Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  Israel’s decision to prolong the fight coincided with Syria’s determination to put up a stronger one. Bolstered by the Security Council’s sudden willingness to confront the Israelis and by Russian threats to intervene, Damascus tried to rescind its proclamation of Quneitra’s capture. “Our brave forces are still fighting in Quneitra,” al-Assad broadcast to Syrian listeners at 11:45 A.M.“Our brave soldiers will not let the enemy conquer the city. Great numbers of enemy tanks have been destroyed.” A commentator added; “Our victory in Quneitra today means victory in Tel Aviv tomorrow.”

  The announcement came too late, however. The Syrian army was in full flight, abandoning its heavy equipment, jamming the roads. Soviet advisers exhorted the troops to remain in their posts, and orders were issued to shoot deserters on sight. All such efforts proved futile, however; the Soviets were ignored while the commanders charged with executing deserters had them- selves abandoned the field. Believing that the entire Golan had already fallen, driven by rumors of Israelis wielding nuclear weapons, some 4,000 Syrian soldiers sought refuge in Jordan, and 3,000 in Lebanon.

  “We were totally cut off, without radio contact and under heavy bombardment,” claimed Marwan Hamdan al-Khuli, an ordnance officer. His platoon had dug in near the Bnot Ya‘akov Bridge, untouched by Israeli bombardments, waiting for orders to invade Galilee. “Finally the word came to retreat [but] without knowing why. All we learned we heard on the radio, and from that we began to guess that we’d lost the war.” Capt. Muhammad ‘Ammar, who had survived the battles around Tel Fakhr, recalled the state of confusion: “The forces that were supposed to block the enemy’s advance pulled out without authorization, without coordination. We knew nothing, and had no choice but to fall back. In my platoon alone we had ten killed and four wounded. We had no ammunition and no way of getting more.” 8th Brigade commander Ibrahim Isma’il Khahya spoke candidly of his humiliation:

  We received orders to block the roads leading to Quneitra. But then the fall of the city was announced and that caused many of my soldiers to leave the front and run back to Syria while those roads were still open. They piled onto vehicles. It further crushed our morale. I retreated before I ever saw an enemy soldier.

  Compounding the confusion was the exodus of 95,000 Syrian civilians from the Golan. “On June 5, we received the order to evacuate,” recalled ‘Ali al-Darwish, a farmer from the village of al-‘Uyun, and a National Guard volunteer. “There was an [Syrian] artillery battalion nearby, and there was a danger that Israeli shells fired at it might hit the villagers. We took nothing with us, only blankets for the children. We hid in caves for five days until the order came to pull out entirely, and we fled on foot to Jordan.”‘Abdallah Mar’i Hasan, a Palestinian working for the Syrian administration, insisted on remaining in Quneitra until the morning of June 10. “Only then, when I realized that everyone else had abandoned the city, did I leave, too. I had nothing but the clothes on my back.” The Druze and the Circassian communities, whose kinsmen in Israel served loyally in the IDF, alone remained to greet the conquerors.

  Most of the refugees converged on Damascus, and yet not even the capital seemed safe from the Israeli onslaught. “The Jews are…closing in on Damascus,” Chief of Staff Suweidani warned Syria’s political leaders; “nobody can stop them. Israel enjoys the support of the Americans and the British and can afford to spurn the UN. We must prepare to defend the capital and to the last drop of blood.” And yet the first to flee the city was the general staff, described by one American diplomatic source as “at least cowardly, at most treasonous,” followed by government ministers, who rushed to Aleppo with stocks of hoarded gold. “We never had the honor of fighting the Zionist enemy,” admitted Mustafa Tlas, who had spent much of the day dodging Israeli jets as he retreated. Though jeeps with bullhorns sped around urging the people to stand and fight, the defense of Damascus was left to a single brigade—the 70th, known for its loyalty to the regime11

  Following full-tilt on the Syrians’ heels, the Israelis descended on Quneitra from three directions—from Mas’ade and Buq’ata in the north, east from Qala’, and northeast from Tel Abu Nida’. Other units headed south to Khushniya and north into the foothills abutting the Lebanese border. At the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee, a concentrated artillery barrage on Tawafiq at 1:00 P.M. preceded a paratrooper assault to take the fortress. Thereafter, gambling on the possibility that few, if any, Syrian troops remained in the field, 800 paratroopers were flown by helicopter first to Kafr Harb, then to el-‘Al, and finally to Butmiya. So quick was this leapfrogging that commanders often had no idea where they were, only that they had to keep advancing before the cease-fire took effect. The Syrians retreated even more swiftly; most of their positions were deserted.

