Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  Lior next called the headquarters of the chief of staff. Though Rabin’s reaction was not recorded, he immediately ordered a helicopter to take him to Northern Command. There, landing at 8:00, he rushed to find Dado. “The Syrian army is nowhere near collapse,” Rabin admonished him. “You must assume that it will fight obstinately and will fight with all of its strength!”3

  Between Hammer and Pincer

  Now with more planes than targets, firing rockets salvaged from captured Egyptian stocks, the air force went to work. Beginning at 9:40 A.M., Israeli jets carried out dozens of sorties and dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on Syrian positions from Mount Hermon to Tawafiq. Artillery batteries and storehouses were knocked out, and transport columns driven from the roads. But the bombs could scarcely scratch the bunkers and trench systems overlooking Israeli territory and covering every route up the face of the Golan. Elazar nevertheless redoubled the barrage to provide time to clear paths through the mile-thick minefields, and to break the Syrians’ morale.

  If not broken, Syria’s morale had at least been seriously cracked. Convinced that the Israelis were tired and intimidated by the shelling of their settlements, the Syrians were unprepared for the ferocity of the IAF’s bombardment. Col. Ahmad al-Mir, commander of the central sector, reported 163 enemy sorties in just over three hours; 52 of his soldiers were killed and 80 wounded. The impact was psychological as well, as a number of senior officers deserted, to be followed by many of their troops. Instructed to reinforce the frontline positions, Maj. Gen. ‘Awad Baha, the operations chief, pointed to the lack of air cover and dismissed the order as “suicidal.” A similar response came from the 70th Armored Brigade stationed outside Quneitra. Its commander, Col. ‘Izzat Jadid, refused to counterattack, even at night, and instead led his tanks back to Damascus. Though Syrian radio described the air strikes as an Anglo-American effort “to save the Israelis from destruction,” there could be no dissembling the damage.

  Nevertheless, the bulk of Syrian forces remained in their bunkers, ready to fight. The greatest concentration was in the central sector, where three brigades and 144 artillery pieces were aimed at the so-called Customs House road—the straightest axis to Quneitra and thus the most likely to be taken by invaders. The army was ordered to block that route at all costs, to hunker down and conserve its ammunition. “Avoid opening fire,” Chief of Staff Suweidani told his commanders. “We have requested United Nations intervention. We are awaiting a response any moment.”4

  Contrary to Syrian expectations, the Israelis were not planning to take the Customs House road, at least not in the initial attack. The Hammer plan called for a swift smashing of the enemy’s frontline defense where the enemy least expected it—in the north, near Kfar Szold, and south of the Sea of Galilee. But massive traffic jams caused by forces moving north from the West Bank and Sinai indefinitely delayed the southern assault. Instead, Israel’s secondary thrust would be made in the central sector, between the fortresses of Darbashiya and Jalabina. Elazar expected the opening assault to be bloody, almost prohibitively so. Climbing extremely steep (2,000 feet), rocky terrain, in the daylight—the original attack was supposed to have been staged at night—the first wave would be totally exposed to Syrian fire. It would have to move swiftly, reaching the patrol roads that linked all of Syria’s fortifications and then capturing the fortifications as well, which were strategically positioned to provide covering fire for one another. They were girded by mines and barbed wire, and bristling with concrete bunkers and pillboxes.

  “If this is the plan, know that it’s suicide,” Avraham Mendler told Elazar, when informed of his assignment. The Shermans of his 8th Armored Brigade—Israel’s only tanks on the front—were worn from the heavy fighting in Sinai and their crews exhausted. Now they were being asked to crack Syria’s most formidable defenses, in broad daylight, over almost impassable terrain. Indeed, no sooner had it moved out at 11:40 A.M. and began scaling the escarpment than Mendler’s column came under raking fire from dug-in Syrian tanks.

  “At first, we weren’t afraid at all,” said Ya‘akov Horesh, member of a tank crew in the 8th Brigade’s 129th Battalion. “Bulldozers ran in front of us, clearing the wire and mines. But then the sky opened up. The bulldozers were knocked out…half-tracks were blown into the air. Suddenly, we were hit!…I went up to the turret hatch and saw that the tank was ablaze and that I was burning with it. I heard shots, heard someone on the radio calling for air cover. I decided it was better to be shot than burned to death, and I threw myself from the turret…They [Israeli soldiers] picked me up and put me on the deck of another tank. I was still on fire.”

