by Jeremy Bowen
Yotvat’s attack had hardly started when the Jordanians pulled out of their positions. Not long after the shelling started, two cars stopped in Imwas. The commander of the local Jordanian garrison got out. ‘We are withdrawing,’ he told them. ‘Take care of yourselves.’ Following him were around sixty soldiers, from the Jordanian Hashimi Brigade. They followed their commander out of the village. When the Israelis entered the old police fortress, which had been an impregnable obstacle to them in 1948, they found half-eaten plates of food. The Jordanians had left in a hurry. Colonel Yotvat, the Israeli brigade commander, radioed in to Narkiss’s headquarters that after only an hour’s one-sided fighting he had captured Latrun. Yotvat was surprised it had been so easy and so quick. If the Jordanians crumbled at Latrun, the West Bank must be wide open. He asked for permission to move on towards Ramallah. Narkiss told him to be careful. Yotvat asked for maps. They were delivered by helicopter.
Hikmat Deeb Ali and his brother had thought the Jordanian soldiers would protect them, just as they had in 1948. They decided it was up to them now. Nineteen years on the new war was starting to feel very different. They loaded dozens of people, their extended family and neighbours, into the village bus, to go down the road to look for sanctuary in the Trappist monastery, where they thought they would be safe. Just as the bus was about to move off, shells started crashing down. The people on the bus pushed their way off to run for cover. Not long afterwards the Israelis entered the village. Hikmat Deeb Ali, who was hiding in the church, could see them get out of their vehicles and start to sing and dance.
In Beit Nuba, the neighbouring village, Abdul Rahim Ali Ahmad’s family were wide awake and could hear the sound of fighting. They decided it would be safer to leave their village for a while. The mother grabbed two blankets, folded them and balanced them on her head. There was no time to take any food. Barefoot, she led her children out of the village. Behind them they could see the lights of Israeli jeeps and tanks. They avoided roads, moving through fields as much as they could. They were terrified of the Israelis. The mother put her hand over the children’s mouths when the Israelis passed, in case a cry gave them away.
Jenin, 0300
A Jordanian battle group lay in wait for the advancing Israelis in the rocky olive groves around the town. Jordanian forces were spread thinly around Jenin and in the rest of the northern part of the West Bank, but they were well organised for defence and had made the right guess about the road the Israelis would use. The day before most IDF troops in northern Israel had been deployed to fight Syria. But once Jordan entered the war and it was clear that the Syrians were going to do as little fighting as possible, a series of orders was given to move into the entire West Bank. Plans that had been in the making for years were implemented. The air force had started bombarding Jordanian positions at five the previous evening while the Israeli troops came south from the Syrian front for the attack.
Around Jenin the Jordanians set up three co-ordinated defence lines, with plenty of anti-tank guns. In the last line was a battalion of Patton tanks. They were well dug in, covering every access road. Because of the terrain, their position could not be outflanked. Israel had to mount a frontal assault. The Jordanians fought well from their positions, driving back two attacks. The decisive moment in the battle came just after dawn. Pretending to retreat, the Israelis pulled back from the battlefield, seemingly abandoning their disabled tanks. When the Jordanian tanks moved out of their positions, without infantry support, to finish them off, the Israelis turned and started firing. The Israeli Super Sherman tanks were Second World War veterans, but they had been fitted with better engines and modern 105 mm guns. They outmanoeuvred the Pattons, lining up shots against their weak points. Most of the Pattons were destroyed. The dug-in Jordanian infantry kept fighting, but they had no chance without support from armour or from the air.
Al-Arish, Sinai, 0400
After what he called a ‘brutal battle’ two of Israel Tal’s armoured brigades were in Al-Arish. Tal’s men had to overcome Egyptian antitank guns, which were hidden among the dunes in concrete bunkers. Tal said they always fired together. ‘It was like a line of lightning across the battlefield. It was impossible to see where they were and few were destroyed by tank fire. We just advanced on the flashes with our tanks and crushed them.’
