CONVINCED THAT THE GOVERNMENT’S decision to take a defensive rather than offensive posture toward Egypt was wrong, Dayan nonetheless remained firm in his allegiance to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, and he set about reorganizing the army for defense. Ben-Gurion was well aware of Dayan’s frustration but trusted him to toe the government line, even pressing him to continue briefing newspaper editors, as he had done before.
Inwardly and before his senior commanders, however, Dayan continued to develop his tactical thinking. On January 15, 1956, he convened all IDF officers with the rank of colonel or higher and delivered an address that filled twenty sheets of paper—his complete doctrine of state and security. He had closeted himself in his office for three days to compose the treatise, and the result was worthy of a defense minister, not simply a chief of staff. His calculations were measured and cautious, supported by clear analysis and a rational prognosis. I had just become his new bureau chief and was surprised when he asked me to comment on his draft. I had no comment to make.
On the most pressing issue facing Israel, he postulated that “as a result of the Czech deal and the absence of a countervailing Israeli deal … Egypt might start war.” Sooner or later, Egypt had to confront Israel if it wished to assume leadership of the Arab world. Nevertheless, he argued, the superior munitions of the Egyptian army “do not rule out an IDF victory. They do, however, demand supreme effort, stamina, and endurance.” Referring to the IDF infantry’s short-range weapons, capable of hitting Egyptian tanks from a distance of about 100–150 yards, he added drolly, “This is not an ideal range, but compared with all the troubles the Jews have suffered down the generations, it is no cause for despair.”1
The Czech-Egyptian arms deal in September 1955 had engendered anxiety among the Israelis and inspired an outpouring of donations to the Defense Fund, a state account reserved for the purchase of arms. Women from all levels of society donated necklaces and rings, children smashed their piggy banks, those without available funds borrowed from friends, unions imposed employee levies, and businessmen opened their pockets. The Israeli public organized mass rallies and distributed hundreds of thousands of flyers, and youth groups paraded through the streets chanting, “Arms for Israel—our answer to those plotting against us.” In high demand to appear at the rallies, Dayan, with his distinctive eye patch, became an Israeli icon.
In January, the government again called upon the public to exhibit its volunteering spirit. Israel’s defense rested not only on the army but also on border settlements, particularly those strategically established after the 1948 war that needed to be fortified with firing positions, barbed-wire fences, and bomb shelters. The needs exceeded the IDF’s limited budget, but workers, students, and professionals alike responded to the call and volunteered to fill sandbags, twist wires, and haul reinforced concrete to fortify the settlements.
The GHQ code-named the campaign “Wall” and launched it with great fanfare. On March 8, GHQ officers and soldiers set out for Mivtachim, the moshav settled by Kurdistan immigrants near the Gaza border during Dayan’s term as O.C. Southern Command six years earlier. For the cameras, Dayan dug diligently as generals worked shoulder to shoulder with military clerks, drivers, and cooks. Even the seventy-year-old prime minister showed up to knot barbed wire. The publicity achieved its goal: dozens of journalists and photographers documented their leaders performing laborers’ work, and all the dailies carried snapshots of Dayan and Laskov digging trenches, and Ben-Gurion and the head of the Women’s Corps bending barbed wire. The world got the message that Israelis were both worried and determined to defend themselves.
Tensions on the border subsided in early 1956. Despite the broader strategic threats facing Israel, Dayan acknowledged in a meeting with senior army commanders that “in terms of day-to-day security, Israel has never had so quiet a period.”2 Attempting to settle matters and reconstitute the armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld asked both sides to retreat from their forward positions, a situation viewed by each side as a provocation. Much to Dayan’s displeasure, the Foreign Ministry, with Ben-Gurion’s backing, handled contacts with the United Nations.
