Facing these and other failures,15 the IDF first tried to restore morale by fiat. Acting as head of the General Staff Division, Dayan, for example, harangued the troops about the need to abandon “Jewish cleverness” (as if there had been anything clever about the recent debacles) in favor of frontal attacks. Missions were to proceed according to plan unless and until at least 50 percent of the men had become casualties.16 When those stirring words failed to produce results, Makleff, as chief of staff, decided to set up a special unit that would take over the task of carrying out reprisals. Its designated commander was twenty-seven-year-old Maj. Ariel Sharon. Like Allon, Sharon was the son of a not-too-successful farmer.17 Unlike Allon, he did not grow up a gentleman; at several points during his career he found his integrity questioned by superiors and subordinates alike. Though he had never gone to officer school, he rose in the service and in 1950 went through a battalion commanders course, commanded by then Lt. Col. Yitschak Rabin. For two years he served under Dayan while the latter was CIC Northern Command. Subsequently he left the IDF for civilian life, studying history at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
Back in the army, this “daring and clever” (according to Dayan) officer was given a jeep and a free hand, touring the country while looking for men who would be suited for the new unit. His catch constituted a mixed lot, some of them veterans who had left the forces in the wake of the War of Independence and others who were still on active service. One man brought in another: Militarily the ones with the brightest futures were Mordechai Gur and Refael Eytan, rough-hewn fighters who perfectly fit Koestler’s description of their generation and who were destined to rise to chief of staff. Two or three others would become generals. Dayan, however, reserved his esteem for one Meir Har Tsion, whom he considered “the greatest Jewish warrior since Bar Kochva.”18
Known simply as Unit 101, the new force began with twenty men, which gradually increased to forty-five as one friend brought in another. Some of the men were outlandish characters, seldom bothering to wash, change clothes, or comb their hair; others were quiet and introverted. Trained at Sataf, near Jerusalem, they launched their first operation on August 29 following the killing of an Israeli man and the wounding of a woman two weeks earlier. Two teams entered the village of Burej in the Gaza Strip, searching for the local chief of Egyptian intelligence considered responsible for sending the infiltrators; failing to find him they killed some forty Palestinian civilians at the cost of two Israeli wounded. Even more murderous raids followed, culminating on the night of October 15. By that time Sharon’s men had been merged with Battalion 890, a paratrooper unit that had heretofore failed to distinguish itself but that he, in a remarkable demonstration of leadership, pulled out of its lethargy. Now a mixed force of 101 men and paratroopers, Unit 202 stormed the Jordanian village of Kibiya and killed no fewer than sixty-nine people, mostly women and children.19 Predictably, this operation also failed to end the hostilities along the border, which resumed after a few weeks. Moreover, the sharp international reaction convinced Dayan that, in the future, military bases rather than civilians would have to be targeted.20
In December 1953, Ben Gurion resigned as prime minister and minister of defense. Before leaving office he had pushed through the appointment of his hawkish protégé, Moshe Dayan, as IDF chief of staff; by so doing he undermined his successor, the mild-mannered, highly cultured, but ultimately weak-kneed Moshe Sharet. Russian-born like the rest, Sharet differed from Ben Gurion in that he was fully familiar with Arab language and culture; politically he was a dove who believed that Israel could achieve more by paying attention to its neighbors’ psychology and national sensibilities.21 Unlike Ben Gurion, he was primarily a diplomat and did not feel sufficiently at home with defense matters to take that portfolio for himself. Instead Pinchas Lavon, a veteran Labor Party intellectual, was appointed defense minister. Before and after 1948, Lavon had been known as a dove after Sharet’s own heart, having, for example, resisted all ideas of deporting Israel’s remaining Arab population. Suddenly he reversed his stance, becoming more aggressive than anybody else in government.
