AMID THE INTENSE ACTION and high tension of the military campaign in Egypt, two family developments awaited Moshe Dayan at home. On the day of the paratrooper drop at Mitla, his daughter, Yaël, returned from an extended trip to Europe and the United States. At her request, when war was imminent, her father had cabled her. Yaël was not yet eighteen, and her military conscription was six months away. Nevertheless, she reported for military service upon her return, and Dayan dropped in at her base on her second day of basic training. Yaël appeared before her father, the IDF chief of staff, in a tattered working uniform, wearing a beret and carrying a rifle. “He was too happy to see me to notice how funny I looked,” Yaël later wrote. “We kissed and kissed again, and he was obviously delighted to find me just where I was—a soldier in his winning army.”1 Her mother, Ruth, in her own memoir noted without rancor that “Yaël is certainly her father’s daughter.”2 Moshe’s relationship with his daughter knew ups and downs, but he always loved her, and he was closer to her than to his two sons, Udi and Assi.
At the same time, Dayan’s marriage to Ruth was deteriorating. Moshe had maintained a relationship with Rachel Rabinovich since they had become acquainted on the flight from Rome, seeing her whenever he was in Jerusalem. They met openly at a café in the southern part of town, and news of the affair spread. “We came from totally different worlds but love bloomed,” Rachel recounted. “We would talk about everything and anything. A lot about poetry…. I never doubted his love for me.”3
Ruth knew nothing of the romance until a few days after the war, when she was at a Tel Aviv hotel on business and an Italian journalist asked her whether she was planning to get a divorce. “Everyone in the hotel is talking about it,” he said; “everyone is waiting for the final word. I would like to be the first to hear it.”4 She refused to believe him, but when she confronted Moshe that evening, he did not deny it. “My world could not be mended,” she wrote.5
Dayan tried to make it up to her, taking her on a short trip to Italy with the younger children, but the rupture was irreparable. Although Rachel, his new love, had left her husband some time earlier and moved to Tel Aviv, Dayan remained with Ruth for another thirteen years, reluctant to file for divorce. “I married her when she was eighteen and only she can undo that bond,”6 he explained. His attitude is puzzling, though he may have feared the children’s reaction or public censure. In a letter he later wrote Ruth, he said that he held her in profound affection and respect, and hoped that they could continue to live in friendship and understanding, but he would not relinquish Rachel.
“You must know that I do not regret the past nor do I promise or plan to change in the future,” he wrote. “If you think that a husband who behaves like this is beneath your dignity or that this sort of family life is intolerable, and you prefer divorce and separation, you have every right to, so choose whenever you wish.”7
He was prepared to carry on as things were. Ruth, however, could neither come to terms with the situation nor bring herself to initiate divorce proceedings.
When Dayan informed Ben-Gurion that the Sinai campaign was over, the Old Man remarked lightly, “And you can’t stand that?” Ben-Gurion was not implying that Dayan liked war, but at that moment he knew that Dayan feared that the prime minister would buckle under the political pressures that would soon bear down on him. On November 7, the day after the Sharm el-Sheikh victory celebration, Ben-Gurion delivered a fiery speech in the Knesset. “The ceasefire agreement with Egypt is dead and buried, and will not be revived,” he proclaimed. “Along with that agreement, our armistice lines with Egypt have also expired.”8 He was intimating that Israel would hold on to some of the territories captured in the Sinai campaign. Yet within hours, under growing pressure from the United States, he had to instruct Ambassador Abba Eban to inform the United Nations that in principle Israel accepted the U.N. resolution calling for the withdrawal of its forces.
Ben-Gurion focused his attention over the following months on New York and Washington, not the IDF. He held countless talks with Eban and occasionally postponed his weekly meetings with the chief of staff. The United Nations accepted Israel’s demand that the evacuated territories be transferred to a special U.N. force rather than to the Egyptian army and stationed an emergency force under General E. L. M. Burns between the IDF and the Egyptian army; this “emergency” force would remain for a decade.
Dayan, now relegated to the diplomatic sidelines, watched unhappily as Israel forfeited its war gains. All he could do was slow down the IDF withdrawal, which began on December 2, deliberately drawing back his forces at a rate of about 15 miles a week. The removal of mines laid by the IDF during and immediately after the war provided the excuse for the torpid pace of retreat authorized by Ben-Gurion to gain time for the political struggle at the United Nations. On December 6, Dayan met with General Burns at the El Arish airfield to discuss the deployment in Sinai of the United Nations Emergency Force. Although he held a higher rank, Burns treated Dayan with the awe afforded to a victorious commander. He clearly reveled in the meeting and unabashedly asked to be photographed with Dayan as a memento.