  Five of the eight bulldozers were struck immediately, their burning hulls battered aside by other, still-advancing vehicles. The Shermans, their maneuverability sharply reduced by the terrain, moved slowly toward the fortified village of Sir al-Dib, aiming for the major fortress at Qala‘. Casualties mounted, including the battalion commander, thirty-nine-year-old Arye Biro. Reconnaissance officer Maj. Rafael Mokady, in civilian life a university lecturer, assumed Biro’s place, only to be killed ten minutes later. Then, with the situation already critical, part of the attacking force lost its way and emerged opposite another redoubt, Za‘ura, manned by reservists from Syria’s 244th Battalion. “If we could hold Za‘ura,” Mendler later testified, “I believed that we could turn the tide of the battle.” Improvising, he ordered the attacks on Za‘ura and Qala‘ to proceed simultaneously.

  The fighting was intense and confused as Israeli and Syrian tanks struggled around obstacles, firing at extremely short range. Mendler recalled how “the Syrians fought well and bloodied us. We beat them only by crushing them under our treads and by blasting them with our cannons at very short range, from 100 to 500 meters.” The first three Shermans to enter Qala‘ were halted by a Syrian bazooka team. Behind it, a relief column of seven T-54s rushed to repel the attackers. Mokady’s replacement, Capt. Nataniel Horowitz, remembered how, “we took heavy fire from the houses but we couldn’t turn back because forces behind us were pushing us forward. We were on a narrow path with mines on either side.” Suffering from a head wound—blood shorted his helmet’s intercom—and with his maps destroyed, Horowitz signaled his remaining vehicles to press forward, and called for an air strike on the enemy’s armor. Mendler turned him down, saying there were simply no planes available. “Sir,” the captain replied, “if we don’t receive air support at once, it’s good-bye, for I don’t think we’ll see each other again.” A pair of jets materialized and disabled two of the T-54’s; the remainder withdrew. The surviving defenders of Qala‘ also retreated, after their commander, Maj. Muhammad Sa‘id, was killed.

  By 6:00 P.M., both Qala‘ and Za‘ura had fallen, along with a third fort, ‘Ein Fit. The most accessible road to Quneitra lay open to the Israelis, but their victory had been largely pyrrhic. Dozens of Israelis had been killed and wounded, and of their original twenty-six tanks, only two remained battle-worthy.5

  Similar carnage occurred throughout the central sector—in the battles for the strongholds of Dardara and Tel Hilal, which left twenty-one members of Israel’s 181st Battalion dead and thirty-six wounded. Desperate fighting also broke out along Hammer’s northern axis, where the 12th Barak (“Lightning”) Battalion of the Golani Infantry Brigade was assigned to clear some thirteen positions, including Tel Fakhr—an imposing, horseshoe-shaped bastion three miles inside Syrian territory. All had been subjected to prolonged air attack in the hope of reducing their defenses or inducing their garrisons to flee.

  But here, too, the Israelis underestimated the bunkers’ ability to withstand massive bombing, while navigational errors again placed them directly under the Syrians’ guns. One by one, the battalion’s nine tanks and nineteen half-tracks were picked off, their passengers wounded or killed. Reuven Dangor, driver of one of those tanks, found himself targeted by multiple artillery pieces. “No sooner had we passed the southern part of the tel than I felt a violent jolt…The driver’s compartm
ent filled with smoke and then, when I finally recovered from the shock, we caught another blast, harder and deadlier than the first, in the turret. I escaped through the emergency hatch and looked for the crewmembers who’d been sitting in the turret. The turret, though, was empty.”

  The Israelis had been stopped, but the forces who stopped them had also taken a beating. The internal Syrian army report of the battle provided a stark record of fear, chaos, and desertion:

  With the enemy just 700 meters away, under heavy shelling, the platoon in the front trench prepared for battle. The platoon commander sent Private Jalil ‘Issa to the company commander to request permission to take cover, but 0‘Issa could not find him. The platoon commander sent another runner who returned with Private Fajjar Hamdu Karnazi who reported on the company commander’s disappearance. When the enemy reached 600 meters, Sgt. Muhammad Yusuf Ibrahim fired a 10-inch anti-tank gun and knocked out the lead tank. But then he and his squad commander were killed. The enemy column advanced. First Sergeant Anwar Barbar, in charge of the second 10-inch gun, could not be found. The platoon commander searched for him but unsuccessfully…Private Hajj al-Din, who was killed just minutes later, took the gun and fired it alone, knocking out two tanks and forcing the column to retreat. But when the platoon commander tried to radio the information to headquarters, nobody answered.