  Yet progress remained relatively slow. The two o’clock deadline was approaching, and even the lead Israeli elements had yet to reach their objectives. Many, believing a cease-fire was imminent, saw no reason to rush. Driving past Nafakh, Yigal Allon halted his jeep and asked one loitering officer—Ron Sariq, a reconnaissance company commander—what he and his men were doing.

  “Waiting for orders,” came Sariq’s reply.

  “Don’t just stand there, run! Now!” shouted Allon. “Quickly take Quneitra!”12

  Quneitra was taken at 12:30 P.M. Mendler deferred to a request from Bar-Lev and allowed the Golani Brigade, in honor of its nineteen-year defense of the northern border, to enter the city first. What they found were entire neighborhoods almost completely deserted, their stores and markets full, lunches still hot on the tables. “We could have continued on to Damascus,” recalled Col. Benny Inbar, commander of Golani’s 51st Battalion. “The road was totally open before us. They [the Syrians] had fled.”

  Meeting in the Syrian Officers’ Club, Elazar urged Rabin to authorize an armored thrust deep into Syria. A 1964 IDF contingency plan, Hatchet (Garzen), called for two divisions to conquer the enemy’s capital within eighty hours. But Rabin rejected the idea, insisting that there be no more seizure of Syrian territory. The sole exception was Mount Hermon, described by Motti Hod, who was also present at the meeting, as “the eyes of the nation.” Part of its summit would be captured as soon as possible and transformed into Israel’s highest observation post, with a view of downtown Damascus.13

  Absent from this crucial consultation was Moshe Dayan. The defense minister was preparing for his rendezvous with Odd Bull. In a rather crude maneuver to gain time, Dayan had arranged for the meeting to be held in Tiberias. But when the chief UN observer arrived there, he found that the venue had been moved to Tel Aviv. The two met, finally, at 3:00 P.M., an hour later than scheduled.

  Bull opened by stressing the need to break the cycle in which Israeli forces advanced and the Syrians defended themselves, thus providing the Israelis with a pretext for advancing further. The logic found no sympathy with Dayan, however. The Syrians were still shelling Israeli settlements, he reported; if they stopped, the IDF offensive would halt immediately. “We are not after mileage,” he said. Dayan described the cease-fire as absolute—“we are not negotiating and we will agree to no conditions”—but then added major conditions of his own. Israel would accept no excuses for violations, for example, that some Syrian units had yet to receive the order. Moreover, the wording of the ceasefire accord could in no way evoke the General Armistice Agreements of 1949. No UN observers would be allowed near the cease-fire line; Bull would simply have to accept Israel’s word that the fighting had indeed halted.14

  The cease-fire was to go into effect at 6:00 P.M.“Nobody’s to say their radio’s not working,” Dayan instructed Elazar. He ordered Weizman and Ze’evi to draw up a map of Israel’s new borders with Syria, scolding them, “and control yourselves!” The Northern Command nevertheless ignored Jerusalem’s directives and stretched the deadline by another few hours in order to improve Israel’s defensive position. Every unit, every soldier, was pressed into taking strategically valuable hilltops and road junctions. Intelligence officer Ahuv
ia Tabenkin stuck helmets on his cooks and supply clerks and sent them to sit atop the al-Ruqada cliffs, north of Khushniya. Helicopters continued to ferry troops into the hinterland northeast of Butmiya.

