$Unique_ID{bob00274} $Pretitle{} $Title{Israel Chapter 5A. National Security} $Subtitle{} $Author{Richard F. Nyrop} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{israel israeli war arab military idf jewish egypt egyptian forces see pictures see figures } $Date{1979} $Log{} Title: Israel Book: Israel, A Country Study Author: Richard F. Nyrop Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1979 Chapter 5A. National Security In few countries of the world do matters of national security play as pervasive a role in society as in Israel. In 1978 over 11 percent of the total population (well over half of all Jewish males between the ages of eighteen and fifty-four and a significant number of Jewish females) were members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF-commonly known in Israel as Zahal, the Hebrew acronym for Zvah Haganah Le Israel) either as regular soldiers or reservists. Many thousands more worked in defense industries. Year after year, defense is the largest component of a government budget that places one of the largest tax burdens on its citizens of any nation in the world. The prominence given national security by Israeli society stems from the Israeli perceived massive security threat posed by its Arab neighbors. Having founded the State of Israel in the wake of the Holocaust (see Glossary), in which Diaspora Jews were defenseless against an enemy bent on their destruction, Israeli Jews were determined and willing to devote considerable resources to defend their young nation. By 1978 most outside observers agreed that the IDF was stronger than ever and clearly superior to the armies of its Arab enemies. Unlike the years after the Six-Day War of June 1967, however, Israelis did not display an overconfidence in their defense capability. The surprise Arab offensive in October 1973 renewed Israel's fears of defeat at the hands of its Arab enemies, fears that lingered five years later. Many observers in the mid-1970s referred to Israel as a democratic garrison state. Indeed, in many respects Israel resembled an armed camp; and a wide range of government policies, particularly in foreign affairs, was greatly influenced by security considerations as advised by IDF commanders. Unlike many garrison states, however, Israel's armed forces did not play a direct role in politics, and there was little prospect of the IDF's abandoning its tradition of strict subordination to civilian authority. Nevertheless national security policy was a major component of civilian politics; and in mid-1978 a nationwide debate was centered on the question of Israeli concessions in the occupied territories, with a growing minority of society urging the government to consider concessions in an effort to renew the stalled peace negotiations with Egypt. A grass-roots movement, composed originally of a group of reserve IDF officers, had recently appeared to express to the government the widely held opinion that "Peace Now" was preferable to continued Jewish settlement in the occupied territories. Military observers agreed that with the growing sophistication and deadliness of modern armaments in the Middle East arena, the alternative to peace with Israel's neighbors was the spectre of increasingly costly wars in an ongoing conflict, which, during its first thirty years, had cost some 13,000 Israeli lives. Security: A Persistent National Concern Historical Background Ancient Jewish military tradition is deeply rooted in biblical history and begins with Abraham who led an ad hoc military force. Joshua, who conquered Canaan, is an early hero; and David, who captured Jerusalem, is regarded by Israeli Jews as their greatest king and warrior. Solomon organized and maintained the first standing Jewish army (see Ancient Israel, ch. 1). Little in the way of military tradition arose out of the nearly 2,000 years of the Diaspora (see Glossary). In fact, the lack of military prowess in the Diaspora Jewish communities was commonly viewed as a cause of their hardships and became a major motivation for building a strong defense establishment within Israel. With the Russian pogroms of the 1880s, Jews began settling in the area of Palestine and, determined to end the centuries of persecution, created self-defense units called Shorim, or Guardsmen, to protect the early settlements (see table B, Preface). In 1909 the Shorim were formally organized throughout the area of Jewish settlement in Palestine and renamed the Hashomer, or the Watchmen. Although few in numbers (the Hashomer numbered fewer than 100 at its peak), these armed militias became extremely important to Israeli military tradition, establishing a precedent of armed self-defense of the Zionist movement, which during the War of Independence in 1948 would flower into the IDF. Many members of Hashomer joined the Jewish Legion, which fought with the British against Imperial Germany during World War I. Increasing tensions between the Arab and growing Jewish communities of Palestine brought the need to expand the Yishuv's (see Glossary) efforts at self-defense (see Events in Palestine: 1908-39, ch. 1). In 1920, after serious Arab disturbances in Jerusalem and in northern Palestine, the Hashomer was disbanded and replaced by the Haganah (see Glossary), which was intended to be a larger and more