  On the road, meanwhile, the Israeli battalion commander, Moshe “Musa” Klein, ordered his twenty-five remaining men to dismount their vehicles, to divide into two groups, and to charge the northern and southern flanks of Tel Fakhr. The southern approach was densely braced with bunkers, trenches, and a double row of wire. Behind them, a company of the 187th Infantry Battalion under Capt. Ahmad Ibrahim Khalili waited with an arsenal of antitank guns, machine-guns, and 82-mm mortars. “It was one of our most fortified positions,” he remembered. “It placed them [the Israelis] directly in our crosshairs.”

  The fighting that ensured was reminiscent of that at Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill, waged at extremely close quarters, often hand-to-hand. The first Israelis to reach the perimeter laid bodily down on the barbed wire so that the rest of their squads could vault over them. From there they dashed to the Syrian trenches.

  Captain Diko Takum, the commander of Tel Fakhr’s northern flank, ordered his men not to fire until the Israelis had reached the wire. “We’ll catch them in a sure-kill zone,” he said. Minutes later, Takum’s deputy, Lieutenant Hatim Haliq, reported that “the Jews are already inside! I’ve taken heavy casualties!” Takum called for reinforcements, but when no answer came, he issued instructions to hold all positions indefinitely. “Nobody moves. Do not let them advance. We will all stand here or we’ll all die here.”

  The Israelis charged. Shlomo Ben Basat, a Golani enlisted man, testified:

  I ran to the left with Kalman, my NCO. We ran through the trenches, clearing out bunkers, until suddenly we saw an alcove with beds and boxes in it. Kalman told me, “‘I’ll go in and you wait outside.” But no sooner had he entered [the alcove] when he was hit by burst of fire from a wounded Syrian inside. Kalman managed to stumble out—he fell and died. Then the Syrian came out. He saw me and immediately started pleading to me for his life. He stood there with his gun still smoking from the bullets that killed Kalman. I avenged his blood.

  Ten of the thirteen Israelis who assaulted the northern flank became casualties, while only one of the twelve on the southern flank, Corp. Yitzhak Hamawi, remained standing. “We ran, Musa (Klein) and I, through the trenches,” he remembered. “Whenever a helmet popped up, we couldn’t tell if it was one of ours or not. Suddenly in front of us stood a soldier whom we couldn’t identify. The battalion commander shouted the password and when the soldier didn’t answer, he fired a burst at him but missed. We jumped out of the trench, ran five meters, and then Musa fell on his face…killed by the Syrian soldier he’d missed. Our radio man waited for him to leap up again, then shot him.”

  The man who killed Klein was identified in Syrian records as ‘Ali ‘Issa Hafez. Dying immediately after him was Sgt. Jamil Musa, commander of the last trench to hold out in Tel Fakhr. Only eight of its defenders remained, under Corp. Mustafa Suliman, and these retreated when a detachment of Golani scouts breached the fort from an unmarked trail in the rear. A single Syrian officer, 2nd Lt. Ahmad ‘Ali, and two privates, surrendered. In the seven-hour struggle, the Israelis had thirty-one dead and eighty-two wounded. Sixty-two Syrians were killed and twenty taken prisoner.

  Tel Fakhr fell, as did Tel ‘Azzaziat, taken by the Golani Brigade’s 51st Battalion, and Darbashiya. Though Israeli forces had achieved most of their objectives and well ahead of schedule, they had penetrated no deeper than eight miles into Syrian territory. A five-mile-wide bridgehead between Za‘ura and Qala‘ had been established and armed probes effected at five other points on the Syrian front. These were the minimal goals of Hammer, but Elazar and the general staff aspired to much more than that—to Operation Pincers and the conquest of the entire Golan. Accomplishing that, Rabin estimated, would take two more days of fighting, at least.6

  Beyond its shattered first line, Syria’s defenses were largely intact. Mount Hermon and the Banias in the north and the entire southern sector between Tawafiq and the Customs House road remained in Syrian hands. Meeting early that night, Syrian leaders decided to reinforce those dispositions as quickly as possible, and to maintain a steady barrage on the Israeli settlements. The 17th Mechanized Battalion, having advanced to northern Jordan at Gen. Riyad’s insistence, was summarily moved back to defend Damascus. In a nationally broadcast speech, al-Assad swore to carry on the battle against “Zionist imperialist aggression,” irrespective of the cost. “The enemy’s objective is to break the people’s morale, thus forcing it to retreat from its heroic stand in the battle against the enemies of the Arab nation.” Arab ambassadors to Damascus were summoned to the Foreign Ministry and asked what their governments would do to assist Syria militarily. A special appeal was made to Egypt, Syria’s ally by treaty.7