During the night Cairo ordered its 4th Armoured Division to attack the left flank of Tal’s division at B’ir Lahfan. The Egyptians’ Soviet-built tanks had much better night-fighting gear than anything the Israelis had. But after the 4th Armoured was given a bloody nose, losing nine tanks and destroying only one Israeli in return, they pulled back to wait for dawn. At first light they saw there were not as many Israeli tanks facing them as they had imagined the night before, so they launched a frontal attack. But the Israelis once again used their skill in manoeuvre and long-range gunnery, as well as the air force, to defeat them. They pulled back towards Bir Gifgafah, with the Israeli air force in pursuit. In the fighting Egypt’s 4th Armoured Division lost between thirty and eighty tanks.
Gaza
The most impressive thing about the Palestinian Liberation Army was its title. In reality it was not an army, just around ten thousand enthusiastic but poorly trained Palestinian infantrymen supported by Egyptian tanks. Lieutenant Omar Khalil Omar, a local man from just north of Gaza City, commanded 100 men, armed mainly with a mixture of Kalashnikov automatic rifles and older semi-automatic rifles. They had nothing heavier. When Omar asked his Egyptian superior officer for anti-tank weapons, he was told to be patient, keep his chin up and stop asking questions. They had been expecting the Israelis to come from the north. When they came from the south, they were astonished. The anti-tank weapons never turned up. Neither did any orders about what to do next. The PLA fought bravely at Khan Younis, but by the time Israeli armour was penetrating north, up the Gaza Strip, Omar’s men saw no point in throwing their lives away in a battle they could not win. They voted with their feet. ‘My soldiers wanted to fight. But what could we do against tanks? Most of them ran away.’
Major Ibrahim El Dakhakny of Egyptian military intelligence could hear the Israelis getting closer to his office in Gaza City. It was time to get out to the beach, where he had prepared a boat with some of his colleagues. They planned to slip out to sea and head south as far as they needed to escape the advancing Israelis. But El Dakhakny had left it too late. When he tried to move through the dusty streets to the sea, he realised he had been cut off. Israeli soldiers and their tanks were between him and the beach. He radioed the men who were waiting for him and told them to get moving. He would have to find another way to escape.
In a sandy, arid valley near Gaza City, El Dakhakny linked up with fifteen Palestinian fighters who also had no plans to surrender. They told him they could get to Jordan. One night of walking, they promised, and they would be able to link up with Jordanian troops on the West Bank. El Dakhakny was not so sure. He guessed the Israelis were advancing as quickly into the West Bank as they were into Egypt. He wished them good luck, they left and he was alone again. The major went off to find somewhere quiet to hide, while he weighed up his options. He was hoping to find another boat. The sea looked like his best chance.
Ramadan Mohammed Iraqi had been on the run since his radio truck was destroyed in an air strike on the first day. He was with two other Egyptian soldiers, one of whom had lost an arm, hidden in a field next to a main road. The wounded man convinced himself that the soldiers they could see on the road were Kuwaitis. He never came back. ‘When he realised they were Israelis it was too late. They shot him.’ The Israelis fired into the field with a machine gun. The other man was shot in both legs. A bullet hit Ramadan’s boot without wounding him. Slowly, he stood up. ‘I knew they’d shoot if I tried to run,’ he said. ‘They shouted in Hebrew and I put my hands on my head. Then they tied my hands and blindfolded me. I thought I was going to die. I said my prayers. All I could think about was my wife, who was pregnant with our first child. We were newlywe
ds. They searched me for my ID and took my money and my photos. They took off the blindfold but kept my hands tied and made me run in front of the tank until we reached the place where they were assembling prisoners.’ When he was being moved later in the day close to Al-Arish one Israeli soldier told them to jump off the truck and walk through the desert to Port Said. Another one cut in and said if they moved he would kill them. The prisoners stayed on the truck.
