Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  “It is always possible, if hostilities do occur, that Jerusalem will be spared,” surmised Evan Wilson, America’s consul-general in the city, before the outbreak of war. Seemingly shielded from the upheaval engulfing the region, Jerusalem’s mood remained relatively calm. Along the two-mile line separating the Jewish from the Arab sectors, Israeli and Jordanian soldiers faced each other with the same methodical vigilance they had maintained for the last nineteen years. The bifurcation of the city was complete, effected by high firewalls, barbed wire, and mines. In some cases, even houses were divided, where property fell within the width of the pencil used to draw the armistice map in 1949. And while bunkers and observation posts were often only meters apart, those manning them rarely came within visual, much less physical, contact.

  The night of June 5 augured no change in this strange modus vivendi. Though small-arms fire occasionally burst from Jordanian positions, the Israelis were under strict orders to ignore them. The IDF also cancelled the bi-weekly convoy to Mount Scopus, together with a number of training exercises. “Standing guard, we even took the magazines out of our Uzis,” Yoram Galon, a reservist serving in Jerusalem, remembered. “Just in case a bullet went off accidently and ignited the front.” The Israelis could not afford to fight. Much of Central Command’s ammunition had been transferred southward to the Egyptian border, leaving a total of 50 vintage Sherman tanks, 36 cannons, and 27 mortars to defend the greater Tel Aviv area. Within the capital, many reservists had been sent home; a mere seventy-one men held the line facing the Jordanian army. “It seemed as if the security [of the central sector] was indeed based on miracles,” Gen. Narkiss told an IDF review board after the war. “We wanted to believe that the enemy would never attack.”12

  And yet Narkiss did not share that belief. Hussein, in his eyes, was “unreliable,” had signed a treaty with Nasser, and had allowed Egyptian commandos onto his territory. If the Jordanians did strike, there was a good chance that Israel would lose several border areas, including the Lakhish settlements and the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion. Narkiss’s greatest fear, however, centered on the small (one-mile-square) enclave of Mount Scopus. Dominating Jerusalem’s highest hill, enclosing the buildings of the Hadassah hospital and Hebrew University that had stood dormant since 1948, Mount Scopus was defended by a UN-monitored garrison of eighty-five policemen and thirty-three civilians. Though Israel had succeeded in smuggling some heavy arms into the enclave, it remained exceedingly susceptible to attack, both from the Mount of Olives to the east and to the north, from the West Bank city of Ramallah. The fall of Mount Scopus would not only deal a tremendous blow to Israeli prestige—“No conquest in Sinai could make up for it,” Narkiss warned—but would enable the Jordanians, by linking up with their forces in south Jerusalem, to isolate the city’s 197,000 Jews.13

  Little better was Israel’s situation along the West Bank border. Though IDF contingency plans called for augmenting Israel’s defenses along the eastern front in time of war, none of the designated forces were available on June 5. Remaining were five reserve brigades, two in the north to guard the Jezreel Valley, and one each to protect Jerusalem, Lod airport, and the approaches to Tel Aviv. While Israeli commanders often talked of grabbing land around Latrun—hap, they called the maneuver, in Yiddish—they knew that there could be no offensive action without those fifty Shermans. But the tanks of the 10th Harel Brigade were being kept as a strategic reserve in Tel Aviv, to block any Egyptian attack from the south. “Our mission wasn’t clear,” recounted Narkiss, who, in the Independence War, had fought with that same Harel brigade in its abortive attempt to seize Jerusalem’s Old City. “There was no order to conquer the West Bank or the Jordan Valley. Yet I was certain that war would come, and certain that it would end in Jerusalem.”14

  Narkiss was not surprised when, at 7:55 A.M., the air raid sirens began wailing in Israel’s capital. Many other Israelis, however, soldiers and civilians, believed it was a mistake, even when the 8:00 news carried the (fabricated) report of Egyptian tanks and planes moving toward the Israeli border. Nevertheless, emergency preparations were accelerated in the city. Hospitals went on high alert and museum exhibitions, among them the Dead Sea scrolls, were placed in secure storage. Broadcasting call-up codes, the radio directed reservists to their units.