In spite of Sharet’s good intentions, during his term of office the problem of infiltration remained much as it had been; in 1954 there were three times as many clashes along the border with Jordan than in 1953.22 Patrols were fired upon, buses attacked, agricultural workers waylaid and murdered, and property destroyed or stolen in a succession of minor hostilities that seemed to have neither beginning nor end; conversely, Israeli settlers in the Jerusalem corridor organized their own hunting expeditions, mounting patrols, driving off livestock, and sniping at “living targets.”23 Whereas Sharet was in favor of restraint, seeking to influence the Arabs by way of diplomatic action in London and Washington, D.C., the IDF’s commanders demanded action. Every so often the cup would run over; then, having extracted permission from a reluctant prime minister, they mounted operations far larger than those authorized by him. A pained Sharet repeatedly protested to them and in his diary, but in public he had to accept (and justify) the raids ex post facto.
Against this unseemly background, the factor that saved the IDF from drowning in a sea of self-contempt was probably neither the establishment of Unit 101 nor the new tactics that Sharon devised for overrunning enemy strongholds—however brilliant they may have been.24 Instead it was the decision—taken willy-nilly under pressure from international public opinion—to switch from killing helpless civilians to attacking the Jordanian armed forces as an enemy more worthy of respect. From early 1954, orders for raids regularly included the phrase “women and children are not to be hit under any circumstances”25 (though figures on such questions are notoriously unreliable; those gathered by Israeli historian Morris, who is unsympathetic to the IDF, from Jordanian and foreign sources bear out this interpretation).26 Thus, when the paratroopers stormed the village of Nachlin on March 19, 1954, the result was seven Jordanian military dead and only one civilian. At Chirbat Jinba in May of the same year three out of four Arab dead were soldiers (National Guard); at Azun in June it was three out of three, and at Bet-Laki in September at least three out of four or five. Other raids, also directed against the Arab Legion rather than civilians, brought in prisoners who were exchanged for Israeli ones. Moreover, once the General Staff ordered units firing across the border during clashes with the Jordanians to refrain from targeting villages, no more villages were, in fact, hit.27
Although the decision to focus on military targets made the raids “increasingly complicated and difficult,”28 IDF morale, which had been threatened by years of cruel and useless skirmishes with mistanenim, suddenly soared.29 Previously even some of Sharon’s own men had been wondering whether the poor villagers whom they were raiding really constituted “the enemy”;30 now, they were able to mount an impressive display of captured weapons for the benefit of visiting foreigners.31 Israel’s paratroopers found themselves basking in public adulation similar to that which in France during the same years was giving rise to the so-called para myth.32 As Shimon Peres was to later write, “Children want to emulate them, mothers pray for their safety, rural settlers admire their achievements, and youth regards them as the embodiment of all its own virtues.”33
Whereas ground forces were made to wear heavy, black, hobnailed boots, paratroopers were given comfortable, red, American-style combat boots with rubber soles. Whereas other troops were still burdened by cumbersome, World War I-vintage bolt-action rifles, the paratroopers sported the new homemade Uzi submachine gun (named after its inventor but also happening to mean, in Hebrew, my strength). Not only was the Uzi well suited for the heroics of close combat, but with its short temper (when falling or being hit it tended to fire bursts without anyone pressing the trigger) it almost acted as a metaphor for the IDF. The original paratrooper force of one battalion was expanded three times over until it reached a full brigade. Their previous commander, Lt. Col. Yehuda Harari, was sacked; Sharon took over as commanding officer, and some of his more prominent subor
dinates became battalion chiefs. To ensure that the message got through, Dayan ordered all senior officers to take a jump course. As of this writing that practice remains in force even though it has been thirty years since any Israeli soldier leaped into enemy territory from an airplane.