The situation again deteriorated, however, as the first blossoming signs of spring brought Palestinian shepherds across the “furrow line” that had been plowed the length of the Gaza Strip. In early April 1956, IDF patrols and Egyptian military posts exchanged fire, and Ben-Gurion authorized an artillery operation if it were deemed necessary. Dayan’s guidelines adhered to his philosophy: “There is no need for provocation, but if battle ensues we must not lose.”3 Matters came to a head on April 4 when an IDF patrol aiming to drive Arab shepherds off kibbutz fields ran into an Egyptian ambush, and three Israeli soldiers were killed. Next Egypt shelled border kibbutzim with mortars. Israel responded with cannon fire, and the Egyptians, in turn, intensified their attacks with a heavy barrage of mortars on Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Dayan now diverted the IDF fire to Gaza City, where shells landed in the main marketplace, hitting homes and the municipal hospital. Though he was acting with Ben-Gurion’s authorization, it is doubtful that the prime minister had intended such extreme measures. When Dayan reported to him with an update, Ben-Gurion ordered the chief of staff to halt the firing on Gaza. The roughly fifty dead and one hundred Egyptians wounded consisted primarily of civilians, including women and children. Nasser was bound to retaliate.
Dayan headed for the kibbutzim. Nahal Oz alone had sustained about a hundred shells. There Dayan encountered Ro’i Rothberg, the charming and composed commander of the heavily shelled zone adjacent to Gaza. Rothberg left an indelible mark on Dayan, an impression that later inspired one of Dayan’s most important speeches. The next day, much to Dayan’s annoyance, Ben-Gurion submitted to Hammarskjöld’s demands and drew the IDF back about five hundred yards from the border. But it was too late.
On April 8, Nasser unleashed dozens of fedayeen, who assaulted Israel’s south. They blew up water pipelines and bridges, hurled grenades at homes, and attacked cars on the roads. The IDF and the police mounted an extensive search-and-destroy mission and ordered hundreds of ambushes set on the fedayeen retreat routes. Israeli forces killed fourteen infiltrators and took four captive in response to the brazen guerrilla attacks that left three Israeli civilians dead and nineteen wounded. Tensions ebbed and flowed. On April 11, Nasser agreed to Hammarskjöld’s request to halt the infiltrations and exchanges of border fire. But that same night, the fedayeen sprang to action. They had apparently been in the field and not received word that hostilities had been halted. Striking near Tel Aviv, they attacked a bus, the gate of a large army base, and, worst of all, a synagogue at Kfar Chabad, where the community’s children were convened for prayer and Torah study. The Egyptian suicide squad murdered five children and wounded many more, as well as the rabbi.
The GHQ believed that Nasser was paying lip service to Hammarskjöld while continuing his aggression toward an all-out war. After the Kfar Chabad murders, Ben-Gurion instructed the IDF to brace for war. Dayan drew up battle plans to attack Egyptian positions deep inside Sinai, including air force bases near the Suez Canal. He ordered a covert call-up of the reserves, the arming of airplanes, and the mustering of forces in the Negev. Intelligence sources, however, reported that fedayeen actions had completely stopped. On April 13, the government decided to wait, and the crisis passed. Dayan gritted his teeth and accepted the verdict once again as the IDF returned to routine duties.
Only weeks later, Israel received a tragic reminder that the U.N.-brokered lull in violence remained tenuous. On the morning of April 29, Ro’i Rothberg, the commander who had earned Dayan’s admiration, set out from Nahal Oz on horseback to drive Arab shepherds off the kibbutz fields. A few hours later, his bullet-riddled body was returned, mutilated.
Dayan was distraught. He delivered a eulogy at the open grave, expressing his grief and bitterness over the agreement contrived by the Foreign Ministry and the United Nations, and perhaps, too, over Ben-Gurion’s wavering. Dayan, unlike many chiefs of staff, wrote his own speeches, and his eulogy became a major text in the historical record of Israel; it is often quoted. In it, he summarized his view of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Yesterday morning Ro’i was murdered. The morning stillness so dazzled him that he did not see those lying in wait for him on the furrow line. Let us not cast blame on his murderers today. It is pointless to mention their deep-seated hatred of us. For eight years they have been sitting in Gaza refugee camps while before their eyes we have been making the land and villages where they and their forefathers had lived our own.