Amman, 0530
Jordan’s ability to fight was collapsing. General Riad told King Hussein he had two choices – get a ceasefire, or pull what was left of the army out of the West Bank entirely to concentrate on defending the eastern side of the river Jordan. He went on: ‘If you don’t decide within the next twenty-four hours, you can kiss your army and all of Jordan goodbye! We are on the verge of losing the West Bank. All of our forces will be isolated or destroyed.’ King Hussein, shaken, asked Riad to find out what President Nasser thought.
Half an hour later General Riad spoke to Nasser and then put Hussein on the line. The United Arab Command had bought the latest secure radio link for sensitive conversations between leaders. But all the equipment was still in Cairo. No one had thought about bringing it to Amman. So they talked on an ordinary telephone. The Israelis, who were intercepting the enemy’s calls while keeping their own secret, recorded it and released a transcript two days later.
First General Riad confirmed to Nasser that Britain, not just America, had aircraft carriers. Then, after talk between operators, King Hussein came on the line. After a difficult exchange of pleasantries – the line was very bad – this is what they said.
NASSER: We are also fighting fiercely. We have been fighting on all fronts throughout the night.
HUSSEIN: (indistinct)
NASSER: However, if there is anything in the beginning, never mind. We will do better. God is with us. Is Your Majesty going to issue a statement on the subject of the American and British participation?
HUSSEIN: (indistinct)
NASSER: I say it would be better for us to issue a statement. I will issue a statement and you will issue a statement. We will also let the Syrians issue a statement that there are American and English aircraft acting against us from aircraft carriers. We will issue a statement and thus make the subject more emphatic, I think.
HUSSEIN: All right.
NASSER: Does Your Majesty agree?
HUSSEIN: (indistinct)
NASSER: A thousand thanks, stand firm and we are with you with all our heart. Our aircraft are over Israel today. Our aircraft have been raiding Israeli airfields since morning.
HUSSEIN: (indistinct)
NASSER: A thousand thanks.
HUSSEIN: Thank you, Abdel Nasser.
NASSER: Goodbye.
Desperate for a scapegoat, Nasser, assisted by the king, had decided to pin the blame for the impending Arab defeat on the United States and Britain. Arab suspicions were deepened by the fact that Israel seemed to be attacking with more aircraft than seemed possible. In a way, that much was correct. The Israelis had trained their ground crews to a pitch where they could turn a warplane round in ten minutes. Some aircraft did six sorties a day. Some pilots did four.
In her villa in Amman, not far from Hussein’s headquarters, Leila Sharaf, the wife of the king’s information minister, tuned into Voice of the Arabs from Cairo. It was transmitting a play about the heroes of a war with Israel. This time, the Arabs were winning.
Syria–Israel border, 0545
Syria staged its only ground offensive of the war. Syrian artillery shelled the Israeli frontier settlements at Shear Yusuv and Tel Dan. After a forty-five minute barrage, around a dozen T-34s (the tank that the USSR had used to beat the Germans) moved forward. At 0700 several hundred infantry men from Battalion 243 moved forward to try to invade the settlements. Their officers ‘mostly pointed their men in the direction of the Israeli defences and ordered them to charge’. The attack was stopped by the kibbutz’s militia, which included farmers, shopkeepers and the local bus driver. Twenty minutes later the Israeli air force finished the job with cannon fire and napalm. The attack was all that was left of a much more ambitious plan called Operation Nasser, an attack by two divisions which had been cancelled the night before. The bigger attack would also have failed. The Syrian army was not capable of anything so complicated. After the war Israeli intelligence discovered from captured documents that the Syrians had not even checked whether the bridges over the Jordan were wide enough for their tanks – they weren’t.
The Syrian army had about 70,000 soldiers, organised into ten brigades. Seven of them were infantry (half of them motorised), two had tanks and there was one artillery brigade. Syria also had an anti-aircraft artillery division, which was dispersed around the country, and a national guard, which was parcelled out among regular units on the border with Israel. Major Ibrahim Ali, the commander of a ‘People’s Army’ of 1000 civilians, claimed it was armed and ready. An American military analysis commented that ‘their effectiveness in a combat situation is questionable’.
