DAVID BEN-GURION’S RETURN to government in January 1955 enhanced the Defense Ministry’s operation, prompting Dayan to note that “things are becoming increasingly clearer and the alternatives more and more apparent.”1 After the Kibiya massacre, Jordan’s Arab Legion had attempted to keep the border calm. Conversely, Egypt’s new president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, embarked on an aggressive pan-Arab policy in which incidents of sabotage and murder were escalated along the Gaza Strip. Two days after Ben-Gurion’s return, an Egyptian intelligence unit infiltrated Israel and came within twenty-five miles of Tel Aviv, vandalizing water installations and killing a passerby en route. Israel, already incensed over the execution of its two Cairo spies, retaliated with a paratroop attack on an Egyptian military base north of Gaza City on the night of February 28. Egyptian reinforcements ran into an Israeli ambush, but the paratroopers also met with fierce resistance at the Egyptian base. When the smoke cleared, thirty-eight Egyptians were dead and thirty-one wounded, while Israel lost eight elite paratroopers.
Egypt’s reaction to the attack contrasted starkly with Jordan’s prudent response to Kibiya. Nasser created a special Gaza unit of fedayeen, fanatical suicide fighters committed to a holy war. Dayan’s reprisal policy, which had partially succeeded on the Jordanian border, had utterly failed on the Egyptian border. He developed the idea that extreme Israeli reprisals were necessary, even at the risk of full-scale war. When he broached the idea to Ben-Gurion, the defense minister asked him whether he sought war. “I am not for initiating war,” Dayan said. “But I am against concessions in any area, and if that’s the reason the Arabs seek war—I am not against it. Their threat should not impede our actions.”2
Another factor crystallized his strategic thinking: Egypt had a dangerous advantage if it chose to initiate war. Egyptian troops in the Gaza Strip were less than forty-five miles from Tel Aviv, and “the only force they would encounter on the way would be a couple of lovers picking oranges in an orchard.”3
Dayan believed that the IDF had to seize the opportunity to drive Egypt out of Gaza and take control of the Rafah Junction on the Sinai border. He wanted the boundaries that had been established at the armistice to be moved to provide the Israelis with defensible positions. These considerations led him to push for tougher responses to the Egyptian provocations that began in the spring of 1955. On March 24, infiltrators from Gaza reached Moshav Patish near Beersheba and during a wedding celebration sprayed the Kurdistan immigrants and their guests with gunfire and grenades, wounding twenty people and killing moshav volunteer Varda Friedman, who had answered Ben-Gurion’s call to help the new immigrants. Outraged, Ben-Gurion the next day urged the government to conquer the Gaza Strip, but Prime Minister Sharett rejected the proposal.
Tensions with Egypt rose when the Egyptian government further restricted Israel’s sea route to Eilat that summer. Passage through the Suez Canal had been blocked to Israeli ships since the 1948 war, and now Egypt claimed sovereignty over the Straits of Aqaba and asserted the right to prevent ships from sailing to Eilat. The IDF began to consider a military solution, but Eilat did not have an operable port, which meant that the IDF Marines would be unable to participate in the battle. The insufficient port also meant that ships were unable to sail to and from Eilat to test the blockade and perhaps break it.
Later that summer, friction intensified along the Gaza border as well. Israel had demarcated the fenceless border by plowing a deep furrow the entire length of Gaza, flanked by a dirt road for daily IDF patrols to protect Israeli farmers. Dayan encouraged the settlements along the Strip to cultivate their fields right up to the border even if it exposed the farmers to gunfire from the Egyptian posts. Occasionally, Arab shepherds crossed the line to graze their herds on the manicured kibbutz fields and were driven off by Israeli patrols. The Arabs laced the patrol road with mines, and Dayan ordered IDF units to stand firm and respond with force to any provocation. He allowed the border units to launch mortars without waiting for approval and instructed them to blow up Egyptian posts that endangered the Israeli patrols.4
The events that unfolded on August 22 marked a turning point in the border skirmishes between Israel and Egypt. Nasser’s forces fired on an Israeli unit patrolling alongside the Gaza Strip, and the commanding IDF officer, acting on what he considered Dayan’s basic reprisal philosophy, crossed the border and captured and destroyed the Egyptian military post. In response, Nasser days later deployed his suicide squad, and for the first time fedayeen roamed Israeli territory and struck inland targets, raising the anxiety level in the South. During the final week of August alone, fedayeen squads killed sixteen Israelis.