wide-ranging organization for the defense of all Palestinian Jewry. By 1948, when it was disbanded so that the IDF would be the sole Israeli military organization, the Haganah was a force of some 30,000. The Haganah, originally financed through the Zionist General Federation of Labor (Histadrut HaOvdim Haklalit, known as Histadrut-see Glossary) and later through the Jewish Agency (see Glossary), operated clandestinely under the British Mandate, which declared the bearing of unauthorized arms by Palestinian Jews to be illegal. Arms and ammunition were smuggled into the country, and training was conducted in secret. In addition to guarding settlements, the Haganah manufactured arms, built a series of roads and stockades throughout Palestine to facilitate defense, and organized and defended groups of Jewish immigrants during periods of the Mandate when immigration was illegal or restricted. Arab attacks on Jewish communities in 1921 and 1929 found the Haganah ill equipped and ineffective: over 100 Jews were killed in 1929 alone. When renewed Arab rioting broke out in Jaffa (Yafo) in 1936 and soon spread throughout Palestine, the Mandate authorities, realizing that they could not defend every Jewish settlement, authorized the creation of the Jewish Settlement Police, also known as notrim, who were trained, armed, and paid by the British. In 1938 a British intelligence officer, Captain Orde Charles Wingate, organized three counterguerrilla units, called special night squads, manned by British and Jewish personnel. As both of these organizations contained a large number of Haganah members, their formation greatly increased the assets of the Haganah while providing a legal basis for much of their activities. Although the Arab Revolt, as the nearly continuous disturbances from 1936 to 1939 have come to be called, cost the lives of nearly 600 Jews and over 5,000 Arabs, Israeli observers have pointed out that Jewish casualties would have been far greater were it not for the increasing effectiveness of these paramilitary units. During the Arab Revolt, the Haganah's policy of havlagah, or self-restraint, under which retaliation against the Arab community at large was strictly forbidden, was not aggressive enough for some. These dissidents, under the leadership of Vladamir (Zeev) Jabotinski and later Menachem Begin, established the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi, known as Irgun and by the acronym ETZEL) in 1937. Initially the Irgun waged a campaign of terror, sabotage, and reprisal against the Arabs. After the British government issued a White Paper in May 1939 extending the Mandate for ten years and placing limits on Jewish immigration, however, Irgun turned its terrorist activities against the British troops in Palestine in an all-out struggle against the Mandate Authority. With the outbreak of World War II, Irgun leaders settled on a policy of cooperation with the British in the war effort; but a hard core within the organization opposed the policy and accordingly split off from the larger body. This group, led by Avraham Stern, formed the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lohamei Herut Israel-Lehi), known as the Stern Gang. The Stern Gang specialized in the assassination of British and other officials. At their peaks, the Irgun contained some 4,000 men and the Stern Gang 200 to 300, though participants were considerably fewer. Defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 witnessed a resumption of anti-British activities by both Haganah and Irgun in pursuance of their common ultimate goal, the establishment of a national home and the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. During World War II some 32,000 Palestinian Jews, both men and women, volunteered for the British army, and in 1944 some 5,000 of these were formed into the Jewish Brigade, which fought successfully in Italy in 1945. With so many of its members serving abroad, the ranks of the Haganah were depleted, and in 1941 its leaders decided to raise a mobile force-the Palmach-of some 3,000 fulltime soldiers, whose mission was to defend the Yishuv. Trained with the aid of the British, the Palmach was the first fulltime standing Jewish army in over 2,000 years and is considered to be the direct forerunner to the IDF. For many years the vast majority of IDF officers were veterans of either the Palmach or the Jewish Brigade. When Israel achieved its independence on May 15, 1948, the Haganah became the de facto Israeli army. On that day, the country was invaded by the regular forces of Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Eleven days later, Israel's provisional government issued an order that provided the legal framework for the country's armed forces. The order established the official name Zvah Haganah Le Israel and outlawed the existence of any other military force within Israel. The dissident Irgun and Stern Gang were reluctant to disband. Fighting between Irgun and regular military forces broke out on June 20 when the supply ship Altalena arrived at Tel Aviv with 900 men and a load of arms and ammunition for the Irgun. A round of ammunition set fire to the ship, and many members of the Irgun were arrested; both organizations disbanded shortly thereafter. A more delicate problem was to disband the Palmach, which