  Not all these operations went unopposed, as scattered resistance occasionally reappeared. At one point, the helicopter carrying Elazar was pursued by a Syrian MiG, and was forced to dive sharply through a ravine. The helicopter landed safely, however, at Kibbutz Ein Gev on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Dozens of kibbutz members ran out to greet the general. “That reunion between Dado and the members of Ein Gev was absolutely unforgettable,” recalled Yitzhak Hofi, chief of the operations staff, who, along with Bar-Lev, had also been aboard. “Men, women, children, crying, laughing, falling all over him, hugging and kissing him. It must have been their exhilaration over what had happened, relief that the nightmare was now over.”15

  News of Dayan’s meeting with Bull, followed by the advent of the cease-fire defused the volatile situation in the UN. “Israelis played for a time in political maneuvers in the Security Council to a hair-raising proximity to the brink,” noted Barbour, and that brinkmanship had clearly paid off. Though Federenko continued to rant against Anglo-American and Israeli imperialism, no resolution was passed condemning Israel. Nor was there a reaction, Arab or Soviet, the following day when Col. Pinchas Noi of the 13th Golani Battalion and his radio operator flew by helicopter to Mount Hermon and planted Israel’s flag on the peak.

  The focus at the UN was no longer the military situation on the ground but the postwar settlement. Goldberg went from delegation to delegation canvassing their attitudes toward Arab-Israeli negotiations. These, he assumed, would be face-to-face and direct with an option for UN mediation, and result in initial agreements on forces separation and freedom of passage through the Straits. With prophetic understatement, he wrote, “The issue of a simple withdrawal as opposed to withdrawal as part of an overall settlement will be the main and somewhat tricky problem as soon as [the] cease-fire firms up.”

  World leaders, too, were already looking beyond the battlefield to the sub-sequent, diplomatic phase. The contentiousness of that stage was evident in Kosygin’s subsequent hot line message: “If today all military actions are concluded, it will be necessary to proceed to the next step of evacuating the territory occupied by Israel and the return of troops behind the armistice line.” The Soviet leader nevertheless ended on a positive note—“I consider that we should maintain contact with you on this matter”—holding out the possibility for future superpower cooperation. Johnson, for his part, was thinking not only of troop disposition and withdrawal, but also the fundamental question of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict—of changing its context. “It now appears that military action in the Middle East is being concluded,” he replied to Kosygin. “I hope our efforts in the days ahead can be devoted to the achievement of a lasting peace throughout the world.”16

  AFTERSHOCKS

  Tallies, Postmortems, and the Old/New Middle East

  One hundred and thirty-two hours: That was the duration of the war, one of the shortest in recorded history. In that brief period, the Egyptians lost between 10,000 and 15,000 men, among them 1,500 officers and forty pilots; thousands more were wounded. An additional 5,000 Egyptians were listed as missing. Seven hundred Jordanian soldiers had died, and over 6,000 were wounded or missing. Syria’s losses were estimated at 450 dead and roughly four times that number wounded. Israel admitted to 679 dead and 2,563 wounded, though IDF fatality figures were later placed as high as 800—the equivalent, in per capita terms, of 80,000 Americans.1

  The glaring disparity of the casualty rates—approximately 25 to 1 in Israel’s favor—proved even more lopsided in the numbers of prisoners of war. Israel held at least 5,000 Egyptians, including 21 generals, 365 Syrians (of whom only 30 were officers), and 550 Jordanians. Two Soviet advisers also fell prisoner, the IDF claimed. Israeli POW’s totaled 15. Though accusations of beatings and even executions were traded by both sides, prisoners were generally well treated. Their exchange, however, dragged on for months. Israel held out for the release of Egyptian Jews imprisoned on spying charges since 1954, and for the remains of several executed agents, among them Eli Cohen. Egypt and Syria were reluctant to repatriate their embittered prisoners, and refused to negotiate directly with Israel.2

  The widest gap of all, however, was not in human but in material terms. All but 15 percent of Egypt’s military hardware, $2 billion worth, was destroyed, and vast stores—320 tanks, 480 guns, 2 SAM missile batteries, and 10,000 vehicles—became Israeli booty. The Jordanian list was also painfully long: 179 tanks, 53 APC’s, 1,062 guns, 3,166 vehicles, nearly 20,000 assorted arms. Of the Arab forces, the Syrians emerged from the war the least impaired, losing 470 guns, 118 tanks, and 1,200 vehicles; another forty tanks were abandoned to the Israelis. In all, the IAF destroyed 469 enemy planes, fifty of them in dogfights, in 3,279 sorties. The figures included 85 percent of Egypt’s combat aircraft and all of its bombers. “Never in the history of military aviation has the exercise of air power played so speedy and decisive a part in modern warfare,” observed R. Goring-Morris, Britain’s air attaché in Tel Aviv, but that part came at a price. Thirty-six planes and eighteen pilots, roughly 20 percent of Israel’s air power, had been lost. And while the Soviet Union swiftly replenished Egypt’s and Syria’s MiG’s, Israel’s orders for French Mirages and American Skyhawks remained suspended.