Assuming that Sharett’s government would not approve a large-scale retaliation, Dayan proposed pinpoint actions, such as blowing up bridges on the Gaza-Rafah road and laying ambushes. Sharett limited the operation to four small units, and Dayan submitted, giving Ariel Sharon’s commando battalion the green light. Dayan traveled to Mafalsim, a border kibbutz serving as Sharon’s frontline headquarters, to observe developments. After midnight, as Sharon’s commandos neared their targets, Ben-Gurion’s military secretary arrived at the southern headquarters and instructed Dayan to recall the units. Elmore Jackson, a representative of the American Society of Friends (Quakers), had arrived on an Israeli-Egyptian peacemaking mission, and Sharett did not wish to impede Jackson’s efforts by instituting any acts of Israeli aggression.
Dayan returned to Tel Aviv and handed Ben-Gurion his resignation. “The contradiction between the government’s defense policy and that which I consider vital makes it impossible for me to bear the responsibility demanded of the CGS.”5 Under normal circumstances, the resignation might have been construed as illegitimate pressure by the military on the government and been accepted. But with Ben-Gurion poised to return to the premiership and threatening to resign in support of Dayan, Sharett capitulated. He approved a broad IDF reprisal for the following day. On August 31, paratroopers stormed the large Khan Yunis police station and razed it to the ground, killing some seventy Egyptian soldiers and wounding more than forty. One Israeli paratrooper was killed.
War appeared imminent. Daily shootings and mortar shelling gave the border area the semblance of an active front. On September 1, the Israeli Air Force downed two Egyptian Vampire aircraft in a dogfight, and the IDF mobilized a large infantry force to occupy the Gaza Strip. But on September 4, calm was restored. The fedayeen returned to base, and both sides agreed to the call for a ceasefire issued by the head of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, Gen. E. L. M. Burns.
Amid the hostilities, Ben-Gurion appointed Gen. Chaim Laskov as the deputy chief of General Staff. Dayan and Laskov could not have been more different. Laskov had commanded a company in the British Army’s Jewish Brigade that fought on the Italian front during World War II. He brought his British Army knowledge and experience to the IDF: strict formal discipline, efficient organization, and exemplary order. Unlike Dayan, he was convivial, warm, and sensitive beneath his tough exterior. Dayan was unhappy with the appointment and tried to convince Ben-Gurion to leave Meir Amit, head of the GHQ branch, at his side. But Laskov, in Ben-Gurion’s eyes, epitomized the consummate soldier. At the defense minister’s insistence, Dayan accepted the appointment. For the year that the two men headed the military structure, Dayan’s relationship with Laskov was professional, though never warm. In retrospect, their division of labor was efficient and effective. Dayan preferred to focus on policy and strategy, glad that Laskov freed him of the responsibilities that he regarded as chores: coordinating GHQ work, dealing with administrative matters, and developing the military organization. Laskov performed his duties skillfully and helped Dayan prepare the army for what awaited.
On September 27, 1955, a new development radically changed the Middle East. President Nasser announced that Egypt had signed an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, a Soviet-bloc country. In effect, Egypt, considered a Western ally, had opened the Middle East to the Soviets. Dismayed, Britain and the United States rallied to find ways to contain the political damage and retain relations with Nasser.