As surely as Dayan knew that the IDF would soon quit most of Sinai, he also knew that it would return one day to fight in this desert. He instructed all units to reconnoiter the length and breadth of Sinai, as he himself spent numerous days doing. On one occasion, he set out for a two-day tour of the new oil fields near the Suez Gulf, the nearby manganese mines, and the old monastery of Santa Katharina at the foot of what is believed to be the biblical Mount Sinai. Near the mines, he headed for a pharaonic shrine dedicated to Hathor, the ancient Egyptian goddess of love and beauty. He ordered the shrine’s steles and imposing statue of the goddess to be transported to the Israel Museum and took a statuette of a bird for his own home. At Santa Katharina, the monks made him a gift of a tiny old cannon, which he placed in his garden. The French and British had also looted antiquities when they had occupied Egyptian territory, but those were different times and Dayan may not have been aware of the change in attitudes.
On another tour, he stumbled across a real archaeological find after setting out in a half-track along the shore from Gaza to El Arish. He knew that west of Rafah there had been a Roman-Byzantine town, Antedon, excavated by the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie. As Dayan’s company approached from the sea side they spotted a hillock and wooden watchtower erected by the Egyptian army. Dayan was astonished to find that the Egyptians had planted flowerbeds around the tower and marked them off with potsherds—the knobs and necks of ancient amphorae. When Petrie excavated Antedon, which had been built about a mile inland for fear of pirates, he had not, apparently, uncovered the port and the warehouses for marine equipment. These had remained buried in the sandy shore for generations.
As Dayan wandered about the site, he figured out why the Antedon antiquities were being used for such homely tasks. Bedouins digging at the tell would expose the ancient amphorae, cut off the necks and knobs, and use the jugs as a protective cover for palm seedlings, while Egyptian soldiers would take the amphora remains to decorate their flowerbeds. Dayan struck a deal with the Bedouins: amphorae in exchange for coffee, sugar, tea, and rice. Though the IDF remained in the area for only a few weeks, Dayan brought back to Israel a prize of some seventy amphorae.
The Sinai campaign spread Dayan’s fame around the world, and his distinctive portrait, the black eye patch with its strap cutting diagonally across his receding hairline, was featured on the covers of major magazines. Journalists flocked to him for interviews, statesmen and celebrities basked in his company. In Israel, his figure overshadowed even Ben-Gurion’s. The wife of the editor of the French magazine L’Express, visiting Israel in early 1957, asked friends to arrange for her to dance with Dayan at a party. Presumably she wished to brandish a photograph of the encounter before her Parisian salon friends. In early February 1957, the French government made him a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.
Shortly before retiring from military service in December 1957, Dayan met with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the hero of El Alamein. At Montgomery’s invitation, the gathering took place in England, at the home of the acclaimed military commentator Capt. Basil Liddell Hart. Montgomery, serving then as the deputy commander of NATO forces, came from Paris specially to meet with Dayan. It was a meeting of equals. In Liddell Hart’s home, Montgomery created an atmosphere in which two extolled generals could sit down and together solve the world’s problems. “Dayan is tough, but I like him,” Montgomery told Liddell Hart when he was escorting the field marshal to his car.9 After Montgomery left to return to Paris, Liddell Hart remarked that he had never heard Monty speak so frankly.
Dayan had never aspired to control all of Sinai and was therefore not opposed to withdrawing from El Arish, in northern Sinai, despite the delaying tactics. Nevertheless, when, on January 15, 1957, Israel folded up the flag that had flown from the top of the Mediterranean coastal town’s municipal building, Dayan was there to observe, sad and begrudging. Asked by a journalist why he had come to watch, he replied, “IDF commanders must taste all the dishes, both the bitter and the sweet.”10
By February, it was clear that the United States would insist on Israel’s full withdrawal back to the armistice lines, which meant a complete withdrawal from Sinai, including Sharm el-Sheikh and the Gaza Strip. There were threats of U.N. economic sanctions should Israel refuse. The gap between Dayan’s views and Ben-Gurion’s maneuvering widened. Despite Ben-Gurion’s initial belligerent stance, presumably in preparation for a confrontation with Washington, he gradually yielded to the mounting international pressure.
