Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  Shkhimat made ready, beefing up his bazooka and antitank gun crews in the triple-tiered bunkers facing Nablus Road. The Israelis blundered into a maelstrom. The tanks fired point-blank down the street, wave after wave of paratroopers charged, but the Jordanians held their ground. “They were like drunkards, exhausted and lost,” Mahmud Abu Faris, a company commander in the 2nd al-Husseini Battalion, described his assailants. “We fought out of faith, not on orders.” One Israeli officer, he claimed, tried to tackle him, but Abu Faris cut off his ear, then shot him with his pistol.

  However robust, Jordanian resistance gradually gave way to Israeli fire-power and momentum. Platoon commander Ghazi Isma’il Ruba’iyya remembered trying to raise the morale of his five remaining men: “I failed. I looked into their faces and saw what a soldier sees before death.” Ruba’iyya radioed battalion headquarters but got no answer. Shkhimat had ordered his men to withdraw to Musrara, a neighborhood abutting the Old City, leaving 45 dead and 142 wounded.

  The scene was no less hellish for the Israelis. “Suddenly the street turned into a slaughterhouse,” Yigal Nir, a paratrooper, averred. “In seconds, everyone around me was hit. Having not felt fear before, the transformation was drastic. I felt abandoned suddenly and hopeless.” Only thirty men—half the original force—crossed the 600 meters from the American consulate to the YMCA—Simtat ha-Mavet, they dubbed it, the Alley of Death.

  More fortunate was the 71st Battalion, which succeeded in breaching the wire and minefields and emerged near Wadi Joz at the base of Mount Scopus. Its commander, Maj. Uzi Eilam, a Chicago-trained engineer and another veteran of the retaliation raids, had been disappointed about his unit’s transfer from Sinai. “When they told us we were going up to Jerusalem, I felt a keen disappointment,” he confided after the war. “Clearly, we were not going to parachute there, that we would merely guard the border…But then, when the shelling started…we realized that this was something serious. That there was going to be war.”

  From Wadi Joz, the Israelis could cut off the Old City from Jericho and East Jerusalem from Ramallah. The one remaining route to the West Bank—eastward through the suburb of al-‘Azariya—was zeroed in by IDF artillery. Israeli shellfire also deterred the Jordanians from counterattacking against Eilam from their still-formidable positions around Augusta Victoria. Confident, a detachment from the 28th Battalion ventured toward the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, a gleaming castlelike structure on the Old City’s northwestern corner, which it took at 7:27 A.M., after a brief skirmish.

  This, Gur believed, was the ideal jumping-off site for the final assault on the Old City, to be effected through the nearby Herod’s (Flower) Gate. Along with three Hebrew University archeologists anxious to protect the museum’s relics, the paratrooper commander moved his forward headquarters to Rockefeller. He found that the area was still dominated by Jordanian snipers and that his brigade was seriously depleted. Nevertheless, he asked Narkiss’s permission to penetrate the gate immediately. The answer was negative; the Cabinet had yet to make a decision on Jerusalem. Gur, furious, contemplated ignoring the government—“By obeying my orders not to enter the Old City, would I not reap sorrow for generations and shame on the IDF which was arrayed just outside the walls?” But Narkiss managed to assuage him. “Our goal is to surround the city and force its surrender,” he explained. “Conversely, surrounding the city will be a staging ground for capturing it.” The paratroopers were to regroup at Rockefeller and prepare to take Augusta Victoria ridge later that afternoon.16

  While Gur’s men rested at Rockefeller, Uri Ben Ari and the 10th Brigade broke through to the Ramallah-Jerusalem road. At Tel al-Ful, a rocky knoll on which construction had begun for Hussein’s newest palace, the Israeli Shermans fought a vehement, running battle with as many as thirty Jordanian Pattons under Capts. Dib Suliman and ‘Awad Sa’ud ‘Eid. The Jordanians succeeded in thwarting the enemy advance and in destroying a number of half-tracks, but ultimately a combination of Israeli air power and the vulnerability of the Pattons’ external fuel tanks proved decisive. Leaving half their tanks smoldering, Suliman and ‘Eid withdrew toward Jericho.

