The Sword And The Olive (26 page)
Read The Sword And The Olive Online
Authors: Martin van Creveld
As commonly done before 1948, border settlements were prepared for defense. Fences were erected, searchlights installed, mines laid, booby traps set, personal arms distributed, training provided, and guard duties imposed. These and similar measures may have helped limit the damage caused by attacks, but apparently they did little if anything to reduce frequency. Furthermore, over time the infiltrators became more sophisticated and responded with measures of their own, such as blowing up an agricultural installation and ambushing the Israelis who came to see what happened. Meanwhile on the Israeli side, security became an intolerable burden as people were expected to stand guard at night and work by day. In 1952-1953, these problems became so severe that some settlements, particularly in the corridor leading to Jerusalem (many populated by new immigrants), came close to being abandoned.
In addition to helping the settlements defend themselves—territorial defense put into practice—there arose the question of whether to use the Israeli armed forces to combat infiltrators. As might be expected, the IDF vehemently opposed the idea of setting up a special organization, claiming that troops best qualified for the mission were its own;
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however, its stance was rejected and a special force, known as Mishmar Ha-gvul (Frontier Guard), established. The Frontier Guard took volunteers who had already completed military service. Many were members of minority groups such as Bedouins, Druze, and Circessians who proved especially well suited for this kind of work, possessing mastery in the use of small arms, fieldcraft, tracking skills, and a good command of Arabic; squeamishness was definitely not included in the job description. Organizationally speaking the Frontier Guard was part of the police, as it remains. In theory the Frontier Guard was responsible for day-to-day operations such as
siyurim
(patrolling) and
maaravim
(laying ambushes), the IDF standing in reserve in case of emergency. In practice the two organizations were almost interchangeable, as both wore military uniforms, engaged in all kinds of activities (save that the Frontier Guard was not supposed to cross the border and retaliate against Arab countries), and were called upon to deal with incidents as availability dictated.
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however, its stance was rejected and a special force, known as Mishmar Ha-gvul (Frontier Guard), established. The Frontier Guard took volunteers who had already completed military service. Many were members of minority groups such as Bedouins, Druze, and Circessians who proved especially well suited for this kind of work, possessing mastery in the use of small arms, fieldcraft, tracking skills, and a good command of Arabic; squeamishness was definitely not included in the job description. Organizationally speaking the Frontier Guard was part of the police, as it remains. In theory the Frontier Guard was responsible for day-to-day operations such as
siyurim
(patrolling) and
maaravim
(laying ambushes), the IDF standing in reserve in case of emergency. In practice the two organizations were almost interchangeable, as both wore military uniforms, engaged in all kinds of activities (save that the Frontier Guard was not supposed to cross the border and retaliate against Arab countries), and were called upon to deal with incidents as availability dictated.
Finally, to avenge past incidents and deter future ones, already in 1949 the IDF began to mount raids across the border. On occasion the identity of perpetrators, as well as their place of refuge, was known so that direct action could be taken against them; then and later, however, the real purpose of the raids was so-called indirect deterrence, meaning that the Arab civilian population and the Arab governments were to be punished for failure to stop the infiltrators. As early as mid-1950, Dayan, then serving as CIC Southern Command, claimed that this kind of retaliation, however “unjustified and immoral” it might be, was the only “effective” way to put an end to infiltration.
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Over the next few years he and other leaders repeated this argument time and again.
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Over the next few years he and other leaders repeated this argument time and again.
Initially the government of Israel denied that its forces had mounted border raids, insisting that they had been carried out by “irregulars” and “vigilantes.” Later this masquerade, never very convincing either to the Arabs or to foreign observers, was dropped, and the IDF for the most part not only admitted responsibility but also proudly proclaimed it. During the early days—1950 to 1953—most of the raids were directed against Arab villages that supposedly served as the infiltrators’ starting bases and refuges upon their return. The villages were attacked by mortar fire (occasionally, as hostilities escalated, artillery fire as well), strafed from the air, and attacked by units that fired on the villagers and demolished their houses; when Egyptian and Jordanian troops tried to interfere they were frequently ambushed. The proceedings were rather unappetizing, the IDF responding to civilian killings by indiscriminately killing infiltrators—including, on at least some occasions, some who were unarmed or had surrendered—torturing captives, and mutilating bodies. As if to emphasize that war, if prolonged, becomes an imitative activity that will cause two sides to resemble one another, the IDF increasingly resorted to attacks on property (livestock was expropriated and taken across the border, electricity and telegraph poles were uprooted, etc.).
The effect of the IDF’s activities on the neighboring Arab populations and governments is debatable. Some Arabs reacted with fear, others with frustration, others with anger. At times the raids encouraged Egyptian and Jordanian authorities in particular to try reining in the infiltrators; on other occasions the outcome was just the reverse, that is, spurring them to acts of revenge. Whatever the Arabs’ reaction, successive years of raids and counterraids proved that the IDF had no effective response to the problem and was incapable of guaranteeing the lives and property of Israeli civilians not only along the border but also, to a lesser extent, in the heart of the country. As Dayan would argue—without a shred of evidence and obviously attempting to justify a policy for which he bore a considerable share of the responsibility—at best the measures only prevented the situation from becoming worse.
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Meanwhile the combination of atrocities committed—news of which occasionally reached the Israeli public in spite of strict censorship—and the IDF’s apparent inability to achieve their objective was beginning to erode the IDF’s fighting power. Surviving evidence shows that through roughly 1951, commanders considered the raids beneficial for the morale of the participating units (one reason for undertaking them in the first place)
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as well as useful for training;
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later the wind changed and one failure began to follow upon another. Thus, in 1952, raids were mounted at Wadi Fukin, Bet Sira, Bet Awa, Idna, Rantis, and Bet Jalla among other places. According to an IDF intelligence division report, all “ended in failure” and caused the IDF to lose prestige in the eyes of its Arab enemies
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(not to mention the effect on Israel’s civilian authorities).
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as well as useful for training;
10
later the wind changed and one failure began to follow upon another. Thus, in 1952, raids were mounted at Wadi Fukin, Bet Sira, Bet Awa, Idna, Rantis, and Bet Jalla among other places. According to an IDF intelligence division report, all “ended in failure” and caused the IDF to lose prestige in the eyes of its Arab enemies
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(not to mention the effect on Israel’s civilian authorities).
12
Then came the Falame village raid on January 25-26, 1953. First, the battalion mounting the operation repeatedly lost its way in the dark. Next, having found its objective, it attacked but was repulsed by a Jordanian force consisting of just twelve riflemen—not Arab Legionaries, mind you, but members of the decidedly second-class National Guard. An attempt to reenter the village on January 28-29 was equally unsuccessful. This failure was followed by a series of others (in one case a navy ship sent to gather intelligence in the Red Sea committed a navigation error, ran aground on the Saudi coast, and had to be rescued). One platoon, sent to blow up a well in the Gaza Strip, lost its way, wandered all night, and finally discovered it had not even crossed the armistice line—whereupon a squad commander hid behind a rock and killed himself with a hand grenade.
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On another occasion an IDF unit, apparently believing it was in the West Bank, attacked a camp of Israeli Bedouin. They killed a seventy-year-old man, two women, three camels, and twenty sheep.
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On another occasion an IDF unit, apparently believing it was in the West Bank, attacked a camp of Israeli Bedouin. They killed a seventy-year-old man, two women, three camels, and twenty sheep.
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Facing these and other failures,
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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.
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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.
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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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