Defending Israel: A Strategic Plan for Peace and Security

by Martin van Creveld

Overview

Israel is a tiny country. From tip to toe, it stretches 260 miles long but is only 60 miles at its widest point. Since the days of the British mandate, the question of "defensible borders" for the Jewish state has always been problematic. Yet considering the larger picture of what has happened in the Middle East over the last 25 years -- the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, the weakening of Syria as a result of the collapse of the USSR, the smashing of Iraq by the U.S. -- Israel is, militarily speaking, stronger than ever before. The greatest remaining threats are terrorism and guerilla warfare; and those, this book argues, are best dealt with territorial concessions. Martin van Creveld's Defending Israel is a compact, incisive study that is certain to draw attention.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466865754
Publisher:	Thomas Dunne Books
Publication date:	06/25/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	221
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Martin van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in 1946 and has lived in Israel from 1950. Having studied in Jerusalem and London, since 1971 he has been on the faculty of the History Department, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. A specialist in military history and strategy, he is the author of 17 books, including The Sword and the Olive and The Rise and Decline of the State, and has appeared regularly on CBS, CNN and the BBC.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

ISRAELI DEFENSE BEFORE 1967

Considering the alleged "indefensibility" of Israel's pre-1967 borders, how did the State defend itself during the first nineteen years of its existence when it was much weaker than it is today? To answer this question, let us start by looking at some maps published at the time. Except on the west, where it borders the Mediterranean, Israel was surrounded by enemies on all sides. So long were its land frontiers, and so small the territory they enclosed, that there was hardly any spot more than thirty miles from the nearest hostile border. From the Jordanian-held town of Kalkilya to the shore the distance was only ten miles; a drawing by Israel's best-known cartoonist took advantage of the twists and turns in the border to present it in the form of an angry snake, ready to strike. As legend had it, tourists journeying from Haifa to Tel Aviv and having a sausage in their possession were advised to hold it from north to south to prevent the Arabs from slicing off a part when they passed the narrowest point. Seriously, an armored force stationed in the foothills of the West Bank and seeking to reach the coast would have been able to do so in less than an hour, effectively cutting the country in half.

Then as now, Israel's heartland was greater Tel Aviv, which held about one quarter of the entire population and also comprised the economic heartland. Yet it was threatened by Egyptian troops stationed in the Gaza Strip, perhaps forty miles to the south, as well as Jordanian ones standing fewer than twenty miles to the east. During the 1967 War its northern neighborhoods came under the latter's artillery fire, albeit most of the shells fell harmlessly into the sea. Haifa, the main and, until the 1960s, only Mediterranean port and an important industrial center, was only about twenty-five miles from the Jordanian border and at about an equal distance from the Lebanese one. The position of the port of Eilat, which served as Israel's only artery to south and east Asia (violating the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the Egyptians did not permit Israeli shipping, or even foreign ships carrying loads destined for Israel, to pass the Suez Canal) was even more difficult. It was, and still is, the world's only city that is located where the borders of four countries (Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) meet. To cut it off, all the Egyptians had to do was move their forces some ten miles to the east.

Perhaps worst of all was the position of the capital, West Jerusalem. Reflecting the outcome of the 1948 War, it was located at the apex of a triangle jutting into Jordanian territory and surrounded on three sides. The highest point of all, Mount Nebi Samuel, was also in Jordanian hands. In 1948 it had served to rain down artillery shells on the city; several Israeli attempts to capture it had failed. Of the roads leading into the capital only one was really suitable for modern traffic, and that one ran so close to the border that smugglers from both sides sometimes met right besides it. The railroad that linked the city to Tel Aviv, indeed, was the border; occasionally it was blocked as Arab kids from neighboring villages put stones on the tracks. During the 1948 War both those arteries had been closed for a period of about three months, which led to the loss of the old Jewish quarter — it was taken by the Jordanians on 28 May — and brought the city close to starvation. Both in the center, where the Jordanians overlooked the coastal plain, and in the north of the country, where the Syrians occupied the dominating Golan Heights and used them as a base for harassing the Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley, it was Israel's enemies who occupied the high ground. They thus enjoyed all the advantages that doing so entails. When Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban once spoke of "Auschwitz borders," he had a point, though he was no military expert and he later modified that statement.