It is not from the Arabs in Gaza that we should demand Ro’i’s blood, but from ourselves. How we shut our eyes to a sober observation of our fate, to the sight of our generation’s mission in all its cruelty. Have we forgotten that this group of young men living at Nahal Oz carries the heavy gates of Gaza on their shoulders, gates behind which hundreds of thousands of eyes and hands pray that we will weaken so that they may tear us to pieces—have we forgotten that? Yes, we know that if hope of our destruction is to cease, we must be strong, morning and evening, armed and ready. We are the generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon maw we will be unable to plant a tree or build a home. Our children will have no life if we do not dig shelters, and without barbed wire and a machine gun we will not be able to pave roads or drill for water. Millions of Jews who were annihilated without having had a country look to us from the ashes of Israeli history, commanding us to settle and build a land for our people. But beyond the furrow border, a sea of hatred and vengeance swells, waiting for the day that calm will dull our vigilance, the day that we listen to the ambassadors of scheming hypocrisy who call on us to lay down our arms.
Ro’i’s blood cries out to us from his rent body. A thousand times we vowed that our blood would not be spilled in vain, and yesterday, again, we gave in to temptation; we listened; we believed. Our account with ourselves we will settle today. Let us not be deterred from seeing the abiding hatred that fills the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs living all around us and waiting for the moment that they will manage to shed our blood. Let us not avert our eyes lest our arms slacken. This is the decree of our generation. This is the choice of our lives—to be prepared and armed, strong and resolute or to let the sword fall from our fist and our lives be cut down. Ro’i Rothberg, the blond, slender young man who left Tel Aviv to build his home at the gates of Gaza and serve as our bulwark, Ro’i—the light in his heart blinded him to the gleam of the knife. The longing for peace deafened him to the sound of lurking murder, the gates of Gaza were too heavy for him and they overwhelmed him.4
The eulogy was broadcast on the radio and the words impressed Ben-Gurion. But he asked Dayan to omit the line about “ambassadors of scheming hypocrisy” from the press version for the following day: Hammarskjöld was in Israel and Ben-Gurion thought the allusion too blunt.
At the same time that the government was retreating from full-scale war the previous December it had been making a concerted effort to procure heavy munitions. The Foreign Ministry came up empty in Washington, but Peres was exploring informal channels in France. He counted on the loose structure of France’s republican government to enable him to bypass the French Foreign Ministry (familiarly known as the Quai d’Orsay), with its pro-Arab veteran diplomats, and instead form direct contacts with the Defense Ministry, the military, and even the arms industry.
The French Socialist Party under Guy Mollet had formed a coalition government in early 1956, with Christian Pineau as foreign minister and Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, the republican representative, as defense minister. Peres had long felt at home in the French Defense Ministry, and there had been talks of purchasing sixty Mystère fighter-bomber aircraft, Vautour jet bombers, and hundreds of tanks and mobile cannons. But Peres carefully studied France’s political interests and realized that the deal could be still more lucrative for Israel. The new French government, busy suppressing the Algerian rebellion that began in 1954, had learned that Nasser had ties with rebel leaders who had sought asylum in Cairo. It occurred to Peres that here was an opportunity for strategic convergence between France and Israel. Returning from Paris on April 30, Peres relayed to Dayan the remark by Republican representative Bourgès-Maunoury in their meeting: “The tidal waves of the Mediterranean waters lap the shores of France and Israel with equal frequency.”5 The metaphor was clear: France and Israel shared an interest in weakening Nasser. Peres and Bourgès-Maunoury began to devise ways to smuggle tanks and cannons into Israel by sea, a scheme dubbed “The French Invasion.” But they still had to figure out how to circumvent the Quai d’Orsay.