  The government still hoped that Jordan would fire off a few shells—“a salutatory salvo to fulfill its obligations to inter-Arab unity,” Narkiss put it—but would otherwise remain passive. To further ensure that passivity, personal appeals would be sent to Hussein, urging him to show restraint. Dayan opposed the idea. “Doesn’t Hussein know he’s not supposed to attack us?” he asked. Allon, however, insisted that the monarch be warned. Three channels were selected: the U.S. State Department, British Foreign Office, and Gen. Odd Bull in Jerusalem. Thus, at 8:30, Bull was summoned by Arthur Lourie, a veteran UN specialist at the Foreign Ministry, who told him:

  At 8:10 Egyptian planes were spotted crossing into our airspace, and our planes and armor have commenced action against them. In the name of the foreign minister, Lourie asked that Bull urgently convey to King Hussein that Israel will not, repeat not, attack Jordan if Jordan maintains the quiet. But if Jordan opens hostilities, Israel will respond with all of its might.

  Bull, lanky and severe-looking, a former fighter pilot with nearly ten years’ experience observing for the UN in the Middle East, was not impressed with the gesture. Ill-disposed toward Israel—he would dedicate his memoirs to redressing Norway’s pro-Israel bias—he rejected the claim that Egypt had started the fighting, and resented the tone of the text. “This was a threat, pure and simple, and it is not the normal practice of the UN to pass on threats from one government to another,” he responded. He wanted two hours to consult New York, but Lourie insisted that the message be conveyed immediately. By all appearances, Jordan was preparing for war.15

  Such preparations had indeed been accelerated over the past twenty-four hours as Jordanian troops were informed that the time had come to fight. “The reserve ammunition was dispersed,” attested Gen. Ma‘an Abu Nawwar, commander of the positions abutting Mount Scopus. “All the machinegun belts were loaded, the shells primed.” King Hussein showed no consternation when, at 8:50, his aide-de-camp, Col. Ghazi, interrupted his breakfast with the announcement, “Your Majesty, the Israeli offensive has begun in Egypt.” Calling his headquarters, Hussein learned of ‘Amer’s claim of crippling Israeli casualties and of Egypt’s swift counterattack. ‘Ajlun reported hundreds of aircraft flying from the direction of Sinai—actually returning Israeli jets, though the Jordanians assumed they were Egyptian. This information went a long way toward allaying the king’s fears of Israeli attempts to conquer East Jerusalem and its 80,000 Arabs, or all or part of the West Bank. Jordan could go on the offensive.

  The extent of that offensive, however, had yet to be determined by Hussein. He entered headquarters just after 9:00, and found that Riyad had already ordered a number of far-reaching actions, including the destruction of Israeli airfields by a combination of artillery fire, jet bombing, and commando attacks. Requests had gone out from ten Syrian brigades to descend from the Golan to the Jordan Valley, where they would meet with 150 Iraqi tanks and cross the Jordan on assault bridges that Riyad requisitioned from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He also instructed the 2nd Imam ‘Ali Brigade to seize Government Hill ridge in south Jerusalem. These operations aimed at covering the flank of the Egyptian column that Riyad believed would soon roll north from Beersheva and Bethlehem. To prevent any outflanking maneuver—an Israeli thrust into the West Bank from the Negev—Riyad further shifted Jordan’s tank brigades southward. The 60th descended to the Jerusalem-Jericho road, and the 40th to Hebron.

  Once implemented, these instructions would embroil Jordan fully in the war with Israel. Though well liked by the Jordanians—“one of the best Arab officers, not only in the Arab world, but anywhere,” one infantry Col. ‘Awad Bashir Khalidi, extolled—Riyad had not had time to fully study th
e defense of the area. Nor did he understand the mentality of the Jordanian army, where command structure closely paralleled family ties. “He didn’t know our terrain,” said Shafiq ‘Ujeilat, an intelligence officer. “He didn’t know how we talked to one another or how we fight.” By giving priority to Egypt’s immediate needs of neutralizing enemy airfields and supporting its supposed offensive, he ignored Jordan’s concern for safeguarding the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This fact was pointed out by several general staff members, most vociferously ‘Atif al-Majali, who stressed that neither artillery nor armor was available to support an assault on Government House ridge. Better to take Mount Scopus immediately, he argued, and implement Operation Tariq. Harsh words were exchanged—al-Majali stormed out—but in the end Riyad’s word proved final. Hussein, who alone had the power to rescind or alter the orders, said nothing.16

  Rather, speaking on Radio Amman at 9:30, Hussein informed his people that Jordan had been attacked and that “the hour of revenge had come.” He had just received a brief telephone call from Nasser in which the Egyptian president had confirmed ‘Amer’s earlier claim of staggering Israeli losses and the destruction of its airfields.

  “Quickly take possession of the largest possible amount of land in order to get ahead of the UN’s cease-fire,” Nasser urged him, anticipating that the Security Council would meet that night. The Iraqis assured Hussein—falsely—that their airplanes were already in action against Israel.