  Thereafter, the 10th Brigade joined with the 4th and descended through the Arab neighborhoods of Shu’afat and French Hill, through the Jordanian defenses at Mivtar, to emerge at Ammunition Hill. So swift was their thrust that forces in the Israeli side of the city, mistaking them for Jordanians, shot at them. Confusion ensued as tanks and their crews wandered the streets, looking for a battle. “We didn’t know what had been captured and what wasn’t,” recalled the paratroopers’ deputy commander, Col. Moshe Peles. “We knew nothing.”

  Israeli historians would later question whether the struggle for Ammunition Hill was truly necessary, whether the tanks’ prompt arrival had rendered superfluous the sacrifice of so many lives. Such second-guessing comes easily in the clarity of a classroom, but viewed from Narkiss’s perspective, through the fog of battle and the belief that Jordanian Pattons were still approaching, the assault on Ammunition Hill appeared the best means of rescuing Mount Scopus. The maneuver further established a double encirclement of Jerusalem—infantry on the inside, surrounded by an outer armored ring. By midday on June 6, a Jordanian army dispatch reported that “the enemy has conquered all of Jerusalem except for the Old City.”17

  The news came as no surprise to Hussein. “If we don’t decide within the next 24 hours, you can kiss your army and all of Jordan good-bye!” Gen. Riyad had warned the monarch just before dawn. “We are on the verge of losing the West Bank; all our forces will be isolated or destroyed.” The Egyptian commander of Jordan’s armed forces had posed two possibilities: either accept a cease-fire at once or order a general retreat. Both options were drastic, but perhaps unwarranted. Jordanian troops remained in control of the Old City and most of East Jerusalem; Israeli advances in the West Bank were confined to Latrun and the Jenin area. Even without air cover, the army could have conceivably held out until a cease-fire was arranged, assuring that most of the West Bank remained Jordan’s. The situation, as such, was analogous to Egypt’s in Sinai, and as in Egypt, passions obfuscated reality. No sooner had he heard the general’s advice when Hussein summoned the ambassadors of the U.S., the USSR, Britain, and France, and told them that his regime would “not survive one hour” without an “an immediate end to violent attacks.”

  Hussein was once again caught between clashing rocks. Acceptance of a formal cease-fire would be tantamount to a declaration of surrender at a time when Egypt was still fighting. The Palestinians would riot and even the army might revolt. Yet retreat was no less perilous, as Nasser could use it as a pretext for withdrawing his own troops and blaming Jordan for the collapse of the Arab war effort. “Jordan could have more difficulty maintaining law and order after a cease-fire than in the absence of one,” was Burns’s assessment, “What if Nasser calls for Hussein’s overthrow so that Jordan can continue the battle?”

  Hussein’s solution was to seek a secret understanding with Israel on halting the fighting or, better yet, an internationally imposed cease-fire. Phoning Burns in a state of near-hysteria, he claimed to have only fifteen minutes to make a decision on whether to evacuate the West Bank. “If we do not withdraw tonight, we will be chewed up. Tomorrow will leave only the choice of ordering the destruction of our equipment and leaving every soldier to look out for himself.” Asserting that Nasser had blundered terribly—“No one anticipated that the conflict would escalate so far and so fast”—and that Riyad was “pretty much running the show” in Jordan, Hussein assumed none of the blame for the situation, and denied that his troops had fired first on civilian targets. His sole concern was in obtaining an “an immediate end to the violence”—he avoided the term cease-fire—without which his regime would fall.

  Over the course of the night, Hussein conveyed no less than four requests for a de facto cease-fire, but each time the response was negative. “I believe it is probably too late to arouse any interest in Israel for the preservati
on of Hussein and his regime,” Barbour explained from Tel Aviv. Citing the continuing battles in both the Jerusalem and Nablus sectors, the Israel is claimed that Hussein had either lost control of his troops or was trying to deceive them into canceling their attack. While it supported a halt to the fighting, Washington’s reply to Hussein was no warmer: Either take personal charge of your army or else remain a target.