Meanwhile the attention of Israel’s security establishment was shifting away from the border with Jordan—troublesome, but owing to the kingdom’s weakness never any danger to Israel’s basic security—toward the Egyptian border. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power in 1952-1953 had been closely watched by the Israeli government. Gingerly, attempts were made to see whether the new Egyptian president would be more inclined than his predecessors to conclude peace with Israel.34 Although these led nowhere, the Egyptians’ prime concern during those years was to rid the country of the British troops still occupying the Suez Canal Zone. Isolated from the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict by the Sinai Desert, Egypt was much less affected by the border incidents that took place than were Israel and Jordan. Moreover, except for the Gaza Strip, it did not have to harbor large numbers of Palestinian refugees. The Gaza Strip constituted administered territory, and throughout the nineteen years of occupation (until 1967) its inhabitants were kept under military rule and systematically prevented from maintaining too much contact with Egypt proper.
In the middle of 1954 this troubled but essentially stable relationship was disturbed by the Lavon affair (essek bish, or unfortunate business).35 As far back as 1951, Israeli military intelligence had set up an espionage network in Egypt. The approaching British evacuation of the Canal Zone caused the chief of intelligence, Benjamin Gibli, to fear the future; with the British gone, Nasser’s hands might be untied. The network was activated, and small quantities of incendiaries (contained inside eyeglass cases!) were set off against British and American targets in Cairo and Alexandria, the objective being to sow discord and postpone or prevent the evacuation. In the event the explosions caused some minor physical damage but no casualties.
Shortly thereafter the ringleader, a dubious character named Evri Elad, who had been selected on the basis of his ability to pose as a German businessman, apparently betrayed the remaining members to Egyptian counterintelligence. Having stood trial, on January 31 several were executed. Inevitably, inside Israel a search for scapegoats got under way, and a commission of investigation was established. To cover his tracks Gibli had his secretary, a nineteen-year-old female soldier named Dalia Carmel, retype some documents to point the finger at Lavon as the perpetrator. Though Lavon vehemently denied that he had ordered the action, the investigating commission, misled by Gibli’s testimony and the documentary “evidence” that he produced, failed to clear the minister of defense. With Sharet still in power, Lavon was forced to resign, his replacement being—who else—Ben Gurion.
No sooner had Ben Gurion come back to the ministry of defense than an opportunity for action presented itself. One, possibly two teams, working for Egyptian military intelligence, entered Israel from the Gaza Strip and broke into a secret installation—reputed to be an institute for biological warfare—in Nes Tsiona, south of Tel Aviv. On their way back they also killed a civilian cyclist. Retaliation against the Egyptians was inevitable. When it came it far exceeded anybody’s expectations, including those of Sharet, who had warned against “large-scale bloodshed.”36 In the event Sharon’s paratroopers killed one Palestinian civilian and no fewer than thirty-nine Egyptian soldiers. Some died when their base was stormed, others when they rushed to their comrades’ aid and were ambushed.
Though the Egyptian border had never been quiet, matters now escalated. Teams of mistanenim crossed the border incessantly, mining and waylaying and destroying and killing. In response, highly placed Israeli officials, including some of Sharet’s close advisers, suggested that the IDF occupy all or part of the Gaza Strip.37 Though that advice was rejected, the paratroopers were sent in. Repeatedly they attacked targets along the border (not just in the Gaza Strip), inflicting dozens of casualties. From time to time things went out of control, and the two sides battled with few holds barred, including artillery (May 30) and aircraft (September 1). Previously most clashes had been the product of local initiatives. Now Egyptian intelligence organized a battalion of fedayeen (heroic fighters), many of them Palestinian jailbirds released on condition they take part in the murderous raids into Israel. Hostilities spread to the border with Syria, where several small demilitarized zones were left over from 1949 and where Israel engaged in a “forward” policy, insisting on its right to cultivate the fields “right to the border line,” as the official line stated. They culminated in December 1955, when an IDF force demolished a chain of Syrian strongholds east of the Sea of Galilee, killing fifty-four (including six civilians) and taking thirty prisoners at the cost of six dead and fourteen wounded.
