Thus perhaps for the first time, the IDF found itself without a spare arrow in its quiver. Given the difficult situation, it was decided to activate the air force against not only front-line targets but also Egypt’s economic and industrial infrastructures. Given that the IAF had always been a tactical service and did not have anything like the means needed for conducting a sustained strategic bombing campaign, just what the Israelis hoped to achieve is not entirely clear. Rabin, who was serving as ambassador to Washington, hoped to topple Nasser, and his theories seem to have found some support at home.39 The possibility that the Soviets would respond by deepening their involvement was apparently considered but rejected as unlikely.
Its confidence bolstered by the F-4 Phantoms, the first of which had just begun to arrive, the IAF on December 25, 1969, mounted its largest operation since June 1967. It rained bombs into a fifteen-mile zone along the canal’s east bank, hitting many targets including twelve SAM-2 batteries. On January 7, 1970, the campaign escalated, concentrating on military targets such as bases and depots around Cairo as well as the area of the Nile Delta but occasionally missing its objectives and inflicting damage on nonmilitary installations and causing heavy civilian casualties. Nasser refused to surrender, instead visiting Soviet patrons and inducing them to send over fighter pilots—of which the Egyptians were desperately short40—personnel to operate antiaircraft defenses, and batteries of SAM-3s, which were more effective against low-flying aircraft than the older, larger SAM-2s. Both types of missiles were familiar to the Americans from the Vietnam War. Now the United States provided its protégé with pods of avionics to mount on aircraft and counter the new threat.
Thus, what later would be termed the first electronic war began to develop. In fact electronics had been used in wartime at least from the time of the Blitz; the British pioneered radar (and, later, the means for countering it) and the Germans pioneered use of radio signals for navigation (which in turn were countered by the British).41 Vietnam and the Israeli-Egyptian struggle were, however, the first occasions when modern combat aircraft were faced by electronically guided missiles in addition to older antiaircraft artillery. Equipment provided the IAF during this period included gear designed to register the pulse of radar beams guiding the missiles, warning pilots and enabling them to break away in time. It may also have included jamming equipment42 but almost certainly did not include as yet undeveloped homing missiles capable of using radar beams to lock on targets.
In the spring of 1970 the battle climaxed. Soviet pilots had arrived, and their presence was soon detected by the Israelis, who listened to them chattering Russian on the radio; as a result, from the end of March the Israelis no longer tried to penetrate in depth but limited operations to targets along the canal. As the artillery battle raged below, the IAF concentrated on preventing the Egyptians from rebuilding their antiaircraft defenses. They rained a hail of bombs—although probably not the 20,000 tons that Egypt’s minister of war, Mohammed Fauzi, claimed had been dropped during a twoday period.43 Yet bombing did not prevent the Egyptians from laboriously constructing a vast defensive zone of sixty by twenty miles. The zone held no fewer than 1,000 concrete shelters for the thirty antiaircraft missile regiments deployed—to say nothing of the 1,000 antiaircraft guns.44
Late in April 1970 the end run got under way. The IDF, with the air force as its spearhead, was desperately fighting the missiles. The figures given by different sources—Arab and Israeli—differ by as large a factor as eight; clearly more Israeli aircraft were being destroyed, including some of the vaunted Phantoms (with a top speed of mach 2.4). Meanwhile the Egyptians were steadily extending defenses westward toward the canal. More and more, those defenses were being operated by the Soviets, who not only sent advisers into every Egyptian unit down to that battalion level but also maintained entire combat units of their own.45 They manned antiaircraft batteries and flew missions, including combat, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare. Under such circumstances a clash was inevitable, and on July 25 it came. Soviet pilots flying MIG-21s pursued a flight of Israeli Skyhawks into the Sinai; when they tried a repeat five days later, they were jumped by the IAF, which shot down five. Next day the commander of the Soviet Air Force arrived in Egypt.46
The precise sequence of diplomatic moves that led to the cease-fire of August 7, 1970—just more than a month after this episode—need not concern us.47 Suffice it to say that pressure had been building since March; key roles were played by the patrons, the United States and the USSR. Under the terms of the cease-fire both sides undertook to maintain a stand-down over a thirty-mile strip on both sides of the canal. Nevertheless, the Egyptians violated the agreement immediately and openly, moving antiaircraft defenses forward.48 The missiles’ “slant range” made it extremely perilous for the air force to operate not only over Egypt proper but also the canal and the western Sinai. Yet the Israelis did not react. During the next few weeks there was some desultory talk of renewing the offensive to punish the Egyptians for the violation—but desultory talk it remained.
