Elazar’s replacement as chief of staff was a paratrooper, “Motta” Gur. Self-confident to the point of rudeness, he, like Dayan, could not leave the members of the female sex alone, addressing any woman who came his way as “Hi, sweetie!” Unlike Dayan, however, who owed some of his charisma to his qualities as a litterateur, his greatest intellectual achievement consisted of a series of children’s book about Azzit, a heroic shepherd she-dog who accompanied the paratroopers on their exploits against feeble-minded Arab opponents. Having served as CO Northern Command from 1969 to 1972, he was then dispatched to Washington as military attaché, a post that usually marks the end of an officer’s career.1 Thus he was fortunate not to have shared in the mechdal, which of course was the real reason behind his appointment. Also, unlike his immediate predecessors (and also unlike General Tal, who as Elazar’s chief of the General Staff was the natural candidate for the job) he was not an armored corps man; neither, to the present day, was any of his successors.
The “October Earthquake” notwithstanding, Israel’s top-level security decisionmaking machinery remained as rickety as ever. In 1976 the Knesset passed a new law that sought to define the relationships between prime minister, minister of defense, and chief of staff. In practice an exact division of responsibilities proved impossible to set down, and much continued to depend on the way personalities interacted. Since the Knesset still did not have subpoena power, Israel’s defense and foreign policy remained in the hands of a kitchen Cabinet—the above-mentioned trio plus Yigal Allon, who was serving Rabin as foreign minister. Depending on the occasion, these four were joined by others such as the commander of the air force, the chief of intelligence, the chief of Mossad, and other highranking security personnel. Later several prime ministers played with the idea of establishing a ministerial committee for defense, which never materialized. On other occasions the entire Cabinet was made to sit as the Ministerial Committee for Defense. But this arrangement did not work either, for twenty-odd ministers sworn to secrecy could never be trusted to keep their mouths shut.
From time to time the question of setting up a national security council was debated. The arguments in its favor were compelling: After all, the prime minister remained the sole juncture into which all channels fed, yet he did not have his own machinery to look into what he heard. From Peres to Mordechai, successive ministers of defense regarded the idea as harmful to their own authority, however, and went out of their way to torpedo it. But the ministry of defense did not succeed in constructing its own independent research and planning capability. Peres’s attempt to make the IDF planning division—it had been upgraded from branch to division—serve him as well as the chief of staff did not work well. When Sharon took over the ministry in 1981 he tried to solve the problem by setting up the National Security Unit (NSU) in the Ministry of Defense, the upshot being a sort of parallel General Staff with one major general, one brigadier general, and twenty colonels.2 Understandably the NSU excited the animosity of Chief of Staff Eytan 3—as indeed it was supposed to, since he and Sharon were old rivals. When Arens in turn replaced Sharon, one of his first actions was to abolish the NSU for the sake of harmony with the IDF.
Thus, as before, neither prime minister nor minister of defense—let alone the Cabinet or the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee—succeeded in setting up a strong organization capable of doing independent research and exercising effective oversight. Also, and contrary to the recommendations of the Agranat Commission of Investigation, the IDF retained its grip over the national intelligence estimate. To be sure, there were a few cosmetic changes. During the first year or two after the war an attempt was made to get the research department of the Foreign Office to duplicate the work of the IDF’s intelligence research branch. A number of bright young men were recruited for the job, but after a while the research department languished. Though the IDF now commanded some of the world’s most advanced sensors and early-warning systems, the fear that another Arab attack would catch it by surprise continued to haunt both GHQ and individual intelligence officers. Over time, this fear led to a great outpouring of works about intelligence, its possibilities, and its limitations.4
By way of correcting the inability of civilian and military decisionmakers to communicate with one another—in plain words, ensuring that the former should know exactly what a division is—the long-dead National Defense College was revived in 1976-1977. Its first commander was Maj. Gen. Menachem Meron. A Tal protégé, he had been responsible for the Sharm al-Sheikh area in 1973; by way of preparation he spent a year with the Royal College of Defense Studies in London. However, and as in its previous incarnation, the college never succeeded either in building up a first-rate faculty or in turning itself into a vehicle for selection. Intellectually its stature was reflected by the almost nonexistent library and the fact that, conspiring with Haifa University, it handed out M.A. degrees in a mere eight months (as against a minimum of two years in any other program). Functionally it acted as a pool for unemployed lieutenant colonels with the occasional civilian thrown in. The war also persuaded the IDF that its brigade commanders were unprepared for the job and led to the establishment of a special course for them. In 1994 the first higher command and general staff course (for brigadier generals) was held. However, the fact that most of them did not have good command of English precluded non-Israelis from being invited to speak; they mainly listened to their own former superiors.
