Occupying one rung below on the ladder, the command and staff college was much less impressive. Located in an old British camp north of Tel Aviv, it was operated, as it still is, by the ground forces on behalf of the IDF as a whole. In addition, air force and navy ran supplementary courses for their own personnel; surprisingly, though, it was only after the October War that the first joint courses for company- and battalion-grade officers were instituted. 52 Depending on their arm and service, officers would remain in the college between three and ten months. They listened to lectures on military and nonmilitary subjects, visited other bases, and engaged in exercises. However, given their own ignorance of English and the almost nonexistent library, they did precious little serious reading and almost no writing—with the result that, compared with their colleagues in other countries, they remained almost entirely unfamiliar with the theory and history of their own profession, Israeli military history specifically included. Furthermore, the “twocareer” system meant that students were considerably younger than comrades in other countries. Since the borders were seldom silent, study took place against a background of constant “current security” operations in which field officers were given an opportunity to earn their spurs. All this may explain why the college was never able to overcome the IDF’s strong prejudice against classroom learning in favor of practical, hands-on experience.
In 1963 a national defense college was started, but it never amounted to much. Senior officers were reluctant to spend a year studying at an unaccredited institution;53 consequently, instead of being used as a vehicle for selecting future commanders, it acted as a holding pen for those with no immediate assignment. Shortly before the 1967 war it was closed by Eshkol, who considered the benefit not worth the expense. The gap was breached to some extent by sending some officers abroad for more or less extended periods of study; over time they included (besides Weizman) Laskov, Rabin, Bar Lev (the subsequent chief of staff), Sharon, and Eytan. In the IDF itself, however, the highest course was the battalion commanders course. Thus, officers beyond that grade could serve their last fifteen years without any formal instruction54—which actually happened to General Elazar (who served as chief of staff from 1972 to 1974). As General Tal once told a visiting French writer, in the IDF senior officers advanced by “natural selection.”55 By this, presumably, he meant to explain how he himself had succeeded.
By the 1960s the army had also largely overcome its remaining teething problems. On the one hand it was no longer unorganized and inexperienced. On the other hand, the system of “solving” the ethnic diversity by putting Ashkenazim (meaning the group of eastern European Yiddish-speaking Jews and their descendants) at the top of the pecking order and Sephardim (Jews from Arab-speaking countries) at the bottom (the latter, IDF experts told Ben Gurion, did not make suitable officer material56) did not yet give rise to protests, as it would later. With this exceptionally cohesive instrument at his disposal Rabin was able to institute, or perhaps one should say institutionalize, his system of optional control.57 Not that this was unprecedented, but the IDF seems to have developed without reference to foreign models, if only because the best of the lot—German Auftragstaktik (missiontype orders)—could never be acknowledged. As under Dayan, each commander was assigned an objective and a geographical zone inside which his troops were to operate. He was then told to position himself with his troops (rather than in the rear, as with many other armies) and given the greatest latitude to achieve the objectives as it saw fit while leaving administrative detail to a rear headquarters.
At the same time there could be no question of a “hands-off” approach. When war broke out in 1967, Rabin did not join any particular unit, let alone go for extended tours. Rather (aside from brief visits to the front) he remained in Tel Aviv, where he was able to consult with the government and issue orders to the front commanders and those of the air force and navy. Farther down the chain of command, and taking Southern Command as our example, Yeshayahu Gavish attached himself to that headquarters that he considered critical in order to supervise the battle as closely as possible. Meanwhile control over the rest was assured by setting up a “directed telescope” in the form of special units to monitor the radio traffic of subordinate formations. Gavish thus created for himself a picture of the battlefield that was independent from, and supplementary to, those formations’ own reports.
The upshot was a mixture of independence and control. IDF units were given the latitude needed to seize fleeting opportunities characteristic of mobile warfare while remaining part of a preconceived plan. The concept was first tested in the great maneuvers of 1960, which as it happened were directed by none other than Rabin as chief of the General Staff Division. In his postmaneuver summary he said that IDF commanders had to be capable of working out plans and giving orders while on the move—the shortcomings of communications notwithstanding.58 Thereafter it was rehearsed during annual exercises; when the time came it served the IDF well.