To sum up the precise outcome of the War of Attrition is anything but easy. Clearly there could be no question of Israel being forced to relinquish the Sinai; as the next three years proved, even the more modest Egyptian objective, namely, destabilizing the Middle East to the point that serious political negotiations would get under way, was not achieved. Yet the IDF had not broken the Egyptian will to pursue the struggle; given its failure to tackle the advanced missiles after the cease-fire, Israel arguably found itself in a worse position. As Ezer Weizman wrote—many years before he converted to a dove—it was the first time since 1948 that the IDF had failed to achieve its objectives. “It is no more than foolishness to claim that we won the War of Attrition. On the contrary, for all their casualties it was the Egyptians who got the best of it.... We, with our own hands, smoothed Israel’s path to the Yom Kippur War.”49
In 1970, though, the October War was as yet far off. Having experienced an impending sense of doom during spring 1970—when the Soviet Union seemed poised to intervene in the struggle—Israel greeted the cease-fire with a deep sigh of relief. Weizman’s remained a voice in the wilderness. Both inside and outside the IDF most people preferred to believe that the brave Israelis had once again trounced their opponents, if not decisively then at least sufficiently to force them to desist. The element of reality in this assessment cannot be denied. Equally true, however, is that outside a very narrow circle the so-called victory was misinterpreted. Instead of inducing second thoughts it led to confidence, which in turn grew into overconfidence and a determination to hang on to the Occupied Territories at any cost. Thus, even as guns fell silent, the countdown toward the next war had already begun.
CHAPTER 13
OCTOBER EARTHQUAKE
THE WAR OF ATTRITION over, from 1970 to 1973 the borders with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria were relatively quiet. The number killed and wounded—always a sensitive issue in Israel where manpower is scarce and the sense of “one big family”1 strong—fell very sharply. To be sure, Palestinian terrorism was beginning to raise its head. From 1968 on there had been sporadic clashes along the northern border; later, having been ejected from Jordan, the PLO moved to Lebanon, where it set up a quasi-independent enclave on the slopes of Mount Chermon known as Fatachland. From there, supported by Syria, they often rocketed, shelled, and sent raiding parties across the border.
Also, these were the years when the air lanes to and from Israel were coming under attack. One El Al airliner was hijacked to Algiers and set free only after Israel surrendered some of its Palestinian prisoners. There was an attack on an El Al plane at Zurich’s Kloten Airport, and on several occasions in various countries passengers waiting to board or deplane were attacked with guns or hand grenades. In 1972 a hijacked Sabena airliner landed at Lyddia Airport and had to be stormed by a commando party led by Maj. Ehud Barak. Later that year a couple of Japanese terrorists arrived at the same airport, opened their luggage, took out submachine guns
, and killed dozens before one was killed and the other captured.2
In spite of these and other attacks—including that against the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich—on the whole these were years of heady optimism fueled by strong demographic growth. A quartermillion new immigrants arrived from Russia, helping stimulate the economy and causing new neighborhoods to grow out of thin air. Even as the country received increasing foreign aid, during the two years after 1971 the fraction of GNP devoted to defense declined significantly, from 24.1 to 16.3 percent.3 By 1973, Israel, along with much of the Western world, was experiencing an economic boom that in turn led to some social tensions as heretofore underprivileged groups demanded their shares. There were also clear signs of overheating as inflation, which throughout the sixties had been modest, reached 13 percent.
October Earthquake: Israeli bus crossing the Suez Canal soon after the war.
At the end of 1971 Bar Lev left office, the Cabinet having declined to extend his term another year. His successor was David Elazar, who during the previous two years had served as chief of the General Staff Division. Dayan’s preferred candidate for that job had been Yeshayahu Gavish, but the minister of defense did not have it in him to enforce his views, the more so because he was distracted by his many romantic affairs (at this very time one of his paramours was trying to blackmail him by releasing tapes of his telephone conversations with her). A former commander of the armored corps, Elazar appointed, as his second in command, Gen. Yisrael Tal. The continuing tilt toward armor gathered momentum when Sharon was replaced by Shmuel Gonen, the former 7th Armored Brigade commander who in 1967 had looked straight forward. Sharon did not leave the army altogether, becoming a reserve division commander; in this way he reflected the dilemma created by victory. In 1973 the IDF was saddled with a galaxy of supposedly brilliant generals, all of whom insisted on lending a “helping” hand and many of whom got their way in one capacity or another.
Though the IDF’s order of battle expanded considerably since 1967, it did not grow as much as planned. When Elazar entered office he inherited an extremely detailed acquisition plan known as “Goshen,” which started with the assumption that the Arabs in 1976 would be able to confront Israel with no fewer than fifteen divisions (of which eleven would be Egyptian) and 5,000 tanks.4 However, in the spring of 1972 it was decided to replace Goshen by a smaller plan, “Ofek I.” The establishment of new formations was postponed until 1977. Of greater immediate significance were decisions such as canceling the purchase of additional naval vessels, bridging equipment, tank transporters, and APCs; the IDF was so “tankomanic” by this time that it considered the possibility of setting up an armored division without an organic artillery regiment. The cuts were not limited to major systems. When the IDF mobilized for war in 1973, the YAMACHim did not have enough binoculars (for tank commanders) and stretchers.5 Then and later the cuts were justified on financial grounds—the burden of defense was just too heavy for Israel’s economy to carry. That was certainly one reason, and yet the decision owed as much to overconfidence in the IDF’s might.