  Gravely disappointed, desperate, the king retorted with a warning of his own. If the fighting continued, Jordan would have no option but to corroborate Nasser’s charge of Anglo-American conspiracy.18

  It was not an idle threat, as Hussein proved a half-hour later, when a phone call arrived from Cairo. “Will we say that the U.S. and Britain [are attacking] or just the United States?” asked Nasser, inquiring whether the British even had aircraft carriers. Hussein responded, “United States and England,” and agreed to issue a statement to that effect immediately. Nasser was heartened. “By God,” he exclaimed, “I will make an announcement and you will make an announcement and we will see to it that the Syrians will make an announcement that American and British airplanes are taking part against us from aircraft carriers. We will stress the matter. And we will drive the point home.” The discussion ended with the Egyptian president urging the king “not to give up,” though the fighting was indeed hard. “We are with you with all our hearts and we are flying our planes over Israel today. Our planes have been striking at Israel’s airfields since morning.”19

  Made on an unscrambled civilian line—the UAC’s sophisticated communications equipment had never been installed—the conversation was recorded by Israeli intelligence and widely distributed. Hussein, in any case, never denied the call, and Egypt’s al-Ahram confirmed it publicly: “The King and the president agreed between them that the entire Arab nation must be informed of this important development and to adapt its position accordingly.” Jordan had received special dispensation from Nasser to maintain its relations with the United States, but that exception had come with a price. Hussein had become party to what Johnson would dub the “Big Lie.”

  The claim of a Western conspiracy to aid Israel helped Hussein mollify the Palestinians and preserve Jordan’s alliance with Egypt. Militarily, though, his position continued to deteriorate. Despite repeated requests for assistance from Syria and Saudi Arabia, and repeated assurances that both had sent forces to Jordan, no such assistance arrived. Syria’s 17th Mechanized Brigade got as far as the border but refused to move farther, its commander first claiming that he needed to reconnoiter the area and then that he lacked instructions from Damascus. The absence of orders was also the excuse proffered by Saudi forces, which similarly stopped at the border. An Egyptian military doctor attached to the Saudis, Dr. Munir Zaki Mustafa, bitterly recalled, “We hoped that one Israeli plane would attack us, so that we could say that we participated in the war and we fired our guns—but for naught.”

  Only Iraq’s 8th Brigade tried to engage in combat and to cross the Damiya Bridge, but there it was bombarded by Israeli planes and decimated. The IAF also destroyed a PLO battalion and attacked the H-3 air base in western Iraq—Hussein’s last hope for air cover. Though two of their Mirages were shot down, the Israelis left behind rows of smoking MiG’s and Hawker Hunters.

  By noon, a despondent Hussein asked Riyad to inform Field Marshal ‘Amer of the truth. “The situation on the West Bank is becoming desperate,” the general wrote, “the Israelis are attacking on all fronts. We are bombed day and night by the Israeli air force and can offer no resistance…the Jordanian, Syrian, and Iraqi air forces have been virtually destroyed.” Riyad concluded by reiterating his belief that, in the absence of a UN-imposed cease-fire, Jordan would have to withdraw its forces from the West Bank or suffer total defeat. Hussein had reconciled himself to this realization as well when, at 12:30, he sent a follow-up cable to Nasser:

  In addition to our very heavy losses in men and equipment, for lack of air protection our tanks are being disabled at a rate of one every ten minutes. And the bulk of the enemy forces are concentrated against the Jordanian army…To this situation, if it continues, there can be only one outcome: you and the Arab nation will lose this bastion, together with all its forces, after glorious combat that will be inscribed by history in blood.20

  In spite of his reluctance to accept either an open cease-fire or sanction retreat, the king was ready to relinquish his prerogatives and let Nasser decide. Yet, as the afternoon waned, no such decision arrived. In the interim, Israel’s offensive thundered on. Gen Peled’s tanks around Jenin were now preparing to continue south to Nablus, as another Israeli column advanced on the city from Qalqilya to the west. Just outside Jerusalem, the 10th and 4th Brigades occupied Ramallah with its 50,000 inhabitants. In Jerusalem itself, the 163rd Infantry Battalion under Lt. Col. Michael Peikas attacked Abu Tor, a heavily fortified Arab neighborhood overlooking the Old City’s southern wall. The fighting was vicious: seventeen Israelis were killed, Peikas among them, and fifty-four wounded. But the IDF secured the area, thus severing the Old City from Bethlehem and Hebron to the south, while Israeli forces descending from Ramallah would soon cut the last open road to Jericho.

  By the late afternoon of June 6, the bulk of Jordan’s army was in danger of being stranded on the West Bank. Riyad, usually calm and even-tempered—he never missed his afternoon nap, even during the fighting—now argued loudly with Hussein over the king’s refusal to approve evacuation. “My hardest job has been to play U Thant to you,” the general carped.