The solution came from an unexpected quarter. Israeli intelligence intercepted broadcasts from Cairo to Rome and Switzerland transmitting the movement of Algeria’s rebel leaders. Yehoshafat Harkavi, the head of Israeli intelligence, assumed that the French might find this information interesting and met in Paris with Robert Lacoste, the minister in charge of Algerian affairs. Lacoste pounced on it. Working within French law, the prime minister possessed the authority to form intelligence contacts with foreign states without advising the Foreign Ministry. Mollet brought France’s Secret Service into the picture and convened a clandestine meeting led by Pierre Boursicot, the head of French intelligence. Foreign Minister Pineau was briefed confidentially, but the rest of his ministry was kept in the dark.
On June 22, an Israeli Air Force transport plane with French markings departed from a semi-abandoned airfield carrying Dayan, Peres, and Harkavi. Landing at a military airport near Paris, the Israelis were whisked off to Veimars, a town in which a Jewish businessman had placed his mansion at the disposal of the Secret Service. Boursicot chaired the meeting with the participation of Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Maurice Challe, at this time one of Israel’s strongest supporters in the French establishment.6
The two-day Veimars Conference resulted in agreements on munitions and intelligence. France would supply Israel with seventy-two additional Mystère jets and numerous tanks. In return, Israel would gather information for French intelligence on the Algerian rebellion and help hinder rebel operations and, specifically, Nasser’s assistance to the rebels. Ben-Gurion demanded joint responsibility from France and Britain. Dayan described the Paris talks as “a special experience” that boosted his personal confidence. It was the first time that he had acted as “Israel’s main representative” in an international forum, “articulating [Israel’s] wishes and motivations.”7 Dayan and Peres reported to Ben-Gurion, who approved the agreements. “It’s a somewhat precarious adventure,” the prime minister said, “but what of it? So is our entire existence!”8 Sharett’s resignation before the Veimars Conference made it easier for Ben-Gurion to negotiate with the full, unreserved support of the new foreign minister, Golda Meir.
The Veimars Conference greatly increased Israel’s military capability, allowed the IDF to alter its defense plans, and forestalled the immediate need to strike Egypt. It was now preferable to postpone any confrontation so as to buy the IDF enough time to incorporate the new munitions into its arsenal and train the units to operate them, to build hangars and broader runways for the air force, and, most time-consuming, to train pilots: three months later, when the Sinai campaign began, the IDF had forty-eight Mystère planes but enough pilots for only one flight squadron.
On July 7, Dayan froze all defense expenditures and ordered a revised budget proposal that would provide for the new acquisitions. On July 9, when Ben-Gurion proposed a series of minor reprisals after two Israeli workers were murdered on the road to Eilat, Dayan found himself opposing any IDF response to avoid arousing the Egyptians.9 The IDF was also dealing with personnel changes. Ben-Gurion suggested that Chief of Operations Chaim Laskov take charge of the Armored Corps and Dayan agreed. Meir Amit, whom Dayan had originally wanted as his deputy, replaced Laskov.
The French had assembled a small fleet of landing craft in early July to make three trips to Israel. The first, Chelif, named after a picturesque valley in Algiers, arrived on the evening of July 25 transporting thirty tanks, ammunition, and spare parts. Dayan and Ben-Gurion joined Peres, the chief architect of the arms deal, on the deserted beach in Haifa Bay to watch the unloading. Thirty Israeli drivers steered the tanks from the ship’s belly to shore and then to the nearby railway track. Ben-Gurion, Dayan, and Peres boarded the ship and went to the captain’s cabin, where the Frenchman popped a bottle of champagne to toast the operation, the crew, and the ship. At eleven o’clock, less than two hours after docking, the ship lifted anchor and sailed back across the bay, vanishing into the night.