During this period, the IDF was not a tame instrument in the government’s hands. At a minimum, lower-level commanders such as Sharon—who commanded the raid against Syria from a boat—systematically exceeded their instructions.38 Claiming to have met with unexpected opposition or the need to extricate their own men, time after time they killed far more enemy troops and wrought far more damage than Sharet thought advisable or they themselves had forecasted when submitting plans. They were backed up by Dayan, who would receive each returning force with congratulations and alcohol; neither then nor later did he leave any doubt about his sympathies.39 From January 1955 on he in turn was supported by the formidable figure of Ben Gurion. By the time of “Operation Sea of Galilee,” the latter was back in the driver’s seat, having ousted Sharet the previous month and reoccupied his prime minister’s post.
As their high casualty lists indicate, the Egyptian armed forces at this time were no match for Sharon’s men who repeatedly stormed their bases. As for training and motivation, they showed little progress since 1948-1949; their equipment was antiquated, much of it dating to World War II. To this was added the fact that both Britain and the United States refused to sell Nasser large quantities of new weapons—even if he could have afforded them. In summer 1955 the stalemate was broken when Western intelligence agencies got wind of a new arms deal between Egypt and Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia. Israeli intelligence estimated that the deal involved 90-100 MIG-15 jet fighters (famous for their success during the Korean War); 48 twin-engine Ilyushin-28 light bombers; 230 tanks (including T-34s and the heavier Joseph Stalin III models); 440 field guns of various calibers; 34 heavy antiaircraft guns; and two destroyers, four minesweepers, twelve torpedo boats, and six submarines. Israel itself at the time had fewer than 50 jet fighters—British Meteors and French Ouragans, both models markedly inferior to the Soviet MIGs—and 130 tanks, including 100 World War II Shermans and 30 light, French-built AMX-13s.40 Compared with this the deal constituted a revolution, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
As in 1967, Nasser’s intentions as to his new might may never be known—though cynics could add that on both occasions his intentions remained unknown solely because he was preempted by the IDF.41 Clearly news of the deal sent the Israel’s government, armed forces, media, and public into something very close to a panic. Having spent time in London during the Blitz, Ben Gurion himself was particularly worried about the damage bombers might do to Israel. Previously there had been occasional talk about a preventive war;42 now launching such a war became the persistent demand of the General Staff under Dayan.43 The hawkish COS worked on the assumption that six to eight months would be needed by the Egyptian army to absorb the new arms. Thus each passing month diminished the Israeli superiority on which he had relied.
From early 1956 on, Israeli preparations for an eventual war against Egypt started in earnest. However, large parts of public opinion—including the left-wing parties on which Ben Gurion’s coalition depended—refused to catch on to the idea that the General Staff was planning an offensive campaign. Instead they reverted to old ideas about territorial defense, insisting that the border settlements be prepared for such defense.44
Against its will the IDF was forced to divert resources, conducting a survey to identify the 150 most critical settlements, providing them with weapons and training, as well as earmarking regular forces for protecting them.45 Fortifications were built, antitank ditches dug, fields of fires prepared, and mines sown. Much of this huge effort was financed and mounted not by the IDF, whose plans were entirely different, but by civilian organizations that volunteered labor and contributed money. Much of it was wasteful and some of it bordered on the ridiculous, as when the craftsmen’s association “purchased” a jet fighter (by donating its equivalent in money according to the official, government-published price list) and the employees of one bank purchased a tank.46 On the positive side, it certainly showed the extent to which the people identified with their state.
By way of a more purposeful response to the Czech arms deal, the defense budget was almost doubled—from 126 million to 246 million Israeli pounds; additional sums were spent on civil defense, roads, and the like.47 In late 1955 an acquisition list, including forty-eight F-86 Saber jet fighters and sixty M-48 Patton tanks, was presented to the U.S. government. Then and later, however, the State Department feared overt support of Israel would drive the Arabs into the arms of the USSR. Accordingly it led the Israelis by the nose; having taken several months to consider the matter, in March 1956 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles formally refused the most important items.48 Washington ended up delivering no more than five helicopters, twenty-five half-tracks, and 110 heavy machine guns.
The Sword And The Olive Page 19