical adjustment to the dunes area, communications systems, methods of attack—all these were rehearsed and repeated, each hour of training being an added security, developing the ability of the soldiers to perform in the method and manner that would be demanded of them when or if the time came. In the afternoon I arrived in the “Little Sabcha.” It was three in the afternoon, and there was no shade at all. The soldiers were sitting on top of the chalk-stone hill and a group of singers was performing for them. An accordionist, a guitarist, and the singers Miri, Zipi, and Aliza. They looked ill-kept, they had been performing several times a day and sleeping a few hours each night, but what they gave the soldiers was irreplaceable. The Egyptians watching must have been surprised. The men were applauding in rhythm, here, at the end of the road, on the green line. The first song was the Sinai Campaign 1956 hit “Confronting Mount Sinai”; they followed with Palmach 1948 songs, songs in Yiddish, in Polish, and in Arabic. The performers were not brilliant but at that moment they were the soldiers’ national theater, Philharmonic orchestra, and opera house combined. After they had left, a soft afternoon breeze touched the Sabcha outpost. The men returned to their trenches, giving me a few postcards to post for them. “You can read them, if you like,” they said, proudly showing me drawings they had received from their children. Most of the cards attempted to calm the families left behind, all saying, “I’ll soon be back, after the Victory.” Postcards in Hungarian, in Arabic, in French, in Hebrew, and in Rumanian. These men had been there for ten days now, twice they had been packed and ready to march, and they worked day and night.

  Returning to headquarters, I asked an officer friend to take me to the ancient city of Shivta. We mounted the jeep and drove along our own marked minefields to the yellow walls of the Nabattean town. The sun was setting and the half-preserved dome of a Byzantine church reflected its last rays. Should I kneel down in prayer? But what would I pray for? I think it was this moment that brought to me the realization that I wanted war, but I had no right to admit it. Not war for the excitement of it, not even war for victory’s sake, but war as a solution to a situation that was unbearable. Not war to kill, but war in order not to be killed. Shivta, empty of tourists, was beautiful, clothed in gold, covered with dust. No footprints, but stones to tell the endless story of conquests and desertions. We walked along the two-thousand-year-old streets of the town. Caravans had stopped here on their way from Petra to Gaza. From a short distance I could see the tents of our field hospital. My officer friend and I talked for about an hour. I was holding back unwanted tears. I, too, must have gone through this change of morale. I, too, was looking for an answer of sorts. The straits of Tiran were closed. Sinai was heavy with seven infantry divisions and two armored divisions and what was going to happen to us? Anything seemed better than just waiting for it to happen and when people said, “It is going to be a long and bad war,” I thought I knew what they meant. I had a desperate feeling, as if awaiting some signal, some kind of green light. I felt alone.

  Back in camp that evening, a pile of letters and cables awaited me, mostly from friends abroad. They cared, they identified, they encouraged, but they were worried. They offered help, but sometimes it was like the last cigarette offered to the doomed man. Someone offered me a ticket abroad and a house in Italy; they all begged to take care. I missed a few of my friends but I could not really write and tell them about it. Tell them what? One would have to start with David and Solomon, the temples, the exiles. One would have to retell of concentration camps and war horrors, of 1948 and 1949 and every week that followed. A letter answering to “How are you?” would mean reciting the Bible, the Talmud, Alterman’s poetry, singing Hefer’s songs, describing the 1956 campaign, and telling of Nasser’s broadcasts. All these things made me what I was and nothing else mattered. So I didn’t write, and hoped they would understand that their support meant a great deal. “So there will not be a war,” one of the drivers said to me. “So there will be a war,” I snapped back. It was a warm night and I slept outside again after a long walk.