While the IDF was thus preparing for another round of full-scale warfare against the Arab states, it also had to look after the usual “current security” problems along the border. In comparison with those incidents of 1950-1956, their significance and number declined. Yet even during the best years approximately one incident per week was registered, involving shootings, border crossings, mine planting, sabotage, and the like. As before, many were launched on local initiative and had no wider significance. However, a turning point of sorts was reached in 1965. Leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded the previous year, was snatched by Yasser Arafat and a number of his comrades in Cairo. Militarily, the incidents still did not amount to much (some of them were even imaginary as the PLO and its central military arm, al Fatach, exaggerated successes). Yet now they took on a clear political objective.59 The PLO knew it could not defeat Israel on its own but hoped that its actions would lead to escalation and thus to eventual war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The largest IDF punitive operation took place at Samua, near Hebron, on November 13, 1966. In full daylight, and with fighters circling overhead, an armored battalion took the village and blew up no fewer than 105 houses. When the Jordanian army rushed to the scene it was ambushed, leading to the deaths of two dozen of its troops.60
“More complicated and more serious” (Rabin, in his memoirs)61 was the situation on the Syrian frontier. One question was fishing rights in Lake Galilee, which the Israelis insisted were exclusive to them; another bone of contention was formed by a number of small demilitarized areas that remained since 1948. Known by such quaint names as the Beetroot Lot and De Gaulle’s Nose, their total area did not exceed a few hundred acres, yet the Israelis insisted the areas were sovereign territory they had the right to farm. The Syrians, not unexpectedly, objected and made their opposition felt by firing on fishermen and laborers, which over the years led to many minor skirmishes.
Still the entire matter might not have gotten out of hand if it had not merged into the so-called Battle of the Water. Already during the late fifties, Israel, having failed to reach agreement with its neighbors in dividing the River Jordan’s waters, started work on a major project designed to pump water away from the Sea of Galilee and into the Negev. Faced with the project’s imminent completion, Arabs, at the first Arab summit in January 1964, decided to respond by diverting the sources of the River Jordan. A detailed program for the project was drawn up and submitted to the second Arab summit in September. Three months later large-scale work—plans called for no fewer than forty miles of canal plus more than three miles of tunnels—got under way.
The first major incident involving the demilitarized areas took place at Tel Dan north of the Sea of Galilee on November 3.62 An Israeli half-track was sent to patrol a disputed dirt road and, as had been planned, came under attack. Northern Command under its new commanding officer, Brig. Gen. David Elazar, returned fire, attempting to use the opportunity to knock out Syrian earth-moving equipment and tanks at long range but failing to regis
ter any hits.63 Ten days later a similar incident, also deliberately staged by the Israelis, took place. This time the Syrian tanks were hit but not their artillery positions, which from elevated positions on the Golan Heights shelled the Israeli settlements below. In the end it became necessary to call in the IAF for strafing and bombing operations. After three and a half hours of fighting a cease-fire was arranged, but not before four IDF soldiers had been killed and damage suffered by two Israeli settlements.
Additional incidents took place in December 1964 as well as the spring and summer of 1965. By the latter time the IDF’s armored corps was much better prepared. Tal’s men proved capable of hitting the Syrians despite the difference in altitude between the two sides and even though the Syrians had changed the course of the canal being constructed to increase the range to seven miles. Unable to match the Israeli Centurions’ accurate 105mm cannons, Syrian tanks responded by shelling the settlements in the upper Jordan Valley, holding them hostage. When the Syrians extended the range to as much as thirteen miles Israel called in the air force. In July 1966 it bombed the earth-moving equipment and also shot down its first Syrian aircraft (next month another one was destroyed as the Syrians tried to interfere with the IDF’s attempts to salvage a boat that had run aground). There were major incidents in January and April 1967.
By this time, by Rabin’s own subsequent admission, the Syrians had already given up their attempts to divert the sources of the River Jordan.64 Thus the last incidents were deliberately provoked by the Israelis, who, determined “to exercise their sovereignty,” continued to send tractors into the disputed plots even though they knew full well that the Syrians would respond.65 In retrospect, perhaps the most remarkable thing about these incidents was the fact that they could take place at all. To fight for a few small plots of land was entirely irrational; as a Northern Command officer pointed out at the time,66 it would have been much cheaper to airlift individual grains of corn from California—packing, insurance, and all. Yet possibly because of decades of efforts to create the new Jewish fighting man, possibly owing to the effect of always living under the gun, by and large this was not how things were regarded either in the IDF, or by the government, or indeed by the Israeli public. Almost without exception, the country backed Northern Command. It did so even at the price of taking casualties and even though Dayan, then an ordinary Knesset member, repeatedly warned his former subordinates in the army that they were “out of their minds” in leading the country to full-scale war.67
The largest single incident took place in April 1967. As usual, the chain of events was started by an Israeli tractor attempting to work a disputed field (at one point the Syrians suggested that Israel work half of the field while they worked the rest, but this proposal was rejected). As usual, the Syrians responded by raining down artillery shells from their Golan positions, this time mainly on kibbuts Gaddot, which suffered considerable material destruction but no fatalities. Once again the range was too great and the topography too difficult for the Centurions, so the IAF was called in. Syria’s air force rose to the challenge and scrambled, six of its fighters being shot down in air-to-air combat. Having received permission to pursue their prey,68 Israeli Mirages flew over Damascus, which the pilots reported looked like “an overgrown Arab village.”69 Whether deliberately or not, the chain of events that led to the Six Day War had been set in motion.