The government afforded Ambassador Eban broad authority to negotiate with the United Nations and U.S. Secretary of State Dulles. Ultimately, this autonomy allowed Eban to agree to the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza as well as Sharm el-Sheikh. Dayan had no influence on these developments. He advised Ben-Gurion that the IDF had enough reserves of munitions, fuel, and food for Israel to endure sanctions for more than half a year. It was always possible to surrender on one’s knees, he protested; why do so now? But Ben-Gurion chose to make a gesture of goodwill rather than wait to be coerced.
As when he had ordered the IDF to make the transition to defense in 1955, Ben-Gurion chose to explain his position to the generals in person and invited them to his home on March 1. If the IDF remained at Sharm el-Sheikh in the teeth of world opinion, he argued, maritime transportation would not be allowed to reach the port of Eilat, and the city would never develop.
“There will be no dancing in the streets tomorrow,” he said in the meeting. “I imagine that in the army, there will be great regret. But I am sure that six months from now … ships and tankers will come, work will start on laying a large pipeline. Then everyone will know that this fateful decision was for the good.”11 The generals were not convinced, but no one wished to express an opinion for or against the prime minister. There was no point—the decision had been made.
On March 4, I noted in the bureau logbook: “Misgivings about withdrawal seem to be weighing on Moshe. It’s hard for him to find himself so divided from Ben-Gurion. His attempts to justify and understand Ben-Gurion’s measure have been in vain…. In Moshe’s opinion, Ben-Gurion’s consent to withdraw from the Straits and Gaza is the result of weakness, not of farsighted policy.”12
Developments in the 1960s, however, would prove Ben-Gurion right. “Perhaps we will need to fight again,” he told his officers at the March 1 meeting. “But when we do, while the whole U.N. may not stand at our side, some states will, the sort of states that will enable us to do so with a calmer heart.”13 His words were virtually prophetic, reflecting a profounder foresight than Dayan had at this stage.
Dayan gritted his teeth and coordinated the details of withdrawal with General Burns. On March 5, he traveled to Gaza “to part with it and its antiquities,” he noted in his memoirs. The town was under curfew. Dayan had feared protests by extremists that would compel the IDF to resort to force, but all was calm. He also parted from the soldiers of the military government, whose feelings were reflected in the bureau logbook: “Instead of being glad about going home or the leave they have received, the soldiers voice regret about withdrawing and their disengagement from an undertaking that had only just begun, that they had striven for, and which they believed they could sustain to create new political realities for the State of Israel.”14
Presumably not all the soldiers felt this way, but Dayan certainly did. He truly believed in the possibility of maintaining Israeli rule in Gaza. After Israel’s withdrawal, however, he was relieved that he did not have to manage Gaza and its Palestinian residents. But then, within days and contrary to expectations, the Egyptian military government returned to its offices in Gaza and there were informal demands among members of the Israeli press and some officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the IDF recapture Gaza at once. Ben-Gurion dismissed them immediately. “We do not intend to react militarily to Egypt’s entry into Gaza even if its army should follow, primarily because I am not convinced that it is worth Israel’s while to rule Gaza,” he said. “The ‘bargain’ of 300,000 disgruntled Arab refugees in Israeli territory does not appeal to me.”15
The U.N. force under General Burns remained stationed on the border as a buffer between the IDF and the Gaza Strip. Egypt ceased its fedayeen raids and kept troops out of the Sinai Peninsula, while the Straits of Eilat stayed open to shipping, allowing it to become an international oil terminal. All this would change in May 1967, but for ten years Israel’s border with Egypt remained calm. A few days after the withdrawal from Gaza, Dayan and the GHQ toured the furrow line on the old border. A picture of border line conditions emerges from the words of the bureau logbook: “Peace and quiet. Shepherds and farmers roam about pleasantly with women and children right near the furrow, not even turning to look when a line of cars drives by. Near the roadblocks, Danes and Norwegians [members of the U.N. force] are busy sprucing up their tents and dwellings.”16 At the sight of the international diversity of the U.N. forces, Dayan quipped, “Who said the Tower of Babel has to rise vertically? It can be laid down horizontally, too, along the border between Israel and Egypt”17
In mid-March, a week after the withdrawal from Gaza, Dayan returned to the Gaza border with Ben-Gurion to meet with officers and settlers. Ben-Gurion again tried to explain his motives for leaving Gaza and asked for their opinions. The officers spoke freely, critically, and resentfully. A snapshot taken by a military photographer shows Ben-Gurion talking to the officers on a kibbutz lawn while Dayan is stretched out sleeping at the lawn’s edge. In a meeting, some officers asked Dayan why he had not resigned over his differences with the prime minister. “As a citizen and soldier, I would disapprove if the chief of staff tried to use his weight to influence government decisions,” he responded. “Anyone who accepts soldiering, including the CGS, accepts the government’s defense policy. When the government discusses defense policy, it must assume that the army is an instrument of service and will do as it is told.”18
Though he did not resign in protest, Dayan had spoken of retiring from the IDF for some time. Having already served for more than three years as chief of staff, longer than anyone before him, he was tired and had been waiting for an opportune time to devote a year or two to study. But Ben-Gurion would not have it, despite their disagreements. He relied on Dayan and his judgment and was unwilling to lose his services.