  The following morning, Wednesday the thirtieth, brought a new situation. K
ing Hussein had signed a defense agreement with Nasser and announced that “the hour of decision has arrived.” Parcels arrived that morning and were distributed to the girl soldiers—white framed sunglasses, wash ’n’ dry tissues, chap sticks, and cologne. If “the hour of decision had arrived” we did not know of it. Other correspondents returned to Beer-Sheba or Tel-Aviv; there was nothing new to write about. Leaves for twenty-four hours were granted to 10 per cent of the troops and people began wondering what life was like “back home.” “Back home,” meanwhile, knew a wave of devotion and dedication. Everybody volunteered to do something, money was donated, people were gentler, kinder, more polite. They gave of their time and means, the country was a living room populated by one large family. Schools sent youngsters to help kibbutzim in farm work, and Boy Scouts distributed the mail and the milk as the men watched the frontiers. Exhilarating news of the public opinion and mood in various countries reached us, and in Israel’s embassies throughout the world volunteers queued to be listed and drafted. We were the underdog going through our finest hour. A couple of provocative acts by the Egyptians were met with silence. We received cream cakes from the Welfare Committee for Soldiers. Elderly men exempted from the draft came crying, begging to be employed; women and children dug trenches and filled sacks with sand; on the radio news broadcasts alternated with sentimental songs, and Syria and Jordan and Egypt were on the borders backed by the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Sudan. I asked to join a reconnaissance patrol heading south along the Sinai border. The patrol was composed of two command cars—about two platoons of reservists, two officers. The purpose of the patrol was to make sure that the track had not been mined, so the first command car moved forward slowly, taking the risk, searching for signs, and the second followed in its tracks. We would arrive at the outpost facing Kadesh Barnea where the children of Israel had camped when they left Egypt and where now, with a good pair of binoculars, a large concentration of arms could be seen.

  I was sitting on, or rather holding on to, the wooden frame, trying to avoid the bumps. Next to me was Private Shimon Albaz. He was holding an F.N. machine gun and I held on to my UZI, an Israeli submachine gun. We talked French. Albaz speaks funny Hebrew. He has been in the country three years, works as a porter in Ashdod, is married, has three children. He pulled from his wallet a photo—all the men did that when I asked them whether they had children. It was his first patrol. He looked around, tense and ready to jump.

  “The minute I see them I’ll shoot and hit,” he declared.

  “But we are within Israel’s territory,” I said.

  “Where is the border?” he asked.

  We were in a wadi now, and climbing up, I showed him the border stone.

  “And all that over there is theirs?”

  “Yes.”

  We stopped at some Nabbatean wells. The commander sent a few soldiers to safeguard the area and explained to the others the ancient system of gathering water. He was a teacher now, and I watched Albaz listen. He asked, “Why don’t we have agriculture here now?” A gazelle crossed our path, swift and elegant, and the beauty of its climb up the cliffs was breathtaking. I asked Albaz if he loved the Negev. “It is ours, so I love it,” was his answer. Other soldiers nodded. I felt the gap then. I loved it for its wild beauty, in the way that I loved the Sinai, which was not yet ours. I loved the space and the chill at night and the starry, clear desert sky. I loved the canyons and the surprises behind wadi turns, the craters, and the enormity and eternity of it all. I loved it for itself, uncultivated, untouched, pure and exposed, while the soldiers were wonderfully possessive about it. No, a Budapest man said, it was not beautiful, he missed the green.

  We arrived at the top of the hill. A plateau stretched before us. Kseime. Tanks, outposts, a camp, movement of armor on the road, the reality of the enemy. Albaz aimed his gun. “Too far!” he declared naïvely. I was thinking about shots that triggered off wars. Did it really matter who fired the first shot? Did it matter what councils and governments decided? Too much was at stake for us—everything. If being the first to shoot gained us an advantage, let us be condemned for it; life here mattered more than some petty formality. We were offered lemonade, given—as usual—postcards to mail, among which was one to the school children of Dimona thanking them for their greetings to this particular infantry unit and telling them not to worry. Leaving them behind, I felt guilt I was free to move, I stayed in Shivta out of choice, and I isolated myself because it suited me, because I felt I belonged where I was. They had to be there, waiting for their water supply and depending on the radio and the communication system. They were perched on the summit of the hill like a flag, aware of the gathering of forces in front of them. We became for them another cloud of dust as we descended in first gear to the wadi and northward.

  That evening I had to go to Beer-Sheba to deliver some articles. The neon lights of the city disturbed me deeply. I went with a friend to the officers’ club. It was empty. I asked the waitress what day of the week it was, and she smiled and put her hand on my shoulder. “You’d be surprised,” she said, “how many people ask the same question.” The luxuries of a city—hot showers, large mirrors, ice cream. A meal which was different, a child’s cry, civilian cars. Beer-Sheba, as in the Sinai Campaign, took on the role of capital. It offered thousands of soldiers their last glimpse of civilization when they left for the south and the first when they came back home. I called Shivta to apologize for not returning, although this was unnecessary, and spent a sleepless night on a tough bed.

  On Wednesday I returned to Shivta and decided there and then that unless something very extraordinary happened I was not leaving the place. The half tent erected for correspondents was pulled down as the others left. I felt I was part of the unit now, not an observer able to come and go. I moved my belongings into a large tent which I shared with two officers, and it was then that I realized the range and quality of activity that went on.