  Though military casualty rates were, even by contemporary standards, high, those among civilians were remarkably low. Apart from the bombardment of Jerusalem, Israeli border settlements, and Palestinian neighborhoods in Gaza and the West Bank, much of the fighting took place far from major population centers. Nevertheless, large numbers of noncombatants suffered and suffered acutely. Between 175,000 (Israeli estimates) and 250,000 (Jordanian estimates) Palestinians fled the West Bank for Jordan, many of them second-time refugees who were once again billeted in wretched camps. While Israel did little to precipitate this flight, neither did it do anything to stop it or, indeed, to encourage the refugees to return. Rather, initially, the IDF laid ambushes along the banks of the Jordan River to prevent “infiltrators” from crossing back into the West Bank. The ambushes were removed only after Dayan, observing them a week after the war, deemed them inhumane.

  Similarly, on the Golan, the exodus of the civilian population was neither impelled nor inhibited by Israel. Though IDF war plans had made no provision for Syrian civilians, the general staff did issue a specific order (No. 121330) stating: “There is to be no expulsion of villagers from the Syrian Heights or from occupied territories in Syria.” Damascus later claimed that the villagers had been expelled en masse, but in fact few Israelis even came into contact with civilians, most of whom had fled with the Syrian command, well in advance of the attackers.

  After the cease-fire, Israel insisted that the 1967 refugee problem, like that of 1948 before it, would have to be solved within the framework of a comprehensive peace treaty. The Arab states uniformly rejected this demand, and insisted on unconditional repatriation and compensation for the refugees. When, later that summer, Israel was pressed to permit at least some of the Palestinians back into the West Bank, few in fact availed themselves of the offer.3

  The refugees’ plight, however tragic, was soon overshadowed by the persecution of Jews in Arab countries. With news of Israel’s victory, mobs attacked Jewish neighborhoods in Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Morocco, burning synagogues and assaulting residents. A pogrom in Tripoli, Libya, left 18 Jews dead and 25 injured; the survivors were herded into detention centers. Of Egypt’s 4,000 Jews, 800 were arrested, including the chief rabbis of both Cairo and Alexandria, and their property sequestered by the government. The ancient communities of Damascus and Baghdad were placed under house arrest, their leaders imprisoned and fined. A total of 7,000 Jews were expelled, many with merely a satchel.4 Apart from Tunisia’s Bourgiba and King Hassan of Morocco, no Arab statesman condemned these outrag
es. Attempts by both the UN and the Red Cross to intercede on the Jews’ behalf were rebuffed.

  By comparison, the 1.2 million Palestinians now under Israeli rule were spared systematic persecution. While looting was widespread and acts of vandalism recorded—nearly half the houses in Qalqilya were reportedly damaged, though later repaired by Israel—a military administration was rapidly established for the West Bank and Gaza and a combination of Jordanian and martial law imposed. Palestinian community and religious leaders were, for the most part, retained in their prewar positions, including the Muslim waqf atop the Temple Mount—a decision for which Moshe Dayan was criticized by Israeli hawks. Israel nevertheless deviated from its tolerant policy in the Old City of Jerusalem, where hovels of the Mughrabi neighborhood were cleared away to create a prayer plaza in front of the Western Wall. The most controversial decision, however, was the destruction of three villages—Yalu, Beit Nuba, and Imwas—located at a strategic junction in the Latrun Corridor. The Israelis accused the three of abetting the siege of Jerusalem in 1948 and billeting Egyptian commandos in their recent attack on Lod, but even then several troops refused to carry out the demolition order. Ultimately, it was executed, and the Arab inhabitants, though offered compensation, were not allowed to return.

  No further acts of retribution were taken against Arabs who, only days before, had celebrated Israel’s demise. The revelation that Jordan had destroyed the Old City synagogues and had paved roads and even latrines with Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives did not dissuade Dayan from joining 4,000 Muslim worshipers for Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque.5