had become an elite military unit within the Haganah with strong political ties to the socialist-oriented kibbutzim (see Glossary). It was only through the skill and determination of David BenGurion, Israel's first prime minister and minister of defense, who was determined to see the IDF develop into a single, professional, and nonpolitical national armed force, that the Palmach was peacefully abolished and integrated into the IDF in November 1948. Though the Haganah was estimated to have only 30,000 men at the time of independence, the ranks of the IDF swelled rapidly to some 100,000 at the height of the War of Independence. Nearly all able-bodied men, plus many women, were recruited, and thousands of foreign volunteers, mostly veterans of World War II, came to the aid of Israel. The newly independent state rapidly mobilized to meet the Arab invaders; by July 1948 the Israelis had set up an air force, a navy, and a tank battalion. Weapons and ammunition were procured abroad, primarily from Czechoslovakia. Three B-17 bombers were bought in the United States through black market channels, and shortly after one of them bombed Cairo in July 1948, the Israelis were able to establish air supremacy. Subsequent victories came in rapid succession on all three fronts, and the Arab states negotiated armistice agreements as they had fought-separately. Egypt was the first to sign (February 1949), followed by Lebanon (March), Jordan (April), and finally Syria (July). Iraq simply withdrew its forces without signing an agreement. As a result of the war, Israel considerably expanded its territory within the United Nations (UN) partition of Palestine at the expense of its Arab neighbors (see fig. 5, ch. 1). Victory came at the cost over 6,000 Israeli lives, however, which represented nearly 1 percent of the population. After the armistice, wartime recruits were rapidly demobilized, and the hastily raised IDF, still lacking a permanent institutional basis, experienced mass resignations from its war-weary officer corps. This underscored the basic manpower problem of a small population coupled with the need to raise rapidly a sizeable army during a wartime emergency. After studying the Swiss reservist system, Yigael Yadin (in mid-1978 the deputy prime minister) proposed a three-tiered solution based on a small standing officer corps, universal conscription, and a large pool of well-trained reservists that could be rapidly mobilized. This system was implemented in 1949 as the Defense Service Law, which provided the IDF with the legal basis to fulfill its manpower needs and remained in 1978 one of the country's most important and far-reaching laws (see Manpower and Training, this ch.). In early 1955 Egypt began sponsoring raids launched by fedayeen (Arab commandos or guerrillas) from the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, and Jordan into Israel. As the number and seriousness of these raids increased, Israel began launching reprisal raids against Arab villages in Gaza and the West Bank of Jordan. These retaliatory measures, which cost the lives of Arab civilians and did little if anything to discourage the fedayeen, became increasingly controversial both within Israel and abroad. Shortly thereafter Israeli reprisal raids became directed against military targets, frontier strongholds, police fortresses, and army camps. In addition to these incidents, which at times became confrontations between regular Israeli and Arab military forces, other developments contributed to the generally escalating tensions between Egypt and Israel and convinced Israeli military officials that Egypt was preparing for renewed war. The first was the so-called Czech arms deal of 1955, when Czechoslovakia supplied Egypt with a vast amount of arms, including fighter aircraft, tanks and other armored vehicles, destroyers, and submarines. Secondly, the deployment of Egyptian troops in the Sinai along the Israeli border increased dramatically in 1956. In July Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal; shortly thereafter the Strait of Tiran, at the southern tip of the Sinai, was blockaded to Israeli shipping (see fig. 1). Fearing these signs of an imminent Egyptian invasion, Israel rapidly mobilized its reserves, and on October 29, under the leadership of Major General Moshe Dayan, the IDF launched a preemptive attack into the Sinai. Israeli advances on the ground were rapid and, supported by aircover, they had routed the Egyptian forces and effectively controlled the entire peninsula by November 2. With Israeli troops on the east bank of the Suez Canal, British and French troops landed at Port Said and demanded withdrawal of both sides from the Canal. The UN met in an emergency session and demanded that the British and French leave the Suez, which they did in December 1956, and that Israel withdraw to the armistice line of 1949, which it did somewhat reluctantly in March 1957 after a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) had been stationed in the Gaza Strip and at Sharm ash Shaykh on the Strait of Tiran. Israel's victory in the 1956 War (known in Israel as the Sinai Campaign) thus afforded it a modicum of increased security by the virtue of the UN presence. Far more important, however, as pointed out by Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz in their portrait of the IDF, was that it gave Israel and the world a renewed confidence in Israel as a military power and as a viable nation, even though surrounded by enemies. Though many Israeli hawks felt that the military victory was nullified by the UN demand to withdraw from the Sinai, Israel had achieved, at least, significant psychological gains at a cost of fewer than 170 lives. The decade after the 1956 War was the most tranquil period in the nation's history. The Egyptian armistice line remained quiet, and there were few incidents at the Jordanian line until 1965, when Egyptian-sponsored guerrilla raids by Al Fatah (see Glossary) first appeared. Although beginning in 1960 there were repeated guerrilla activities and shellings of Israeli settlements from the Golan Heights of Syria, these incidents remained localized until 1964. Underlying tensions, however, did not abate; by the early 1960s both sides considered a third round of warfare to be inevitable. An ominous arms race developed. Egypt and Syria were supplied with Soviet aid and military hardware, and Israel, which suddenly found European powers-the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Great Britain, and especially France-to be willing suppliers of modern armaments (see Foreign Contacts, this ch.). Jordan continued to receive military arms from Great Britain and the United States. Mounting tensions were exhibited in 1964 when, after Israel had nearly completed a massive irrigation project that involved diverting water from the Jordan River into the Negev Desert, Syria began a similar project near the river's headwaters that would have virtually dried the riverbed at the Israeli site. Israel launched air and artillery attacks at the Syrian site, and the Syrian project was abandoned. Guerrilla incursions from Syria and Jordan steadily mounted, as did the intensity of Israeli reprisal raids. By April 1967 increased Syrian shelling of Israeli border villages was met by an Israeli fighter attack during which six Syrian MiGs were shot down. Syria feared that an all-out attack from Israel was imminent, and Egypt, with whom it had recently signed a mutual defense treaty, began an extensive military buildup in early May. On May 18 Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser demanded the withdrawal of UN forces from Gaza and the Sinai, and Secretary General U Thant promptly acceded and removed the UNEF. Four days later Nasser announced a blockade of Israeli shipping at the Strait of Tiran, an action that Israel had publically maintained since the 1956 War would be tantamount to a declaration of war. Jordan and Iraq rapidly oined Syria in its military alliance with Egypt. On May 30 mounting public opinion led to the appointment of Dayan as minister of defense. Levi Eshkol, who had been both prime minister and minister of defense since Ben-Gurion's resignation in 1963, retained the prime minister's position. Dayan immediately made a series of public declarations that war could be avoided, while secretly planning a massive preemptive strike against the Arab enemy. On the morning of June 5 Israel launched a devastating attack on Arab air power, destroying some 300 Egyptian, fifty Syrian, and twenty Jordanian aircraft, mostly on the ground. This action, which virtually eliminated the Arab air forces, was immediately followed by ground invasions into the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, Jordan, and finally Syria. Arab ground forces, lacking air support, were routed on all three fronts; by the time the UN-imposed cease-fire took effect in the evening of June 11, the IDF had seized the entire Sinai Peninsula to the east bank of the Suez Canal; the West Bank of Jordan, including East Jerusalem; and the Golan Heights of Syria. Unlike the aftermath of the 1956 War, however, the IDF did not withdraw from the areas it occupied in 1967. Israel was ecstatic with its swift and stunning victory, which had been achieved at a relatively low cost of some 700 lives. The IDF had proven itself superior to the far larger forces of the combined Arab armies; but more important, it now occupied the territory that had harbored immediate security threats to Israel since 1948. For the first time since independence, the Israeli heartland along the Mediterranean Sea was out of enemy artillery range. The exploits of the six-day war soon became legend, and the commanders who led it became national heros. Although control of the occupied territories greatly improved Israel's security from a geographical standpoint, it also created new problems. Most important, the roughly 1 million Arabs within the territories provided potential cover and support for infiltration and sabotage by Arab guerrillas. From shortly after the six-day war until 1970, a steady stream of men and weapons were sent into the West Bank by a number of guerrilla groups, in particular the Al Fatah; incidents of sabotage and clashes with Israeli security forces were commonplace. In the spring of 1970, the guerrilla strategy reverted to shelling Israeli towns from across the Jordanian and Lebanese borders. International terrorism, aimed at bringing world attention to the grievances of Palestinian Arabs against Israel, also appeared after the six-day war (see Sources of Security