Simultaneously on the ground, the principal thrust was made in the north by Brigadier General Tal’s ugda with three brigades and Fouga ground-support light aircraft. But the Egyptian understanding of the terrain proved better than that of the Israelis, two of whose brigades floundered in the sands when they tried to outflank Rafah on the left. As they tried to advance through the dunes, Eytan’s paratroopers, riding half-tracks, lost their way as well as contact with their own attached tanks. Next they came under an Egyptian counterattack, supported by heavy JS III tanks, and suffered losses; by late afternoon they could be found slowly grinding toward Rafah from the south. From there they drove back into the Gaza Strip, thus crossing the communications of the rest of their own ugda at the cost of considerable confusion;22 in the Strip itself they linked up with “Force Reshef” (one of Gavish’s reserve brigades), which had been standing by but was now unleashed.
Though Eytan’s advance had been disorderly and uncoordinated, he finally reached his objective. Not so “M” Armored Brigade, with its reservists riding out-of-date Sherman and AMX-13 tanks. Throughout the day it attempted to pass the impassable stretch of dunes assigned to it; by evening it had yet to fire a shot. This meant that Tal’s real thrust had to be delivered by a single brigade, 7th Armored, a crack formation consisting of conscripts riding Centurions. Coming from the west, first they captured Khan Yunis. Next, and overrunning the Palestinians on the way, they drove south to Rafah, where their accurate fire, delivered at long range, proved more than a match for the Egyptian antitank guns and thus vindicated Tal’s theories (the more so because they were being supported by Fougas from the air). Having barely avoided firing at Eytan’s paratroopers (who were reaching for the same objective from the south), they next headed for the Jirardi Defile. The leading tank battalion got through easily enough but found the road blocked behind it; approaching in its turn, the second one also got through but took heavy losses on the way. Still the Egyptians resisted, blocking the defile for the second time until 7th Brigade’s mechanized infantry arrived and mopped up.
As fought—conducted would be too complimentary, since only one out of Tal’s three brigades responded to his orders while carrying out its mission—the battle for the northeastern Sinai was misunderstood by the Israelis. It should have taught them that tank advances against unbroken infantry were risky business. Instead they took them as the supreme proof of the virtues of tanks driving forward in egrofei shiryon. “Tankomania” (in the words of Ariel Sharon) was carried to the point where the force was nicknamed Ugdat Ha-plada (Steel Division), and Tal became the only Israeli officer ever to have a serenade written in his honor: “On the fifth of June/The armored battalion broke through . . . just as you wanted, Tal.” The hero of the day was the commander of 7th Brigade, Col. Shmuel Gonen, known for the martinetlike antics he inflicted on his unfortunate troops. Now he found the road to promotion open to him until, as we shall see, he came up against the “Peter Principle” and was cut down to size.
Farther south, Brig. Gen. Avraham Yoffe’s two-brigade ugda had an easier task of it. This time the Israelis’ confidence in their ability to get through terrain the Egyptians considered impassable proved well founded; although the struggle against the sand proved difficult, there was no opposition. By late afternoon the Centurions of the leading “I” Brigade had penetrated some thirty miles into Egyptian territory, thus interposing themselves between the two main Egyptian fortified areas to the north and south. They were refueled from the air—their own dragim (trains) got stuck in the dunes—took up positions along the road leading northeast from Jebel Livni, and waited. That same evening the leading elements of the Egyptian 4th Armored Division appeared in front of them as if on a peacetime march. Their objective was Al Arish, some twenty miles away, where they were supposed to counterattack Tal’s forces; suddenly the sky lit up as the Israelis fired flares. The 4th Egyptian fell easy prey to the Centurions, with their long-range guns firing from concealed positions. Early next morning, the survivors turned back.