With Rabin in the saddle, the country started pulling itself out of its confusion. Though there was constant trouble on the Lebanon border, the separation of forces agreements with Egypt and Syria proved their worth and enabled the IDF to rebuild. This was even more true after the “Second Separation of Forces Agreement” was concluded with Egypt in September 1975. Representing a real step toward peace, the agreement made war on the Egypt front much less likely. Should Egypt decide to go to war, however, it would have to do so in the teeth of U.S.-manned early-warning stations located in the Sinai passes. It also implied moving the forces across a twenty-mile demilitarized zone, thus simultaneously serving warning and getting out of antiaircraft missile range. Last but not least, the agreement opened the road for the IDF to receive even more U.S. weapons than before.
Yet economically speaking these were extremely difficult years. The war itself was said to have cost Israel the equivalent of a full year’s GNP. No sooner was it over than it was followed by the energy crisis, which first doubled and then quadrupled the price of oil. From 1967 on, Israel had taken about half its oil from the fields at Abu Rhodeis, but in 1975 they were returned to Egypt. Together with the need to pay for rearmament, the effect was to quadruple the gap in the balance of payments between 1972 and 1981.5 Inflation rose to dizzying heights. At no time during the decade after 1973 did it fall below 37 percent, and in 1985 it even exceeded 400 percent.
Had it not been for U.S. economic assistance, Israel might not have weathered the crisis. Before 1967, U.S. aid to Israel, mostly for civilian projects such as building the national water carrier, had been limited to no more than perhaps $50 million annually.6 Between 1968 and 1973 it quintupled, reaching an average of $250 million (to which should be added the much-augmented proceeds of the bonds sold by the government of Israel to American Jewry).7 In 1973-1974 it was increased to $2.2 billion per year—and even this sum later grew to $3 billion. Of the $3 billion, $1.8 billion consisted of outright military aid that, much to the IDF’s sorrow, could only be spent by buying weapons in the United States.8 The rest was provided in the form of loans for civilian purposes and could be converted into Israeli pounds and shekels; however, in 1984 the loans were converted into grants that were renewed by Congress in October each year. Thus the Israeli lobby in Washington has been spectacularly successful—never did so few receive so much free aid for so long.
As Rabin in particular never tired of saying, in part the U.S. assistance to Israel’s defense may have been based on genuine sympathy for an embattled ally. In part it was govern
ed by considerations pertaining to the so-called Second Cold War, and in part it was designed to prevent Israel from raising its nuclear profile (in plain words, endangering world peace by using unconventional weapons to defend against much more powerful enemies). In any case it made possible a very great increase in defense spending, which rose from $1.247 billion in 19729 to $4.27 billion in 197710 and as much as $7.34 billion in 1981.11 In fairness, the increase was not paid for only by the Americans, who accounted for no more than just under half of Israel’s military outlay.12 The remainder was obtained by starving the civilian economy of funds, bringing growth to a near halt, a nightmarish balance of payments problem, and an exceedingly heavy tax burden on its own population—including the introduction of a new value-added tax that started at 6 percent and rose to 19 percent. The magnitude of the effort may be deduced from the fact that the share of defense out of gross domestic product (GDP) shot up from an average of 8.7 percent between 1957 and 1966 to 21.3 percent in 1968-1972 to 26.3 percent in 1974-1981—this after having peaked at a whopping 32.7 percent in 1973.13
In 1973, even after the reserves had arrived, on each of the fronts the IDF had found itself outnumbered 2.5-3:1.14 Early in the war only three divisions had stood between the Egyptians and Tel Aviv; of those, one had been badly attrited, whereas another received a beating on October 8. Accordingly GHQ’s first priority was to increase the size of the army, the twin objective being to maintain the balance of forces vis-à-vis the Arabs and to have more formations available for maneuver. The two main methods were to increase the size of the regular forces (keva plus conscripts) and to reclassify all manpower in the country. Results came soon. By the best available figures the regular army increased from 115,000 in 1973 to 164,000 in 1977 to 170,000 in 1982.15 The total force (including reservists) expanded even faster, going from somewhat more than 300,000 to 400,000 to 540,000 during the same period. Since the number of divisions is a closely guarded secret, it had to be calculated on the basis of brigade equivalents, as they are listed in internationally published sources. It seems to have gone up from seven to thirteen to about sixteen—though the latter figure also includes a number of brigades suitable for local defense only. By comparison, the U.S. Army in 1982 also had sixteen divisions and the Bundeswehr, the second strongest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), had twelve. But then again Israel’s Jewish population was only around 3.5 million, its per-capita GNP perhaps one-third of that of the developed states.16
In point of doctrine there was little change from the period before 1973.17 Although some ground had been lost both in the north and the south—on the Golan Heights, this amounted to only a mile or so—compared to the period before 1967 the borders remained much easier to defend. Accordingly the IDF prepared to “absorb” and “brake” an Arab first strike by means of the enlarged standing army and the air force. Next, as reserves arrived, it expected to go on the offensive, smash as much of the opponent’s armed forces as possible before the UN Security Council arranged for a cease-fire, and seize territory that could be used as a bargaining chip. Owing to the availability of strategic depth, the doctrine was more easily applied in the south than along the River Jordan and on the Golan Heights; on both fronts a heavy investment was made in building strongholds, minefields, antitank ditches, and the like so as to hold off the initial assaults and buy time. Finally, to placate those who still insisted on using settlements for defense (in 1973, the Golan settlements had been evacuated before the first shot) a plan was hatched to revive hagana merchavit by fortifying them and providing them with antitank weapons.18 In practice, though, little came of this; indeed it is hard to envisage women and children slugging it out with invading Syrian and Jordanian forces while their menfolk were presumably away serving in the reserves.