Threats, this ch.). Hostilities on the Egyptian front were far more serious. The decimated Egyptian army was rapidly resupplied with advanced Soviet weapons, and the Soviet presence at the Suez Canal increased dramatically. In October 1967 the Israeli destroyer and flagship Elat was sunk by a missile fired from an Egyptian ship docked in Port Said; Israel retaliated with the destruction of Egyptian oil refineries at Suez. A year later shelling began along the canal, and a new round of fighting, commonly known as the War of Attrition, commenced. For nearly two years, until a new cease-fire was imposed on August 7, 1970, Egypt (with growing and direct support from the Soviet Union) threw an increasingly heavy barrage of artillery and missiles at fortified Israeli positions along the east bank of the Suez, while Israel stood its ground and flew a series of fighter-bomber raids deep into the Egyptian heartland. This deadly but inconclusive conflict culminated on July 30, 1970, when Israeli and Soviet fighters met head on in a dogfight near the Suez Canal. Although Israeli pilots reportedly shot down four MiGs and lost none of their own, this direct confrontation with a nuclear superpower was a frightening development and was instrumental in bringing about the cease-fire. Although activity aimed against Israel by Palestinian guerrillas continued throughout the early 1970s, Israel felt relatively secure vis-a-vis its Arab neighbors after the War of Attrition. Its military intelligence was convinced that Syria would launch a war only in concert with Egypt and that Egypt would go to war only if it were convinced that its air power were superior to Israel's. This theory, which became so institutionalized into Israeli military thinking as to be dubbed "the concept," contributed to the country's general sense of security. Defense expenditures declined markedly from 1970 levels, the annual reserve call-up was reduced from sixty to thirty days, and in 1973 the length of conscription was reduced from thirty-six to thirty-three months. The October 1973 War (known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War and in the Arab world as the Ramadan War) developed rapidly, and the coordinated Egyptian-Syrian offensive caught Israel by surprise. On September 28 Palestinian guerrillas detained an Austrian train carrying Soviet Jews en route to Israel, and subsequent Egyptian and Syrian military deployments were hence interpreted by Israel as defensive actions in anticipation of Israeli reprisals. For a week, Israel postponed the mobilization of its troops; not until the morning of Yom Kippur (October 6), some six hours before the Arab offensive, were Israeli officials convinced that war was imminent; a mobilization of the reserves was then ordered. In the early days of the war, the IDF suffered heavy losses as Egyptian forces crossed the Suez and overran Israeli strongholds, while Syrians marched deep into the Golan Heights. The Israeli counteroffensive was launched first against the Syrian front, and only when the Syrians had been pushed back well east of the 1967 cease-fire line (by October 15) was attention turned to the Egyptian front. In ten days of fighting, the Egyptian army was pushed back across the canal, and the IDF made deep incursions into Egypt. On October 24, with Israeli soldiers about a kilometer from the main Cairo-Ismailia highway and the Soviet Union threatening direct military intervention, a UN cease-fire was imposed. After several months of negotiations, during which sporadic fighting continued, a disengagement agreement was reached in January 1974, whereby the IDF withdrew across the canal, and Israeli and Egyptian troops were separated in the Sinai by a UNEF-manned buffer zone. A similar agreement was signed with Syria on May 31, 1974 whereby Israel withdrew to the 1967 cease-fire line in the Golan Heights, and a United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) occupied a buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian forces (see Appendix C). On September 4, 1975, after further negotiations, a new agreement was signed between Egypt and Israel that widened the buffer zone and secured a further Israeli withdrawal to the east of the strategic Gidi and Mitla passes. Israel's military victory in 1973 came with a heavy price of over 2,400 lives and an estimated US $5 billion in equipment. Over US $1 billion of this was airlifted by the United States during the war as it became apparent that Israel's ammunition stores were dangerously low. This, and the threatened Soviet intervention, raised more clearly than ever the specter of the Arab-Israeli conflict escalating rapidly into a confrontation between the superpowers. The October 1973 War also cost Israel its self-confidence in its military superiority over its Arab enemy. A special government commission, headed by Chief Justice Shimon Agranat, president of the Israeli Supreme Court, was appointed to investigate why Israel had been caught by surprise and why so much had gone wrong during the war itself. The commission's report, completed in January 1975, was highly critical of the performance of the IDF on several levels, including intelligence gathering, discipline within the ranks, and the mobilization of reserves. The euphoria of the post-1967 era faded.