  If during the first few days I had concentrated on learning what our men were like, now I wanted to know what we were facing, why we were there, and what our plans were—just in case … Oddly, I felt like a spy. I was not present at the different planning meetings which took place nightly. I did not enter the war room or did I have access to the Intelligence reports, but I sat there watching and listening. Faces of people, worried, tense, excited, disappointed. Changes on the map, arrival of brigade commanders and general headquarters coordinating officers, occasionally a few words of explanation from Arik. The 2nd Division facing us had two strongholds—Abu-Ageila and Kseime, both acting as blockades on major Sinai roads leading west and north. In addition they held several outposts which we could see. The fact that they outnumbered us, in armor, artillery, and number of soldiers, never worried me, although numbers quoted were impressive. I was fascinated by pieces of reports which reached us hourly and by our fast reaction to them, giving the enemy credit for knowing our organization thoroughly, giving it maximum credit for planning and changing our plans accordingly. In town, people demanded more people in the government and in the field the soldiers waited for war, but here in division headquarters it seemed as though war was being waged. The soldiers in the trench had to wait, the officers in the war room were working day and night. The enemy have moved another hundred tanks! They have moved another fifty! Another battalion has arrived! Our Intelligence service was continually feeding the war room—air photographs, radio reports, changes of positions, detailed information from our own outposts. From the outside it seemed like a game. A helicopter landing: the maps are pulled out, the arrows in red and blue and black erased and new ones painted; orders are given to the units; commanders arrive in the middle of the night; every step is weighed and replanned over and over in an effort to tease out the best solution.

  In the Sinai campaign we exploited to the full the element of surprise. Here it had to be the surprise of brilliance based on knowledge of enemy methods—to hit what was least expected, from an unexpected direct
ion in an unexpected way. Colonel Dov, regularly a faculty member of the National Defense College and now one of Arik’s right-hand men, explained it to me. They have a system, not a bad one, but bound by conventions. They have forces and they move them according to the books. We know the books, we have done the exercises, and our advantage lies in forgetting them all and finding the one method which is not in the books. But then, neither were these men from any written book. Dov moved around wearing a girl friend’s corduroy hat; Arik had with him a couple of friends, one a civilian ranch owner, the other Zeevale, a drafted captain from Nahalal, the farm I grew up on. The amored brigade commander, Motke, had the appearance of a teacher, and Kuti, the infantry brigade commander, rather fierce looking and famous for his courage, daring, and leadership, was dreaming of having a cattle farm in the mountains, and told me he would never kill. David, Arik’s A.D.C., insisted on analyzing poetry with me, and I suspect that he wrote poetry himself. In the afternoon I went to the armored brigade to talk to Motke. I had to decide where I should be in case of war. Motke, bespectacled, curly-haired, was barefoot. His small trailer was operational rather than comfortable. A desk, a bed, a couple of chairs with hardly any room between them. I accepted a glass of brandy and some biscuits and listened to Motke. He quoted poetry and recited some lines from the Bible to support his argument. Motke was a teacher, he knew where our strength lay and issued daily bulletins to the soldiers, encouraging and preparing them. He looked harmless enough sitting there, but I knew that here was a lion, proud, convinced, eager. He offered me room in his half-track, “a lift to the battle front,” and I duly accepted. I was planning on going with the brigade, as long as I didn’t have to be closed up inside a tank. But at that point, five days before the war, talking about “where to be” seemed like wishful thinking.

  A patrol was leaving for Beerotaim that evening in order to set off from there at dawn to explore the frontier. I decided to go with them, as after sunset individual traffic was forbidden. Darkness engulfed us while we were on our way. The driver of a jeep gave me a flight jacket and we drove along the road without lights. Something about this drive broke the monotony of waiting. Very few lights could be noticed in the area. Some antiaircraft guns and antennae were like warning fingers, silhouetted against the Negev sky, and a strong, cool wind blew in our faces. The machine gun attached to the jeep was loaded and the cartridges reflected the light of a pale moon. We drove in silence. Around us was the empty and uninhabited land, except for the troops which were dug in. There were no smells, no sounds, no colors, the emptiness of an area which nevertheless was all we had and which needed protection. I thought of the soldiers in the north, where every patrol route was surrounded by orchards and fields, where there were children and women, barking dogs, sleeping flocks. There it was clear what had to be protected and defended; here it was only wilderness, but wilderness which we had learned to love rather than fear and which we would hold on to as if it were a living city with streets and lives and a future.