Still farther south, the IDF’s third ugda found itself facing the Abu Ageila-Kusseima fortified zone, which had stymied their predecessors eleven years earlier. The Egyptians had learned from their experience: Not only was 2nd Infantry Division, which held the position, reinforced to approximately 16,000 men; it was provided with a mobile counterattack force in the form of a tank regiment (sixty-six T-34 tanks with 85mm guns) and a battalion of tank destroyers (twenty-two Su-100s with 100mm guns). The Egyptian reserves were, however, stationed too far west, and their commander did not have authority to act on his own. In the end, this deficiency in command would bring about their defeat.23
On the Israeli side, the commander in charge was Ariel Sharon. After 1956 he had been put on hold, first commanding a reserve infantry brigade and later serving as chief of staff, Northern Command. Once Rabin became chief of the General Staff, Sharon was brought back into the center of things as director of military training; in wartime he was to command an ugda. On the basis of detailed air photos he proceeded to draw up a meticulous plan for capturing the Abu Ageila-Kusseima area by way of a concentric attack.24 One brigade was to capture Kusseima on the south, thus creating a diversion while also preventing any attempt by Force Shazly at Kuntilla to intervene. While the main assault was carried out by two armored brigades coming from the north, a force of paratroopers would land west of Abu Ageila, thus cutting off the position from its operational reserve.
Driving west against comparatively light opposition, by late afternoon both of Sharon’s landborne prongs reached their jumping-off positions north and south of Abu Ageila. A message from Southern Command arrived and suggested that the attack be postponed until the next morning to enable the IAF to take part; Sharon, however, decided to go ahead. At 2200 hours artillery from two brigades opened up on the Egyptians from the north. Next, Col. Danny Matt’s paratroopers used the confusion to enter the Egyptian artillery positions from the west. In the north, Sharon’s two remaining brigades—one armored, one infantry—brought in mineclearing equipment. Carrying colored identification lights and forming narrow wedges, they advanced closely behind their own artillery barrage and straight into the main defenses. As Sharon noted at one point, “It was all working like a Swiss watch.” Though Matt’s paratroopers took heavy casualties, by 1100 hours or so on the morning of June 6 the battle was over.
Perhaps the decisive factor in the Egyptian defeat had been the inactivity of their local reserves, which, since they did not come under attack, stood idly throughout the night until surrounded in the morning.25 The same inactivity now overtook Sharon’s own forces, either because of exhaustion or because they received no orders from headquarters. Dayan’s daughter Yael was attached to Sharon’s headquarters as a journalist; she reported26 that they laid themselves down in the desert. They thus enabled Force Shazly to slip away and its commander to make a name for himself as the only Egyptian officer who escaped defeat; rising up the ladder of promotion, in 1973 he was chief of staff and in charge of crossing the canal.
Even at the height of the battle for Abu Ageila, however, Yoffe had already asked and received permission to send his second armored brigade across the road cleared by Sharon north of the perimeter westward into the central Sinai. On the morning of June 6 there were thus four armored brigades ready to carry out the second phase of the campaign: two under Yoffe, two under Tal (who also made Eytan’s paratroopers reverse direction and join the attack). Coming from the north, Gonen drove south toward Jebel Livni, where on the morning of June 6 he linked up with Yoffe’s “I” Brigade, thus building a pocket and trapping inside all the Egyptian forces (two divisions) defending the northeastern Sinai. With 2nd Egyptian Division at Abu Ageila broken, 4th Armored bloodied, and Force Shazly isolated far to the south, the lone main force remaining was the Egyptian 3rd Division.
When news of the fall of Abu Ageila arrived the minister of defense, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, panicked. Without so much as consulting the chief
of staff, he ordered all remaining formations to retreat, with the result that command and control collapsed and the Egyptians ceased to represent a cohesive force. At about the same time as this order was being given (1630) Gavish met with his division commanders. Quickly surveying the latest developments, the Israelis decided not to pursue but to drive straight through the retreating Egyptians to reach the passes ahead of them.27 Only Yoffe’s forces succeeded in this task. Driving all night (and engaged retreating Egyptian tanks at point-blank range along the road) the Centurions of “I” Brigade reached the Giddi on the morning of June 8. They took up positions and opened fire on the approaching columns of 3rd Infantry Division, wreaking vast destruction.