  Exasperated, the king bolted out of his headquarters, commandeered a jeep, and raced down to the Jordan Valley. There he encountered the remnants of the 25th Infantry and 40th Armored Brigades, retreating from Jenin. “I will never forget the hallucinating sight of that defeat,” he later recorded. “Roads clogged with trucks, jeeps, and all kinds of vehicles twisted, disemboweled, dented, still smoking, giving off that particular smell of metal and paint burned by exploding bombs—a stink that only powder can make. In the midst of this charnel house were men. In groups of thirty or two, wounded, exhausted, they were trying to clear a path under the monstrous coup de grâce being dealt them by a horde of Israeli Mirages screaming in a cloudless blue sky seared with sun.” Hussein thought to inquire about ‘Ali ibn ‘Ali, a cousin serving with the 40th, but loath to exploit his station, the monarch kept silent.21

  While their sovereign fretted, Hussein’s troops continued fighting. Behind the Old City walls, ‘Ata ‘Ali was determined to hold out. Though he had only two heavy mortars left, there were rations and ammunition to last him and his men for two weeks. He set up headquarters in the Armenian Quarter, placed fifty soldiers at each of Jerusalem’s seven gates, and waited for the Israeli attack.

  It came just after 7:00 that night, though the Israelis’ target was not yet the Old City but, yet again, Augusta Victoria ridge. Fradkin’s 28th Battalion, aiming to reach the ridge via Wadi Joz, took a wrong turn and found itself under the parapets of the Lions (St. Stephen’s) Gate. Murderous fire rained down on the attackers. Four Sherman tanks, caught on the narrow bridge linking the Garden of Gethsemane with the Church of Jehosophat, were hit as they tried to turn, as were three jeeps from the paratroopers’ recon company. In all, five Israelis were killed and twenty-five wounded, while survivors huddled for cover in the depressed yard of the Virgin’s Tomb. Observers on Mount Scopus, meanwhile, reported sighting a convoy of forty Pattons advancing through al-‘Azariya, en route to the Mount of Olives. Gur, fearing that the entire force would be caught in open ground with their backs literally to the wall, ordered Fradkin’s men back to Rockefeller. Israel’s attempt to completely surround the Old City and force its garrison to surrender had failed. For the Jordanians, valuable time had been bought.22

  The inability of the Israelis to reach Augusta Victoria should have provided a fillip to Hussein, strengthening his aversion to retreat. That action, though, had far less impact on Jordan than on Israel, where military and civilian leaders were deep in debat
e over the pros and cons of conquering the Old City. At stake were crucial considerations of time and world opinion, of Israel’s relations with the UN and the United States. Equally pressing was the apparent kindling of yet another flashpoint, not in Sinai or in the West Bank, but on the northern border with Syria.

  Damascus and Jerusalem

  The Syrian shelling of Israel’s northern settlements, unabated since the previous day, went largely unanswered. Residents of those settlements, comprising the country’s largest lobbying group, continued to pressure the government to act, their cause championed by Labor Minister Yigal Allon. Oxford alumnus, elite forces’ commander, and hero of the 1948 campaign against Egypt, the forty-nine-year-old Allon had promised the farmers that the war would not end with Syria’s guns still trained on them.

  In promoting an operation to eliminate those guns, Allon could count on at least implicit support from Eshkol. The former Galilee farmer and water expert, Eshkol had deep sympathy for the northern settlers—and an abiding interest in the Jordan headwaters. “From the moment war broke out, Eshkol showed special apprehension regarding the north,” recollected Col. Lior, “In every consultation and every discussion…he would as three or four times, ‘what’s happening up north?’ I think he went a little crazy with it…constantly bothering people about the Banias [one of the Jordan River sources]. Twelve times a day, he’d ask; ’What about the Banias?”

  But not all Eshkol’s ministers shared his Golan obsession. Zalman Aran and Haim Moshe Shapira, among others, still feared the opening of yet another front and possible intervention by the Soviets, and in this they had a powerful ally in Dayan.

  The defense minister also expressed anxiety about the Russians, and doubted whether the Northern Command, already committed on the West Bank, had the troops necessary to take the Golan. In conversations with the Cabinet ministers, he dismissed the strategic threat posed by Syria. “We’re afraid of the Egyptians, even though they’re far away, because they’re very strong, and we’re afraid of the Jordanians, though they’re weak, because they’re very close. But the Syrians are weak and far away—there’s no immediate need to attack them.”