  Curtain Call

  The Egyptians could offer no help, of course, but were themselves in need of assistance urgently. Whether out of bitterness toward Damascus for failing to

  come to Egypt’s rescue earlier in the war, or a need to recoil from the deathtrap of inter-Arab politics, Cairo all but ignored the battle unfolding in the north. Its sole concern was Sinai and Israel’s coup de grâce.

  By noontime, June 9, the Israelis had completed the peninsula’s conquest. Two columns from Yoffe’s Ugdah—one heading south from Suez and the other west from Mitla—met up with paratroopers who landed by helicopter at Ras al-Sudr. The entire eastern bank of the Gulf of Suez was now in their hands. In the north, Gonen’s 7th Armored Brigade reached the shore of the Great Bitter Lake, while the Granit Force, bypassing Qantara, took up position opposite Isma‘iliya and Firdan. Though scattered skirmishes continued—the Egyptians lost fifty more tanks—the fighting had effectively ceased. The Egyptians scuttled ships to block the Suez Canal, but the Israelis, perhaps out of a sense of overconfidence or simply fatigue, failed to occupy its northern terminus. That port—Fu’ad—would soon serve as the main conduit for the massive Soviet rearmament of Egypt.

  The first deliveries of Russian arms had in fact already landed near Cairo, and would total nearly 50,000 tons by the end of the month. Yet, not even this impressive effort could hide the scenes of thousands of Egyptian troops limping back to the capital. Humiliated, many of these men removed their uniforms, lest they be identified with defeat. “There were only four hundred soldiers between Isma‘iliya and my house,” Nasser later told Sudanese leader Mohamed Mahjoub. “Israeli troops could have entered Cairo if they wanted to.” British intelligence sources reported that “defenses apparent along [the] approaches to Cairo consist of several sand barricades and trenches that could scarcely pose any serious problems for an advancing army except perhaps a dissident Egyptian one.” Rumors spread of an impending revolt by disaffected officers or by pro-Soviet age
nts led by ‘Ali Sabri. Intelligence Chief Salah Nasir went so far as to risk a secret meeting with Nolte, warning him of a Communist coup unless the United States embraced “pro-Arab” policies.

  Gone were the mass demonstrations in praise of Arab victories, the reports of Israel’s demise. The economy lay in shambles. “By the time the cease-fire had been arranged the UAR was approximately $448.5 million per year poorer than she had been before the war started,” one British diplomat, tallying the loss of tourism, Sinai oil, and Canal revenues, calculated. Deeply depressed, Anwar Sadat still refused to come out of his villa near the pyramids. “I…was completely overwhelmed by our defeat. It sank into the very fabric of my consciousness so that I relived it day and night…trying, with all the fortitude I possessed, to weather the fierce campaign of denigration launched by both friend and foe against our armed forces.”Le Monde’s Eric Rouleau recalled how “an air of mourning seized Cairo,” and how secretly its citizens were calling Nasser al-wahsh—“The Beast.” Nor was the disenchantment confined to Egypt. Rioters in Algiers chanted “Nasser traitor!” and attacked the Egyptian embassy; in Tunis they burned down the Egyptian cultural center. The Arab world had been shamed and angered, and desperately needed a scapegoat.8Nasser seemed willing to play that scapegoat. The once-unflappable leader was suffering from severe depression, complaining of leg pains, and sleeping with a gun under his pillow. Repeatedly he phoned Gen. Fawzi, questioning him on the state of his troops. “I’m sitting here waiting for the army to come and take me,” he told Madkur Abu al-‘Izz, the governor of Aswan, whom Nasser would soon name to rebuild the air force. The president was sitting in the dark—a blackout was still enforced—a single candle lighting his face. “My personal guard is at the front, along the Canal. But I need nothing except for my pistol. It is here, in my pocket, ready.” The implication was that Nasser would take his own life rather than fall victim to a military coup. And yet, shortly after midnight, when reports reached him that ‘Amer had already attempted suicide, Nasser rushed to Supreme Headquarters.