And yet, the difficulties were not insuperable. In part, this was because the borders, though they were completely without logic and though they cut right across countless streams, valleys, and transportation arteries, turned out not to constitute a serious obstacle to the country's development. The latter proceeded as if those borders, and with them the hostile states on the other sides, did not exist; proof, if proof were needed, that it is primarily human ingenuity and not geography that makes a society tick. Nor were the military problems that these borders created nearly as bad as they seemed at first sight. To quote a wise saying by Moshe Dayan, the road from Tel Aviv to Damascus was no longer than the one which led from Damascus to Tel Aviv; in fact, even taking the pre-1967 border as one's starting point, it was considerably shorter. Take the Gaza Strip. To anyone familiar with the map the Strip, some twenty-five miles long and less than seven miles wide in most places, looks like a finger pointing straight at Tel Aviv. During the 1948 War it was occupied by the Egyptian Army, which, having overrun the few Jewish settlements in the area, turned it into a forward base and used it to advance to within twenty-five or so miles of that city. In fact, however, since there are no topographical obstacles of any kind, the finger is hopelessly exposed to an invasion from two directions. It is also narrow enough so that its entire length can be brought under artillery bombardment both from the land and the sea.

Above all, the Strip hinges on Rafa, the southern town that marks the border between it and the Sinai, and the site of a T-junction where the coastal road meets one that runs to the southeast. Already, in late 1948, a small Israeli infantry unit, launching a bayonet charge, had occupied a hill overlooking the town; the only reason why it could not press home its advantage was because it possessed no heavy weapons to confront the Egyptians. Although, by 1956, the town and its surroundings had been heavily fortified, it still took an Israeli armored division, ineffectively assisted by gunfire from a French destroyer, just one night's hard fighting to break through the Egytian positions. In 1967 the same operation was carried out in broad daylight on the first day of the Six Days' War and only took a few hours to accomplish; to the extent that the Egyptians were able to put up any resistance it was mainly symbolic. By that time, so hopeless had any attempt to defend the Strip become that, had it been up to Dayan, it would not have been attacked at all but left to fall of itself as Israeli forces, bypassing it to the southwest, raced towards the Suez Canal. In the event, what all three campaigns really showed was how easy it was to cut the Strip from the rest of the Sinai Peninsula, causing any forces unfortunate enough to be stationed in it to be trapped.

Appearances to the contrary, the situation in the West Bank was similar. It is true that Jordanian control over that part of the country provided them with excellent starting positions from which to cut off Jerusalem, dominate and harass the coastal plain, and invade Israel from the east. It is equally true, though, that the border between Jordan and Israel was no longer than the one between Israel and Jordan. Throughout the period from 1949 to 1967, but particularly in 1953–5, it was the Israeli Army that demonstrated its power by launching countless raids into the West Bank. The blood toll, both military and civilian, ran into many hundreds, perhaps more. Except for two very small moves during the 1967 War itself, though, not once in all that period did a single Jordanian soldier penetrate a single inch into Israeli territory proper; and even those thrusts were repelled without any difficulty within a few hours.