The following day, at a mass rally at Alexandria’s Liberation Square, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, which had been owned by the Egyptian and British governments, as well as private French investors. A day later, the French army’s chief of staff and his English counterpart met to start planning a military campaign to protect their economic, political, and military interests, which had been hurt by the nationalization of the canal. Before that meeting, the French had asked the IDF for details on the readiness of the Egyptian army. They followed up with a request for information on Israel’s ports and airfields, apparently weighing their value in a war against Nasser. “We must treat the French as our brothers,” Ben-Gurion noted in his diary. “Their assistance and help to us and our cooperation with them is immeasurably vital and we must cooperate wholeheartedly.”10 The British, however, soon demanded that France keep Israel out of the entire affair lest the Arab states regard the Europeans as cooperating with the “loathsome Zionist” enemies against their revered leader, Nasser. Dayan was pleased. He did not consider the IDF ready.
Throughout these developments, Dayan’s mother, Devorah, was lying on her deathbed, cared for devotedly by her husband, Shmuel. Dayan visited her as often as he could. On one visit, according to Shmuel, she said to her son, “You are brave; the brave can do everything. Can’t you spare me suffering and agony?”11
Devorah passed away on July 28 and was buried beside her son Zohar at Givat Shimron, the first foothold of Nahalal’s settlers. With her death Dayan lost the person closest to him, the one he held in the highest esteem. Yet she remained with him until his own death. “Whenever I saw a woman bent over a vegetable patch, I saw my mother’s image, weeding between the beet and cauliflower seedlings,” he wrote.12 But he had no time for private mourning, nor was he one to show his feelings. After the funeral he hurried back to a meeting with Ben-Gurion.
Despite Dayan’s wish to avoid unnecessary tension, more violence flared up in September, mostly on the Jordanian border. Months earlier, Gen. John Bagot Glubb and most of the British officers had been ousted from command of the Arab Legion, leaving discipline lax. The violence peaked on September 11, when Arab villagers attacked an Israeli unit training at the border near Hebron, killing six soldiers.
In response, Dayan proposed a plan to conquer the nearby Arab village, evacuate its residents, and raze their homes to the ground. Most of the ministers, fearing a recurrence of the Kibiya episode, decided to strike at a military target instead—the police station south of Hebron. As usual, Sharon’s para-troopers carried out the operation. They blew up the station and destroyed Jordanian reinforcements, killing twenty Jordanian soldiers. But for Dayan, waiting at Sharon’s command post, success came at a steep price. Meir Har-Tzion, who had returned to service after the IDF dismissed his trial concerning the retaliation for his sister’s brutal murder, led the attack and was critically wounded. The unit doctor saved his life by inserting a tube directly into his windpipe to prevent him from choking on his own blood. As he was rushed to the hospital in Beersheba, his stretcher brushed past Dayan.
I noted in the bureau logbook: “I said to Moshe, ‘It’s Har-Tzion who’s wounded.’ Dayan seemed to lose all interest in everything around him. He got into his car minutes later and raced behind the ambulance. He waited near the operating theater until the wounded man was brought out and stood at his bed for a long time. Suddenly, Har-Tzion opened his eyes, a weak smile alighting on his face before he drifted off again. I caught an expression on Dayan’s face that I had never seen before. It was impossible not to see his profound pain and his prayer that Har-Tzion would pull through. He stood there, alone with himself and his feelings.”13
Despite the paratroop operation’s success, the Jordanian command seemed to be flaunting its loyalty to the Palestinian population and seeking further confrontations. Additional assaults in the days that followed hardly appeared incidental; someone in Amman was pulling the strings, spoiling for a fight. “The acts of terror from Jordan have exceeded the measure of restraint we may permit ourselves,” Ben-Gurion told his government.14
Now the paratroopers deployed two battalions, one against a police station near Bethlehem, deep inside Jordanian territory, and the other against a Jordanian border stronghold. Despite the operation’s success—the IDF took the stronghold, and killed more than forty Arab Legion fighters—ten paratroopers were killed and sixteen wounded, mainly at the stronghold. Dayan was at the border when Legion cannons fired at Sharon’s command post, and his driver, Noam, who had climbed up a nearby water tower, was wounded and evacuated to the hospital. Dayan felt that the conquest of the Jordanian post had been unnecessary and the cost too dear.