  Hussein was clearly excited by this news, and distrustful of Israel’s motives in asking for restraint. He may still have believed that limited shelling of bases and the capture of Government Hill ridge—a UN area—would not provoke a full-scale Israeli counterattack. Ultimately, though, there was no choice but to comply with Riyad’s decisions; to survive politically, physically, Hussein had to fight. Thus, when Ambassador Burns found him in a forward observation position and handed him Lourie’s note, the king responded matter-of-factly. “They started the battle,” he said, “Well, they are receiving their reply by air. The lot has been cast.”17

  The shelling of Israel from Jordan had already begun an hour earlier, at 10:00 A.M. Two batteries of the American-made 155-mm ‘Long Tom’ guns went into action, one zeroing in on the suburbs of Tel Aviv and the other on Ramat David, northern Israel’s largest airfield. The commanders of these units were instructed to lay a two-hour barrage “on all enemy positions cited on your lists,” which included military bases and even civilian settlements situated in Israel’s narrow midland. Harry McPherson, billeted at Barbour’s house north of Tel Aviv, was awakened by the crump of explosions. Tanks soon joined in the fusillade, and then planes. At 11:50 A.M., sixteen of Jordan’s serviceable Hawker Hunter fighters performed sorties near the towns of Netanya, Kfar Sirkin, and Kfar Saba. Though the attacks failed to inflict major damage—one civilian was killed and seven injured, and one transport plane destroyed—their psychological impact was weighty. Greeting Ambassador Burns outside Hussein’s palace, the Soviet ambassador to Jordan remarked, “Our estimate is that if the Israelis do not receive arms, we think the Arabs will win the war if they are allowed to fight it to the finish.”

  One result of Jordan’s offensive was to draw both the Syrian and Iraqi air forces into the war. Syria activated Operation Rashid for the bombing of northern Israel, and by noon, twelve of its MiG’s were striking Galilee settlements, including Kibbutz Degania, home to both Eshkol and Hod. Three of the planes were shot down and the rest driven off by Israeli fighters. Meanwhile, three Iraqi Hunters strafed settlements in the Jezreel Valley, including Dayan’s village of Nahalal. A Tupolev-16 bomber, also from Iraq, attacked the Lower Galilee town of Afula before being shot down near the Megiddo airfield. Again, the material damage was minimal—several chicken coops and a senior citizens’ home were hit—but sixteen Israeli soldiers were killed, most of them when the Tupolev crashed. Damascus Radio quickly trumpeted that, “The Syrian air force has begun to bomb Israeli cities and to destroy its positions.” The war had come to Israel’s eastern front, and would soon engulf Jerusalem as well.18

  Intermittent machine-gun exchanges had been raging in the city since 9:30. The Jordanians gradually escalated the fighting, however, introducing 3-inch mortars and 106-mm recoilless rifles. Gen. Narkiss ordered his men to respond with small arms only, firing in a flat trajectory to avoid hitting civilians and Holy Places in the Old City. “They’d start shooting…and we would take pains not to answer,” attested Col. Eliezer Amitai, commander of the 16th Jerusalem (Etzioni) Brigade, a reserve unit comprised mostly of city residents. Like Narkiss, Amitai had fought in Jerusalem in 1948, as a platoon commander with Harel. “Tanks couldn’t fire, recoilless rifles couldn’t move around for fear of provoking the Jordanians. We wanted them to be quiet.” Though increasingly anxious about Mount Scopus, Narkiss adhered strictly to Dayan’s instructions to avoid any provocation of Jordan. Even when, at 10:30, Jordan Radio announced that Jordanian forces had taken Government Hill ridge—a false claim, it turned out—the Israelis refrained from responding.

  So far, the Jordanians had reacted much as Israeli leaders had predicted, demonstrating their Arab solidarity but in a limited way, short of all-out war. But then, at 11:15, that situation changed. Jordanian army howitzers launched the first of 6,000 shells on Jewish Jerusalem, beginning with Kibbutz Ramat Rachel in the south and Mount Scopus in the north, before ranging into the city center and outlying neighborhoods. Military installations were targeted, along with the Knesset and the prime minister’s house, but the firing was also indiscriminate. Over 900 buildings would be damaged, among them the new Hadassah hospital in Ein Kerem, where stained glass windows by artist Marc Chagall were shattered. The roof of Mount Zion’s Church of the Dormition was also set on fire. Over a thousand civilians were wounded, 150 seriously; 20 of them died. “Very heavy machine and mortar fire, probably cannon, continuous in Jerusalem,” reported the British consul-general at around 11:30. “It looks as though Jordanians were pouring a lot into the New City. Jerusalem totally engulfed in war. Bullets have already hit the consulate, one narrowly missing Her Majesty’s Consul.”19