From Israel’s perspective, the arms deal was earth-shattering, tectonically shifting the balance of power in the Middle East. Egypt had suddenly obtained an abundance of warplanes, bombers, tanks, cannons, destroyers, and torpedo boats that left Israel at a grave disadvantage. The quality of the weaponry and machinery also left Israel with no adequate technological response. Soviet warplanes were much faster than Israel’s old British aircraft, and the range of Soviet tank cannons was three times that of Israel’s outdated tanks.
In the days following the arms deal, the extent of Egypt’s windfall remained unclear. The day after Egypt’s announcement, at Ben-Gurion’s weekly Defense Ministry gathering of the Senior Forum—himself, CGS Dayan, and the ministry’s director general, Shimon Peres—the three discussed the deal without knowing the specifics. They nevertheless decided that Peres should leave immediately for Paris to expedite an arms deal that was under discussion with the French. Dayan was scheduled to leave on a four-week trip with his wife, and Ben-Gurion did not consider it necessary to stop him. “You deserve a vacation,” he said.6
The Dayans sailed with another couple to Genoa and from there traveled through Italy and continued to Switzerland and France. Ruth had fond memories of the trip, recalling that their friends were interested in art and did not skip a single museum. Moshe, for his part, was a good sport. He did not have “much patience” for museums, “but he would not miss anything,” Ruth later said.7 He was cut off from news in Israel and glad for the breathing room after his incessant worries about upholding Israel’s defense in recent months. Two weeks into the trip, he arrived in Paris and met Peres, who updated him on events at home. Reality disrupted his blissful vacation. Ben-Gurion was suffering from an ear ailment that caused dizziness and required lengthy bed rest. The country was swept by a wave of pandemonium over the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, and various quarters clamored for preemptive attacks on Egypt before Nasser could integrate the menacing Soviet-supplied arsenal into his army.
Dayan did not see the trip through to the end. On October 21, Ben-Gurion’s military secretary wired him, “This morning the Old Man rose from bed for the first time. His first wish was to meet with you.”8 Dayan boarded an airplane to Israel, a routine flight that he would later describe as “the most important event of my personal life.” He found himself sitting next to a pretty woman, elegant and gentle, well-set-up and refined. Rachel Rabinovich, who was married to a Jerusalem attorney, had boarded Dayan’s plane in Rome. “I don’t know if it was love at first sight,” Dayan recalled, “but from the moment I met Rachel, there was nobody else that I so wanted to be with or share joy and sorrow with.”9
Rachel, who would later become his second wife, remembered being impressed that “Moshe was relaxed and pleasant.” In a 2009 interview, she recounted their first conversation. “At some stage, he told me that I have lovely hands and asked me if I ever make salad. I said yes and he added: ‘You cut onions as well?’ Just before landing, he asked me if he could invite me for a cup of coffee one day. I said I would gladly invite him to my home. And he asked: ‘Will you lay a tablecloth on the table?’ It was strange, but I gave him my phone number.”10
Rachel’s upper-middle-class elegance apparently captivated him and starkly contrasted with Ruth’s simple lifestyle. Dayan had been with many women in his life, but he had only two loves: Ruth, his first love, and Rachel, the irresistible product of a chance encounter.
On October 23, Dayan and Ben-Gurion met privately. No minutes were taken, but on his return to the IDF headquarters, Dayan summoned Laskov and Yehoshafat Harkavi, the head of intelligence, and reported the details of the meeting to them, conveying the defense minister’s instructions. Ben-Gurion was opposed to a preemptive war, believing that the global community would not accept such a move. Nevertheless, he agreed with Dayan that Israel had to protect its interests assertively. According to Dayan, Ben-Gurion instructed him to prepare his soldiers to conquer the Gaza Strip if IDF reprisal operations provoked a forceful reaction from Egypt. The reprisals Ben-Gurion wanted taken would be a response to Egypt’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran, which broke international law and justified Israeli military measures. Ben-Gurion also ordered Dayan to organize an IDF campaign to capture Sharm el-Sheikh, a small port located at the southern tip of the Sinai where the Straits of Tiran begin, and to end the blockade of Eilat.