In early September 1956, France signaled that Israel might be invited to participate in the campaign against Egypt over the status of the Suez Canal. Before leaving for Paris on September 18, Peres consulted with Dayan, who noted that while Israel would like the Suez Canal to revert to an international waterway, the decision would be left to the world powers. Israel had no interest in reaching the canal, but should war erupt it would strongly encourage changing the borders to allow Israel control of the Straits of Eilat and Rafah. Dayan, echoing Ben-Gurion’s apprehension concerning direct confrontations with the English, warned that Britain might be a problem because it had defense pacts with several Arab states. “We must not find ourselves alongside the English on the Egyptian front while clashing with them on the Jordanian front,” he said. Dayan also stressed to Peres that Israeli-French relations were being conducted “under the table,” which was not right. If France wanted Israel’s cooperation in the war in Sinai, “we must free ourselves of the status of a minor member of the tripartite and become an equal ally.”15
The French feared that Britain’s prime minister, Anthony Eden, had lost his resolve, and they began to explore the possibility of a French-Israeli operation. On September 25, the French government formally invited a senior Israeli delegation to Paris to explore the option. Ben-Gurion had his own reservations. “Israel’s position depends on the type of partnership offered,” he told Dayan. “It must be dignified.”16 Nevertheless, on September 29 a delegation set out with Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Dayan, and Peres. I accompanied the delegation as the mission’s secretary. The French had sent an old marine bomber to fly us to a French naval base in Bizerta, Tunisia. We crowded into the flight crew’s small compartment for the ten-hour flight along the northern coast of Africa. Only Meir was given a comfortable seat in the cockpit. From Bizerta, we continued in a more spacious aircraft to a military base near Paris. To maintain secrecy, the delegation was hosted outside the city in a palace with cultivated gardens built by Henri IV in the suburb of Saint Germaine en Laye, overlooking the Seine. The gardens were filled with Saturday strollers as sailboats glided on the Seine, but tension marred Dayan’s enjoyment of the tranquil scene that was so rare to him. He kept turning different scenarios over in his mind. More than anything he wanted the joint Israeli-French Sinai operation to materialize, and he searched for an argument that would eliminate Ben-Gurion’s doubts.
The meetings soon showed that political conditions were not yet ripe for collaboration. Moreover, French forces were already preparing for the Anglo-French operation against Egypt, and it was not at all certain that a campaign could be launched without the British. Another ten days passed before the conditions for Israel’s involvement were clarified. Dayan was concerned.
“I did not have a good feeling,” he recalled. “The only thing that became clear was that the situation was unclear…. Militarily, the uncertainty was obstructive and complicated. Military preparations can’t be made without a political decision. And should the decision come … we will have very little time at our disposal. How will we manage to do what’s necessary?”17
The only practical outcome of the meetings was that the French committed to supply Israel with additional equipment, especially materiel for desert warfare. A delegation of officers under General Challe was to leave for Israel immediately to study the proposed Franco-Israeli agreement and Israel’s needs for further supplies more closely. For the trip home, the French government furnished the delegation with the much more luxurious DC4 aircraft given by President Truman to President Charles de Gaulle at the end of World War II.
The French officers were impressed by what they saw in Israel, and on his first evening there Challe wired authorization to Paris for the instant provision of more equipment. Dayan, meanwhile, convened the GHQ and issued a war alert, ordering his staff to prepare an update of the plans for the conquest of the Sinai Peninsula: “The plans should be drawn up on the assumption that the fighting in Sinai will be undertaken by the IDF alone, as if we were setting out for war without partners.”18 Within days, the plans were revised and code-named Kadesh, after the biblical settlement of Kadesh Barnea, one of the stations on the route of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt. The countdown to war had begun.