Meanwhile to the north along the coastal road, Tal’s “M” Brigade—the one that had not fired a shot on June 5—pursued from Al Arish, reaching the Suez Canal on June 7. At Bir Gafgafa on the same day, the campaign’s only major shin be-shin battle was fought between Gonen’s 7th Armored Brigade and elements of the Egyptian 4th Armored Division with its T-54 and T-55 tanks.28 Like the Allies at Falaise in 1944 (albeit on a much smaller scale), the Israelis went for an encirclement and tried to outflank the enemy from the south. Also like the Allies at Falaise in 1944, they were only partly successful, since the jaws snapped shut too late; at least part of 4th Armored Division managed to escape. Finally, and even though he was now being attacked from two directions (in addition to Sharon coming from the north, he was being pursued by Gavish’s remaining reserve brigade, which drove at him from Kuntilla), Shazly, as already related, gave them both the slip. Only after he had passed through Giddi Pass did some of “I” Brigade’s Centurions arrive on their last drop of fuel, holding it for eighteen hours before Sharon could reach them, bagging little but stragglers.
It remained to secure Sharm al-Sheikh. Committing his last available reserve, Gavish carried out the operation on June 7 by means of a paratrooper drop—but when the men landed they found the navy waiting for them. On June 8 the Israelis mopped up, sending forces north to south along the Suez Canal and from there on farther south along the peninsula’s western coast. By that time, however, attention had long shifted to the central front. Despite the fact that King Hussein had put his forces under the command of an Egyptian general, Israel did not expect him to enter the war. The king’s reasoning is hard to figure. If it were true, as was later claimed, that he was “almost certain” to be attacked by Israel following its eventual victory over both Egypt and Syria,29 he should have hit out as hard as he could on the first day with his armored brigades. But he made only two symbolic thrusts at Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus and the Mount of Evil Council (both of them totally unimportant objectives), fired a few long-range 155mm artillery shells in the general direction of Tel Aviv, and mounted a few air attacks against Israeli airfields. Perhaps Hussein felt that he had no choice but to do something, all the while hoping to avoid serious retaliation.
On the afternoon of June 5, after several hours trying to bring about a cease-fire, Israel and the IDF had had enough antics from the “little king.” The IAF went into action, wiping out Jordan’s small air force (they had one radar station) in its bases, also paying a visit to the old, British-built H-3 air base in western Iraq; when the balance of the first day’s fighting was summed up on the radio late that night, the IAF could boast of having destroyed no fewer than four hundred Arab aircraft in all. Meanwhile a crack brigade of Israeli paratroopers (the 55th) had been standing ready to take Al Arish in conjunction with Tal’s forces. When that town fell ahead of time, the brigade was diverted to confront the Jordanians.
To the south of Jerusalem, Narkis’s Jerusalem Brigade was holding on to the area around UN headquarters while the paratroopers of Mordechai Gur—he had entered Mitla Pass in 1956—prepared to envelop the city from the north.30 Late that night, the paratroopers fought an extremely tough engagement in a fortified area known as Ammunition Hill overlooking the road from West Jerusalem to Mount Scopus and Mount Olives. When the latter fell, the Jordanians in East Jerusalem found themselves encircled. Moreover, since the main highway runs through town, communication between the two main parts of the West Bank—the northern and the southern—had also been cut.
MAP 11.2 THE 1967 WAR, JORDANIAN AND SYRIAN FRONTS
That same evening (June 5) another mechanized brigade belonging to Central Command drove up the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. Before reaching Mount Kastel they turned north, however, using a dirt road that ran parallel to the highway. Although the topography was the same, this time there could be no question of the Israelis attacking mainly with light arms, as Rabin’s men had done in 1948; instead they used their Super Sherman tanks in close support, quickly breaking through several defended Arab positions before debouching at Tel Ful north of Jerusalem on the morning of June 6. As a third brigade reached Ramalla, farther north, by way of Latrun and Bet Choron, there were now no fewer than three IDF brigades stationed along the north-south watershed and cutting the West Bank in half. Any hope that the situation might still change was soon ended. With its hands freed by the destruction of the Arab air forces the previous day, the IAF intercepted Jordanian 60th Armored Brigade on the road from Jericho—where burned-out tanks and other armored vehicles could be seen strewn about for years to come.