  Coming in the wake of their swift gains against Egypt, the sharp deterioration of the Jordanian border was the Israelis’ first major setback in the war. Dayan had wanted to avoid opening a second front at least until the south was secured. Also, France had declared an arms embargo of the Middle East—French weapons would continue to reach Israel but secretly and at a slower rate—and there was new need to conserve ammunition. While he rejected repeated requests by Narkiss to mount an infantry breakthrough to Mount Scopus, Dayan sanctioned a number of actions in response to a new eastern threat. The air forces of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq would be neutralized, along with the radar facility at ‘Ajlun. The enemy’s frontline positions around the Old City would also be reduced. The 10th Harel Brigade, along with several units from the Northern Command, would be activated for the possible implementation of Operation Whip against Jordan.20

  Shortly before 12:30, the IAF conducted a lightning strike against the airfields of Mafraq and Amman. Before the war, Weizman had favored eliminating the Jordanian air force even without provocation, as a preventive measure, but Rabin had vetoed the idea. Now, after the Hawker attacks on Netanya, Weizman had his pretext. The Hawkers were on the ground refueling when the Israelis struck. Within nine minutes, both bases were rendered inoperable, the runways cratered, their control towers knocked out. The second Israeli wave came at 1:10 P.M. and completed the task by destroying all twenty of Jordan’s Hawkers. Eight other aircraft went up in flames, along with Gen. Bull’s private plane. A sole C-130 Hercules managed to take off with fourteen pilots for the H-3 airfield in western Iraq, there to continue the battle. Israel lost a single Mystère, to ground fire.

  Hussein watched the attack from his yard, where his young sons, ‘Abdallah and Faisal, thrilled to the thud of the bombs. He witnessed the death of his friend, Maj. Firas ‘Ajluni, as he tried to take off in his jet. The k
ing’s presence at home, he would later claim, saved his life, for his office at the Basman Palace was riddled with Israeli cannon and rocket fire.

  Another observer of the slaughter was Wasfi al-Tall, the royal adviser who had opposed Jordan’s alliance with Egypt. Tall slapped his hands over his eyes and wept, “We’ve lost everything our Majesty built over the entire course of his rule!” He then turned to Shuqayri, berating him as if he were Nasser: “And where is the Egyptian air force? Where are your MiG’s, your missiles?”21

  For Jordan, the destruction of the air force was only the beginning of Israel’s retribution. The IAF also attacked the 40th Brigade as it moved south from the Damiya Bridge. Maj. Arye Ben-Or, commander of the Fouga squadron that rocketed the Jordanians, recalled that “it was an extraordinary experience flying over Bethlehem, Hebron, and Jericho…The feeling was that this time we’re fighting on our historic homeland.” The Fougas destroyed dozens of tanks and set alight an ammunition convoy of twenty-six trucks. “I didn’t know that the fighting there would release such powerful emotions hidden inside me,” admitted Ben-Or, who would die on a similar sortie five days later, up north.

  In Jerusalem, Israel responded to the Jordanian bombardment by unleashing a secret weapon, code-named L after its inventor, Col. David Laskov of the IDF engineering branch. Hidden in all the forward bunkers and pre-sighted on enemy positions opposite, the L was a coffin-shaped ground-to-ground missile that hit with devastating impact. “People, sandbags, stones flew into the air,” one eyewitness remembered. “Thick clouds of smoke enshrouded all the [Jordanian] bunkers. Pieces of buildings fell down on them, and telephone poles.” One Jordanian soldier, surrendering, was convinced that Israel had dropped an atomic bomb.22

  Yet, even as Israel took a more aggressive stand against Jordan, it continued to seek ways of containing, if not ending, the battle. An 11:40 attempt by Gen. Bull to arrange a cease-fire was accepted by the Israelis. Their representative to the IJMAC, Col. Jerry Bieberman, met with Jordan’s Col. Stanowi and informed him, “on the basis of reliable sources,” that “the Egyptian air force has been annihilated” and therefore Jordan should agree to a cease-fire immediately. The initiative made no impression, however. In a radio address, Prime Minister Jum’a told listeners: “We are today living the holiest hours of our life, united with all the other armies of the Arab nation, we are fighting the war of heroism and honor against our common enemy. We have waited years for this battle to erase the stain of the past.” Loudspeakers atop the Dome of the Rock mosque exhorted the faithful “to take up your weapons and take back your country stolen by the Jews.”23 Thus entreated, the Jordanians began their attack.