Dayan understood Ben-Gurion’s guidelines as a sweeping authorization for a strategy of “escalation,” with the goal of forcing Egypt into battle by stepping up provocation. Dayan convened the GHQ and gave orders to prepare for war. The forces mobilized at a frenetic pace as the IDF began to flex its military muscle. Dayan knew Ben-Gurion well and was aware that though the “Old Man” showed grit and addressed the Knesset confidently, he had his doubts about entering a full-scale war. A few days after receiving the order to prepare for the Sharm el-Sheikh campaign, Dayan remarked to Ben-Gurion’s secretary that “he doesn’t really want it.”11
Nonetheless, Dayan embraced the policy of escalating reprisals. On November 2, the day Ben-Gurion once more became Israel’s prime minister, the IDF attacked Egyptian positions in the demilitarized border zone near Nitzana Junction, where Egypt had infiltrated hundreds of yards into Israeli territory. The operation was the largest the IDF had undertaken since the War of Independence. An entire brigade was involved, and Dayan hoped that the large force’s actions would lure Egypt into responding with might. He asked Ben-Gurion to keep the Israeli troops in position until the next morning. Ben-Gurion, wary of acts that could be interpreted as unjustified aggression, refused. He ordered the troops back to Israel. At dawn, the Egyptians launched a counterattack on the posts that Israel had conquered, only to find them empty.
Less than two weeks after Ben-Gurion’s instructions to prepare for war, Dayan knew for certain that the prime minister was filled with doubt. Sharett, now the foreign minister, was leading the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a major diplomatic effort to acquire arms to cancel Egypt’s military edge. Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, worked his lines to the State Department and the White House, trying to persuade Washington to lift the de facto embargo on Israel imposed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. President Dwight Eisenhower had dropped a few encouraging hints, and Sharett believed that aggressive military action by Israel would undermine these diplomatic endeavors.
To reinvigorate Ben-Gurion’s fighting spirit, Dayan sent him a memo on November 10 stating that action was necessary. But three days later, his fears were realized: Ben-Gurion hesitantly informed him that the Sharm el-Sheikh campaign would be postponed to mid-January. Dayan returned to his office and sent Ben-Gurion another letter. “In my opinion,” Dayan wrote, “we have to bring about a large-scale confrontation with the Egyptian army soon in order to gain three objectives: to deal the Egyptian air force a hard blow; to take the junctions of Rafah and Nitzana; to conquer the Straits of Eilat (Sharm el-Sheikh).”12
Dayan was unrelenting. He directly addressed Ben-Gurion’s reservations at another meeting and stated that he did not think that Israel’s hopes for an arms deal with the United States would bear fruit—and even if they did, “we prefer to fight now, without American weapons, rather than later, with American weapons.”13 The two leaders held opposite positions. At the weekly Senior Forum meeting on November 17, Ben-Gurion again explained that if Israel initiated an offensive, all its sources of weapons would dry up, and the country would find itself isolated. “It’s not a case of being able to shoot and end it,” he said. “Afterward, are we to flee? Where to?”14 Ben-Gurion at this point had adopted Sharett’s logic. On December 4, before flying to the United States, Sharett managed to persuade the government to vote to avoid offensive initiatives in principle. Ben-Gurion voted in favor of the proposal.
Less than a week after the government’s decision, Dayan made one last-ditch effort to revive the escalation policy. The Syrians over the years had shot at Israeli fishermen on the Sea of Galilee from positions on the northeastern shore, although there had been no recent dramatic incidents to justify retaliatory action. Yet it occurred to Dayan that given the defense pact between Syria and Egypt, this area might provide the catalyst he had been seeking to goad Nasser into a large operation. Dayan surmised that a comprehensive attack on the Syrian army at the Sea of Galilee might induce Egypt to respond on the Sinai front.