On the eve of the war the Syrian army was still in the throes of a debilitating purge. It had started in September 1966, following the failure of yet another attempted military coup. Once the coup was crushed, Syria’s ruler Salah Jadid and his right-hand man, Major-General Hafez al-Asad, the commander of the air force and defence minister, began what turned into the biggest ever purge of the Syrian armed forces. On the eve of war in 1967, it was still going on. Salim Hatum, who led the attempted coup, arrived back at the border saying that he had come home to fight. He was arrested and tortured. The head of the secret police, Colonel Abd al-Karim al-Jundi, broke his ribs before he was shot.
The other coup leaders included Major-General Fahd al-Sha’ir, graduate of a Soviet military academy, deputy chief of staff and commander of the south-west front, the only one that mattered to the Syrian army because it faced Israel. He was arrested and among other indignities reportedly had to ‘get down on all fours like an animal and was ridden by his tormentors through dirty water’. Four hundred officers were dismissed. While Israel was training new officers and making sure they exercised regularly with the men they would be commanding in battle, the only Syrian manoeuvres were political.
Imwas, 0800
Hikmat Deeb Ali, from his position in the church, watched the Israeli soldiers going from house to house as the sun came up. They moved carefully. No shots were fired. Israeli jeeps fitted with loudspeakers told everyone to assemble in the centre of the village. A soldier who spoke Arabic told them: ‘You have one road to leave. It’s the Ramallah road. We don’t want to see one of you pass by your home. You leave from here.’ An old man asked the soldier if he could go home to get his shoes, because he was barefoot. ‘If you do that,’ the soldier told him, ‘you will die. You should head for Ramallah.’ No one was allowed to pack belongings or to search for missing relatives.
In Beit Nuba, Zchiya Zaid, the wife of the Moukhtar, the village headman, saw some of her neighbours coming out of their houses when the soldiers moved in. ‘The soldiers did not harm civilians and they distributed food, sweets and cigarettes. The ones who wouldn’t leave willingly were forced out. The soldiers called “Go to Hussein! Go to Hussein!” We couldn’t take anything with us, only our children.’
The column of refugees moved off. Watching from the church, Hikmat Deeb Ali saw his own family walking between lines of soldiers. With his wife were their six children. The youngest was a week old. When they had gone Hikmat and his two cousins crept back to their family house. It was still intact. A patrol found them there and they left. On the edge of the village ‘we saw hell. Young children, elderly, the ill, the handicapped, kids that couldn’t walk, an old lady, all being accompanied out. Every time I think of it I want to lose my mind. Everyone left in what they stood up in, pyjamas, suit, anything you had on, that’s the way you left.’ He heard one of the villagers protesting to an Israeli soldier. The soldier told him that, ‘If anyone remains, you will die
.’
Cairo, 0900
Cairo Radio was still making up news and broadcasting threats. Its morning report said: ‘We have defeated Israel on the first day of the battle, we will defeat it every moment and every hour. We will conquer it in the air and on the land and destroy it for ever … bid farewell to life, Israel.’ After their disturbed night, the American journalists in the Hilton did not get any breakfast. The bell captain said Israeli planes were coming back, so meals were suspended. On every corner, loudspeakers were blaring ‘strike, strike, strike’. The journalists went to the press centre and looked at the morning papers. Al Akhbar, one of the Cairo dailies, splashed ‘Our Armoured Forces Advance Deeply Inside The Enemy Lines’. The English language Egyptian Gazette had a similar headline. Inside there was a shot of what the caption said was ‘the wreckage of the wicked raider’. Its horoscope told readers ‘to take action along technical lines if you would realise better than average gains today’.
Another air raid started at 9:05 a.m. A few minutes later the Middle East News Agency ticker ‘chattered out a communiqué marked “urgent, urgent”’: ‘It has been definitely proved that the United States and Britain are participating in the Israeli military aggression. Some US and British aircraft carriers are undertaking large scale activities in supporting Israel…’