In the absence of Arab documentation—not that Israeli material relating to the period has been released—the exact origins of the Six Day War will probably never be known. Clearly the IDF under Rabin, more cohesive and better trained than ever before, was spoiling for a fight and willing to go to considerable lengths to provoke it. Clearly there was talk of a full-scale Israeli attack on Syria, which the Soviets, ally to both Syria and Egypt, did nothing to discourage.70 Nasser’s decision to violate the agreements of 1957 by sending forces in May 1967 into the Sinai may have been a response to this threat. As self-appointed leader of the Arab world he could hardly be expected to sit by as the balance of power between Israel and its neighbors fundamentally changed; indeed for months he was attacked verbally for doing nothing while the Jordanians (at Samua) and the Syrians clashed with Israel. Yet he was provided with an excuse to disentangle himself from his commitment in Yemen, where his forces had been fighting to aid the Yemenite revolution for four years without achieving anything in particular. Yet another question—little written about, yet perhaps at least equally important—was Israel’s nuclear program during those years.
As far as can be reconstructed, things developed as follows: Frenchassisted Israeli efforts to build a reactor went into high gear during the late fifties. From the beginning, they had been overshadowed by the possibility they would lead the Arabs to launch a preventive war or try to obtain a weapon of their own. For this reason, but also in order to avoid irritating the Americans (who then as always opposed the attempt of any country to obtain nuclear arms), the Israeli project was kept secret as much as possible. When news of the reactor being built at Dimona leaked—as it was bound to—Pres. John F. Kennedy put pressure on Ben Gurion to desist. After Kennedy was succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson and Ben Gurion by Eshkol, an informal deal was apparently worked out. It is claimed that the Americans, having been allowed to inspect Dimona, pretended not to notice what was going on (a hoax they did their best to foist upon their incredulous British allies).71 In return, Israel was to continue its confidence trick.72 As part of the deal Eshkol may also have promised not to conduct a test.73
The Arabs, however, were not misled. Even if their intelligence services had not been able to warn them, they could have, along with everybody else, got the news from the New York Times. Already during the first half of the sixties various Lebanese, Jordanian, and Iraqi commentators had referred to the matter, expressing fear that an Israeli bomb would lead to the “freezing” of the conflict—and thus the end of any hope for defeating the Zionist entity and liberating Palestine.74 From 1965 on, scarcely a week passed without some Arab commentator or other raising the issue. Among those who took note of the developing “Jewish threat” and discussed possible reactions to it were some of the highest-ranking personalities in the Arab world. They included Egyptian Prime Minister Ali Sabri; the president of Egypt’s national assembly, Anwar Sadat; King Hussein of Jordan; Syrian President Zain; and Syrian Foreign Minister Ibrahim Machus.
But whereas the weaker and peripheral countries could afford to acquiesce—if only against their will—to the eventual existence of an Israeli bomb, Nasser, the self-styled leader of the Arab world, could not. He referred to the question in several public speeches, stating that Egypt would not resign itself to the existence of an Israeli bomb but would launch “a preventive war” against it—a pronouncement that reflected a resolution passed by the third Arab summit in Casablanca in September 1965 and confirmed by the Palestinian national council a few months later. Apparently he asked the USSR to provide him with nuclear arms but was rebuffed.75 Equally unsuccessful was the attempt by his top aides to persuade Washington, London, and Paris to put pressure on Israel to stop their program. Just how these issues meshed with the origins of the June 1967 Six Day War we do not know, but the closer one looks the stronger the suspicion that they did in fact play a role.
During the first half of 1966, Nasser had apparently reached the conclusion that the Americans were not only going to do nothing to stop Israel from developing the bomb but also sell A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft capable, if suitably modified, of delivering it. By this time the term preventive war was common throughout the Arab world; everybody, including the U.S. State Department,76 knew just what it stood for.77 Expecting the bomb to be ready in 1968,78 the Egyptians knew it was now or never. When, in May 1967, the Soviets informed them that a dozen or so Israeli brigades were concentrated on the Syrian border they probably took the situation as a pretext for action and stuck to it even though a week or so later they knew that the Soviet reports were unfounded.79 While Israel was celebrating i
ts nineteenth Independence Day on May 15, Egyptian forces began crossing the Suez Canal into the Sinai, not secretly as they had in 1960 but in paradelike manner and with the greatest possible fanfare. On the next day Egypt asked for the UN forces stationed in the Peninsula to be withdrawn; a day later (May 17) its forces reoccupied Sharm al-Sheikh. On the same day, Dimona became the target of an Egyptian reconnaissance flight. On May 23 the Straits of Tyran were blockaded, and again an Egyptian aircraft flew over Dimona.
For obvious reasons, historically no country has ever admitted to surrendering to nuclear blackmail. Hence, even if the Egyptian archives should one day be opened, it is not to be expected that the Egyptian train of thought will ever be made clear. The flights over Dimona may have been intended as preparation for a military strike, as some have claimed.80 However, and given the way they coincided with the moves at Sharm al-Sheikh, they may also have been meant as a signal to Israel. The latter interpretation is perhaps more likely, because attack aircraft would have come up against the IAF as well as Hawk antiaircraft batteries already positioned to protect the reactor.
The Sword And The Olive Page 24