Although his reasons remain unclear, Ben-Gurion approved Dayan’s proposal to attack Syrian positions, even though it clearly defied the government decision. Without question, he had not properly assessed the national and international outcry that would follow the incursion at the Sea of Galilee.
On the night of December 11, Sharon led his brigade against the Syrian military installations. By the time the sun broke over the horizon on Galilee’s eastern shore, his soldiers had destroyed every post, killed thirty-seven Syrian soldiers and twelve civilians, and taken more than thirty prisoners. Six Israelis were killed during the clash. Dayan greeted the soldiers as they returned with weapons and vehicles, a sizable booty for one melee. In the IDF’s brief history, this was one of the most daring, brilliant, and successful operations. But within hours, that success had instigated a political fiasco. Sharett’s scheduled meeting the following day with Secretary of State Dulles—who before he learned of Israel’s attack had intimated that he was prepared to release a quantity of weapons—was canceled. Sharett was overcome by feelings of shock and betrayal. “Universal darkness, the weapons matter undone,” he recorded in his diary. “Horrific.”15 In a telegram to his bureau director, he wrote: “Never has there been such abomination in Israel.”16
The Israeli press was harsh in its censure, and the cabinet ministers were in an uproar. Not only did the action defy their policy, but Ben-Gurion had not consulted any of them before giving Dayan the green light. They decided that every future act of reprisal would require cabinet approval. Although Ben-Gurion had suggested this new system of checks and balances to conciliate his colleagues, their decision was a slap in the face.
Nobody understood Ben-Gurion’s motives, and many believed that Dayan alone had decided on the operation. The prime minister denied the charge and openly defended Dayan and the army. Yet he, too, had obviously been surprised by the size of the IDF operation. The day after the incident, Dayan took Sharon to see Ben-Gurion in Jerusalem to describe the battle. Dayan noticed that Ben-Gurion was displeased because the mission “had been too successful.” Two days later, Ben-Gurion was asked what the army should do now. “From now on, the army must be ready for an Egyptian attack,” he replied, “which may come in the next few months.”17
With those words, Ben-Gurion dismantled the strategy that Dayan had been constructing since Ben-Gurion’s return to the Defense Ministry. Instead of training for an Israeli-initiated attack, the army now had to prepare for defense against an enemy attack. The defensive stance clashed with Dayan’s approach to combat. He was disappointed and hinted that he might resign at the end of his three-year term as the IDF chief of General Staff. Conveying his dismay, Dayan mentioned to Ben-Gurion that he felt he must travel to Japan to acquire weapons. Asked by Ben-Gurion whether there was nothing he could do in Israel, Dayan replied, “The things I need to do, I don’t feel like doing.”18 Ben-Gurion rejected Dayan’s insinuation that he would retire, and Dayan relented, and in January 1956 he reorganized the army for its new task: defense.
Ben-Gurion had highlighted the urgency—and futility–of Dayan’s modified undertaking a month earlier, when he had appeared before the IDF High Command to explain why he had canceled the offensive initiative. There was a basic asymmetry between Israel and the Arabs, he explained. Whereas the Arabs could destroy Israel if they defeated it, no Israeli victory could bring an end to the conflict. “After every war from which we emerge as victors, we will face the same problem, just as we do today,” Ben-Gurion warned. “We will face the fear of a third, fourth, and fifth round, ad infinitum. Even a war from which Israel emerges triumphant—if it is the initiator, it will suffer moral defeat because the world will not accept its initiative, and Israel will find itself isolated. In the eyes of the entire world, we will remain sullied.”
Dayan did not argue. He merely asked the prime minister from the audience, “When should the army be ready for war?” Ben-Gurion did not go on record with a specific timetable, but the prevalent view was that preparations should be made for an Egyptian offensive in the summer.19