Organizationally speaking there were several changes in the ground forces. The divisions were organized into permanent corps. The latter stood under front commanders; however, the IDF avoided inserting another rank between that of division commander and front commander, with the result that, in 1982, an aluf acting as CO Northern Command commanded another aluf acting as corps commander. Elite infantry brigades apart, practically the entire ground forces now consisted of armored divisions. The jettisoning of the all-tank doctrine was reflected inside each division by providing each armored battalion with a company of APC-riding infantry; they in turn were equipped with machine guns, mortars, and antitank missiles and were ready to support the tanks as they went into battle. Another change was to abolish the divisions’ organic reconnaissance battalions, the rationale being that the task would be carried out by new technology then under development and that whatever remained of it could be entrusted to any battalion. This move was regarded by many officers as an error,19 and indeed it may explain some of the IDF’s ham-handedness during “Operation Peace for Galilee.”
Reflecting the IDF’s origins in prestate days, traditionally its General Staff had also acted as headquarters of the ground forces, but after the October War this arrangement came under critical fire. Some argued that the burden on the chief of staff was excessive and that the ground forces needed their own headquarters parallel to those of the air force and navy; others argued that new headquarters was needed in order to overcome problems in interarm cooperation. After several plans for resolving the problem had been proposed and rejected, in August 1977 Ezer Weizman asked Major General (ret.) Tal, who was then in charge of developing Israel’s home-built tank, to present a detailed blueprint. It was promptly turned down by the General Staff, which discerned an attempt to reduce its own authority, and by the remaining ground arms, which suspected Tal of attempting to subordinate all of them to his beloved armored corps.
In the event neither Gur nor Eytan saw any need for organizational reform. Consequently the bickering went on throughout the late seventies and early eighties; it was not until after the invasion of Lebanon, which brought to light glaring shortages in the cooperation of armor, artillery, infantry, and engineers, that the scheme finally found favor. In 1983 the slot of CO of the armored corps was reduced from major general to brigadier general, thus depriving the corps of its status as first among equals, which it had enjoyed since the midfifties, and putting it on a par with the remaining ground arms. A new headquarters known as MAFCHASH (Mifkedet Kochot Ha-sadeh, Ground Forces Headquarters) and commanded by a major general was established.20 Even so, the hopes of those who had advocated a ground forces headquarters similar to the semi-independent headquarters of the air force and navy were disappointed. MAFCHASH remained a mere inspectorate, responsible for coordinating peacetime organization, force development, and training but without an operational function in war.
Between 1967, when it suddenly burst on the world scene, and 1973 the IDF was widely admired for its fighting qualities. In spite of the modernization that took place, however, equipment-wise it was still the army of a comparatively small and poor country and was wanting in many respects. Since it was able to draw on 50 percent of the total military budget the IAF was better armed than the rest, but even here the order of battle still included obsolescent aircraft left over from the 1967 war, and there was a shortage of modern ground-to-air missiles and air-to-ground missiles. The situation of the land forces was much worse. Some of the armor consisted of upgraded Sherman tanks, and the majority of troops rode World War II-vintage M-3 half-tracks; for antitank work the IDF still relied on jeepmounted recoilless rifles as well as limited numbers of 1950s-vintage, French-made SS-10 and SS-11 missiles. Some of the shortcomings were due to the financial constraints affecting a small country with a comparatively huge military establishment. Others reflected the IDF’s obstinate refusal to adopt a combined arms doctrine as well as the kind of organization that this implies.
Already during the October War America’s arsenals began to open as Pres. Richard M. Nixon and his principal advisers, Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger, organized a massive air-sea lift. Its importance in raising Israeli morale is undou
bted; bonbons were literally dropping from the sky. Yet its significance in assisting the IDF’s war effort became moot. During the ten days that passed from the time it got under way until the cease-fire came into effect, only about 200 aircraft were able to make the journey and land. Though a handful of tanks and self-propelled cannons were flown in by way of demonstrating capability, clearly there could be no question of the airlift replacing hundreds of major weapon systems lost and tens of thousands of tons of ammunition expended. Of the total number of sorties flown by the U.S. Air Force Transport Command, about two-thirds took place after October 24; even so the bulk of the aid was sent by sea and thus arrived weeks after the war was over. Yet there is no denying that certain critically important items arrived during hostilities. The list included some fifty Phantom fighter-bombers, which, with midair refueling, could be flown in on their own power. It also included 155mm and 175mm artillery rounds—of which there was a shortage21—as well as air-to-air, air-to-ground, and antitank missiles and electronic equipment for radar jamming and the like.
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