Six weeks after the War of Attrition Nasser died of a heart attack. His replacement, Anwar Sadat, did not command respect; in Egypt his nickname was the “Black Ass” for his dark skin (which he inherited from his mother, a Sudanese slave). During his first year or so in office he often spoke of 1971 as the “Year of Decision” and of his own determination to liberate the Sinai even at the cost of “a million” Egyptian lives; when the “32nd of December” (a term invented by the Israelis to derogate Sadat) passed and the promised offensive did not materialize, however, he was seen as a clown. That estimate was reinforced during the summer of 1972 when Sadat, in a surprise move, ordered the army’s Soviet advisers to depart. Whatever the diplomatic implications—Sadat’s move was meant to appease the United States and make it put pressure on Israel6—militarily the decision was considered to have “greatly eased” Israel’s situation.7 After all, was it not obvious that the Egyptians were too incompetent to operate sophisticated equipment on their own?
Came 1973 and Israeli self-confidence peaked—“our [defense] situation has never been better” was the common wisdom spread by the IDF, accepted by Golda Meir,8 and reflected in public opinion. Independence Day 1973 witnessed a parade, the first one in five years. With Ms. Meir and Dayan on the stand and a beaming Elazar taking the salute, Israelis and foreigners were given an impressive display of the IDF’s might—including the new Phantoms, M-60 tanks, M-113 APCs, and self-propelled cannons. Yet about the same time there was brief panic as the Egyptian offensive appeared imminent; some of the reserves were mobilized. The IDF’s chief of intelligence at the time, Maj. Gen. Eliyahu Zeira, discounted war as unlikely, and events proved him right (those who had contradicted him were left red-faced and had to account for nearly $10 million wasted in mobilizing).9 From then on the views of this brilliant but opinionated officer prevailed to the point that, as late as September 1973, the ministry of defense—instead of working to expand the IDF—was studying the possibility of cutting the period of conscript service from three years to two and a half years.10
While Israel, supported by the Nixon administration, refused to evacuate the Occupied Territories and lulled itself to sleep, the Egyptians and the Syrians were busy. According to Sadat’s memoirs, the decision to go to war was made on November 30, 1972.11 Still there could be no question of attempting to liberate the entire Sinai: Not only were the IDF and the IAF in particular much too strong; there was no reason to believe that Egypt’s weakness in conducting maneuver warfare had been corrected. Even more decisive, back in 1967 Nasser probably operated on the assumption that Israel did not yet possess nuclear weapons. That was a luxury which Sadat did not have, although Israel had not tested or admitted to possessing a nuclear weapon.
As will be remembered, during the years before June 1967 the Egyptian media in particular had often referred to an Israeli bomb, and numerous urgent attempts were made to bring the matter to the attention of the superpowers. Now that their problem was presumably to launch the war while minimizing the danger of escalation, however, Egyptian attitudes changed. The entire subject disappeared; on rare occasions it was mentioned only in stating that Israel might be working on the bomb. From Nasser and Sadat on down, Egyptian spokesmen claimed that reports it already existed—such as that printed in the New York Times on November 21, 1968—were no more than part of “a psychological campaign” designed to intimidate the Arabs.12 It is thus fairly clear that, in sticking to its arrangement with the U.S. pressure and not admitting the state of affairs, Israel created a window of opportunity and helped Sadat prepare his war. Although, to be sure, a hair-raising gamble it was and remained.
Feeling fairly certain that a limited offensive would not provoke Israel to use the six to ten bombs that, as they later claimed, they believed were available,13 the Egyptian high command went to work. Under the direction of the minister of defense, Gen. Ismael Fahmi, and the chief of staff, General Shazly, detailed plans were drawn up.14 To cover preparations the Egyptians constructed a tall earthen ramp along the canal. Behind it they built up forces until they numbered 200,000 men distributed between two armies; 2nd Army (north) had 110,000 men and 3rd Army (south) had 90,000. Between them the two armies possessed five infantry divisions and two mechanized divisions; two additional armored divisions came under GHQ. The intention was that the infantry should cross first while the mechanized and armored formations remained in reserve. Even so, by attaching 200 to each infantry division the Egyptians had more than 1,000 tanks ready to participate in the first attack alone.
Crossing a major waterway being one of the most difficult of all military operations, this was prepared meticulously and rehearsed many times. First, teams of commandos were to block a series of petrol pipes the Israelis laid with the intention of igniting the canal (although they later claimed that the system never reached operational status). Under cover of air strikes and a massive artillery bombardment
by more than 1,000 guns of various kinds, the leading infantry assault waves were to cross in rubber boats. Heavily loaded with antitank missiles in addition to their personal weapons, webbing, and gear, they were to take up positions to head off the first counterattacks. The earthen ramp the Israelis constructed on their side of the canal was to be breached by means of high-pressure water cannons mounted on rafts floating in the water. Once pontoon bridges had been laid opposite the breaches, the vehicles and armor would cross.
The Sword And The Olive Page 30