Partly because they were afraid of what the Israelis might do to them, partly because they often had Syria, Egypt and (after 1958), Ba'athist Iraq to cope with as well, most of the time the Jordanians did what they could to ensure that the border should remain peaceful. In this they were not always successful, as happened, for example, in November 1966, when infiltrators crossed into Israel and blew up a patrol vehicle, inflicting casualties. Upon being informed of the incident King Hussein sent a note to apologize, promising to punish the perpetrators, but before it could be delivered the Israelis retaliated by raiding the village of Samua, near Hebron, and all but demolished it. As a Jordanian Army unit came to the rescue it was ambushed, and over seventy of its troops were killed or wounded. Four 1950svintage Jordanian fighter aircraft appeared overhead and tried to interfere in the battle, but were chased away by lsraeli Mirages. No wonder that, writing their after-action report, the Israelis spoke of "poor little Jordan" and concluded they would have no difficulty overrunning the entire West Bank in short order. A mere seven months later they did exactly that. Even as their main striking forces battled the Egyptians, they took less than three days to accomplish the feat. Indeed, so easy was the operation that, as in the case of the Gaza Strip, large parts of it were carried out by the Officers Commanding, Northern and Central Fronts, on their own initiative and without waiting for orders from Moshe Dayan. He himself would have been content by occupying only a fairly narrow strip along the border, making it harder for the Jordanians to target some Israeli assets but leaving the most important cities in their hands, or so he later claimed in his memoirs.

Jordanian military weakness apart, one reason why the Bank was so hard to defend was because, in the entire territory, there was (and is) just one road linking the southern bulge to the northern one. Connecting Hebron with Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin, for most of its length it ran roughly along the watershed, staying perhaps fifteen to twenty miles away from the nearest Israeli border and thus providing reasonable security against attack, except from the air. However, the section that led northward from Bethlehem to Ramallah had to cross East Jerusalem, as it still does. It passed within a few hundred yards of that border; a winding, twisting affair, only one lane wide and more suitable for the occasional vehicle than for a steady flow of modern traffic. Just as the main road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was within striking range of the Jordanians, so the Israelis could have cut the Bank in half within five minutes of the order being given. This, of course, is one reason why the Palestinians have always insisted on having East Jerusalem as their capital and will not give up on it. Even disregarding its symbolic importance, without it all they can have is not a state but two separate cantons linked, if they can be linked at all, by a waist as narrow as that of an ant.

While building activities that have taken place since then make it hard to reconstruct the layout of the terrain, it is not impossible that the Israelis could have cut the West Bank in two without engaging in any ground movements at all. To adduce just one example of how it could have been done, take the northwestern corner of the Old City between the Ottoman-built wall on the one hand and the great Hostel of Notre Dame which, at that time, was in ruins. Running across the street between the hostel and the city wall there was another wall that separated the Israeli side from the Jordanian. From the place where Israel ended, as people used to say, the distance to the above-mentioned road was only about three-quarters of a mile, looking downhill. All that was needed was to break down the wall that marked the border, bring up two heavy self-propelled artillery pieces, and open fire over open sights. These considerations explain why, at the time of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the Jordanians insisted that West Jerusalem be kept free of heavy weapons and, after much bargaining, got their way. Once the Agreements were broken, the rest followed almost automatically; to this day, whoever controls Jerusalem holds the key to the entire area.

Penetrating into enemy territory, salients have their uses in maneuver warfare. On the other hand, they are exposed to such warfare; by definition, anything that can serve as a forward base can also be cut off. Then as now, the Bank formed a salient — or, in view of what has just been said, two almost entirely separate salients — into Israeli territory that surrounded it on three sides. A pincer movement coming from the south was ruled out by the terrain west of the Dead Sea, where sheer mountains descend directly to the shore and where there was no road. On the other hand, Israeli forces coming from the north (the Beth Shean Valley) would enjoy more room for maneuver and find it almost as easy to pinch off the West Bank as it was for Jordanian ones to slice Israel in half. To put it in a different way, as long as Israel's own armed forces remained intact and capable of maneuvering, for an opponent to send his army from the eastern Jordanian plateau across the Jordan River into the West Bank simply meant inserting it into a killing ground. The more so because the terrain, which rises from 1,200 feet under the sea to 2,200 feet above it, constitutes a formidable obstacle.