On June 7 the great drama was complete. Jerusalem Brigade turned south, driving toward Hebron and sending the Jordanian brigade deployed around the city—they had been sent in hope of linking up with the Egyptians! 31—into a hasty retreat. Gur’s paratroopers broke through Jerusalem’s Lions’ Gate and were soon mopping up in the Old City; of Narkis’s two mechanized brigades stationed on the Jerusalem-Ramalla Road, one took the old road toward the Jordan Valley and Jericho, whereas the other turned north to link up with the forces of Brigadier General Peled. That ugda had been engaged in heavy fighting since the afternoon of June 5. One armored battalion drove down to Bet Shean, from where it probed the Jordanian part of the Jordan Valley from the north, thus threatening to take 40th Armored Brigade in the rear. Three brigades (one minus a battalion) converged on Jenin. Farther southwest, Narkis’s 5th Brigade entered the West Bank by a different road and made directly toward Nablus.
To defend the area in question the Jordanians had three infantry brigades plus the elite 40th Armored Brigade, which, disregarding the threat to its communications, moved up to Jenin by way of Tubias on June 6, meaning that the two sides were approximately equal in numbers. Riding dissimilar vehicles—the Israelis relied on their Super Shermans and half-tracks, the Jordanians on M-47s, M-48s, and M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs)—they slugged it out at close quarters among the narrow mountain valleys. Israeli accounts emphasize the excellence of the Jordanian troops so long as they stayed put and were not called upon to counterattack;32 per Jordanian accounts, the decisive nature of the air strikes rained down on their “hapless” troops.33 Hitting fortified positions located on mountain slopes from the air with the equipment then used by the IAF—they wouldn’t deploy precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and computerized navigation attack avionics till later—is difficult even for the best pilots. Perhaps, then, the two accounts can be made to dovetail by assuming that the Jordanian counterattacks failed because whenever their armor broke camouflage and got moving it would come under air attack.
Be that as it may, after thirty-six hours of tough fighting the Israelis prevailed. By the evening of June 7 their right-wing brigade had crossed through Nablus (where they were initially mistaken for Iraqis and welcomed by the population) and linked up with the one coming up from Jerusalem. The other three took Jenin and proceeded south and east, occupying the Jordan Valley and blocking the escape routes of whatever Jordanian units had remained intact. Though the Arab Legion fought well, its forces had been shattered, and only stragglers made it across the river; the Israelis, who also had a vast stream of refugees on their hands, did not try to stop them so long as they left their arms behind. In the confusion one of Narkis’s brigades had actually crossed to the East
Bank without orders.34 According to Rabin, he learned of the move only when the United States, prompted by Hussein, ordered Israel to desist.35 Thereupon the 10th Brigade, having crossed into the East Bank, was told to retreat and did so, blowing up the bridges as it went.
It remained to deal with the Syrians, who, in contrast to their bellicose actions during the years leading up to the war, scarcely lifted a finger while their allies were being pulverized. On June 6 and 7 they fired at the settlements in the Jordan Valley, inflicting considerable material damage (“205 houses, 9 chicken-coops, 2 tractor-sheds, 3 clubs, 1 dining hall, 6 haystacks, 30 tractors, 15 cars”36 according to a meticulous Israeli account) but killing no more than two and wounding sixteen. What offensive plans they may have had never materialized; at any rate any talk of an offensive was absurd, given that by the evening of June 6 most of their air force had been destroyed by the IAF. Israel and the IDF, however, were bent on revenge against the Syrians, whom they regarded as the most implacable enemy of all.
Relying on the excellent intelligence on the Golan fortifications provided by spy Eli Cohen prior to the war, Northern Command drafted several plans for dealing with the Syrians. Thus “Makevet (Sledgehammer) North” provided an offensive against the northern part of the heights; “Makevet South” for an attack on the center; and “Makevet Center” for a purely holding operation. Once the war had started and a decision had to be made, however, the Eshkol-Dayan-Rabin-Bar Lev (Rabin’s deputy)-Elazar chain of command proved less than perfect. At first, on June 6, Elazar was given permission to attack on the next afternoon. Next, waiting for reinforcements—he had only two brigades left, having lost one to the West Bank—and for the sky to clear, he decided to postpone for twenty-four hours. Around noon on June 7 Bar Lev was still telling him to go ahead; but at 1000 hours on June 8 Rabin came on the phone and informed his front commander that the IDF “did not have permission” to attack.37
The Sword And The Olive Page 26