On November 3, Ben-Gurion suffered a personal tragedy when his military secretary, Nehemiah Argov, who had been at his side since the War of Independence, committed suicide. The reason for his act remains a mystery, but for Ben-Gurion it was a terrible blow. Because of his poor health the doctors had hesitated to tell him the news, and newspapers had printed special editions for him omitting the item. On the day after the funeral, Dayan took on the unhappy task of telling Ben-Gurion the truth. “I spoke and he wept,” Dayan told his aides. After he regained his composure, Ben-Gurion took his hand and said, “Moshe, stay in the army,” repeating it several times. Argov’s death left him feeling alone. He missed the familiar face and could not bear the thought of Dayan, too, leaving.19
By mid-November, however, it appeared that Ben-Gurion would no longer stand in Dayan’s way and had decided that Chaim Laskov, Dayan’s deputy, would become the next IDF chief of staff. (I had left my post as bureau chief in June.) In his final days in the military, a foolish, yet typical, gaffe briefly tarnished Dayan’s relationship with Meir Amit, his closest confidant. In the advent of Laskov’s appointment, Amit decided to retire as chief of GHQ Operations, and Dayan spoke at his farewell party. He was fond of Amit and respected him, but instead of praising him with the expected military accolades, Dayan spoke of his character, noting that Amit was not a military man at all, that his entire comportment was basically civilian. He meant it as a compliment, wishing to commend Amit’s disposition, friendship, informality, and openness. But Amit interpreted the words differently and took offense. Dayan, as soon as he learned of this, dashed off a letter of explanation and apology that mollified Amit, who received it while on tour in the United States. “Working with you inspired and infused me with that spice of life and sense of security that you sowed in the entire army,” he responded to Dayan. “I do not know anyone … who instilled in me more values than you did: to stand firm, do one’s best, separate the wheat from the chaff, be true to oneself and stick to the goal—all these qualities are often bandied about, but few know how to put them into practice as well as you.”20
Only Ben-Gurion’s warm letter of appreciation to Dayan on his retirement topped Amit’s emotional superlatives. Listing Dayan’s accomplishments in military service, from his youth in the Haganah to the Sinai campaign, Ben-Gurion wrote:
From the villages of the homeland where you grew up and your parents’ home where you were raised, you imbibed a natural love of homeland and of freedom, the stature of a Jew standing tall, and the belief and confidence in our own strength. From childhood, you harbored a dauntless spirit, tackling difficulties or obstacles head on, and walking—not merely standing—at the front…. In the battles of the War of Independence, you showed two basic, seemingly contradictory, qualities that made you one of the most excellent soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces: almost insane daring balanced by profound tactical and strategic judgment.
On Dayan’s service as chief of staff and commander of the Sinai campaign, Ben-Gurion wrote: “Your four years of service will remain a highly significant turning point, rich in outcomes for the IDF…. The crowning achievement of your efforts—the heroic and glorious Sinai campaign—raised Israel’s prestige both internally and around the world. This campaign, in its precise planning and execution, will gleam not only in the history of Israel but in the military history of the entire world as one of the grandest campaigns in the life of all nations.”21
It was a glowing summation of twenty years of military service, and Dayan was undoubtedly gratified by the words of praise. He included Ben-Gurion’s letter in his autobiography as one would hang credentials and testimonials on an office wall.