These considerations may explain why, historically speaking, most of those who invaded the Land of Israel did so by using the road that ran along the Mediterranean Coast. Either they proceeded from the north (by way of what is now Lebanon) or the south (coming from Egypt). For those coming from Syria, another possibility was to cross the Jordan River, either north or immediately south of the Sea of Galilee, and then head west towards the Valley of Esdraelon; that, for example, was the route Saladin, on his way to the Battle of Hattin, took in 1187. By contrast, few if any armies tried to cross the Jordan River further south, between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Among the very few exceptions was the Arab Legion in 1948; that, however, was only possible because the British permitted it (at the time, the Legion formed part of the Imperial Forces and was commanded by British officers). Another reason was because there was no opposition. The entire area did not contain a single Jewish settlement that could have served as a point d'appui for organizing a defense. Nor were any Jewish armed forces stationed there; nor did the Jews have long-range weapons such as attack aircraft capable of commanding it from afar. Before 1948, the last time anybody tried to invade the Land of Israel from the direction of the desert was over 3,000 years ago, when Joshua led his tribesmen to Jericho. Unlike Joshua, the commanders of the Jordanian Army did not have magic trumpets to bring down walls. Perfectly aware that the West Bank constituted a trap, during most of the period 1948–1967 they were careful to keep their main forces stationed well east of the River.

One person who was well aware of the plus and minuses of the geo-strategic situation was the IDF's real founder and its second Chief of Staff, Major General Yigael Yadin. A protege of Ben Gurion, during the 1948 War Yadin had been Chief of Operations. He spent much of it moving his forces, now here, now there, in a desperate attempt to head off threats coming from various directions. Later he and his subordinates, including a certain twenty-nine-year colonel named Yitzhak Rabin who was head of the Operations Department, started working on a doctrine that would offset the country's weaknesses while utilizing its assets to the maximum possible effect. The doctrine's most important pillar was deterrence, a product of Israel's demonstrated ability and willingness to cut off the hand that was raised against it, as the saying went. Should deterrence fail and war come about, then Israel was to place its trust in good intelligence that would provide it with early warning of a coming attack. Early warning in turn would permit rapid mobilization of all available resources and their concentration at the most endangered spots — which, interestingly, did not include the Israeli-Jordanian border. Critical to the entire exercise was a centralized, yet highly flexible, command system. This was something that Israel possessed, whereas its Arab enemies, eternally divided by their internal squabbles, did not.

Whereas the early plans hesitated between the defensive and the offensive, from at least July 1951 on the emphasis was clearly on the latter. First the strongest enemy, Egypt, then the rest, would be crushed, and the war "carried into the enemy's territory," as the official phraseology went. At a minimum, the IDF was to reach as far as the River Litani in Lebanon, the Damascus-Irbid-Amman-Aqaba line in Jordan, and El Arish in Egypt. Some plans, particularly those drawn up by a young Lieutenant Colonel Yuval Neeman (the subsequently world-famous nuclear scientist) were much more ambitious still. If there existed any doubts concerning Israel's ability to smash its enemies when the opportunity presented itself, the files of the General Staff are the wrong place to look for them; in 1954 the dovish Moshe Sharet, who in his capacity as prime minister was permitted to peep at them, called them "monstrous." Preparing for the strike, Israel was to build up powerful fighting forces consisting mainly of squadrons of attack aircraft and armored brigades. The former would protect the country's skies, defeat the enemy's air force, achieve air superiority, and aid the ground forces by interdicting the enemy and flying close support missions. The latter would strike hard and fast, driving spearheads into vulnerable parts of the enemy array, cutting his forces into penny packets and smashing them.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Defending Israel"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Martin van Creveld.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Epigraph,
Maps,
INTRODUCTION,
1. ISRAELI DEFENSE BEFORE 1967,
2. THE BIRTH OF "DEFENSIBLE BORDERS",
3. THE GRAND STRATEGIC EQUATION,
4. DEFENDING AGAINST TERRORISM,
5. DEALING WITH CONVENTIONAL WARFARE,
6. AIRCRAFT, MISSILES, AND WMDS,
7. BROADER HORIZONS,
8. CONCLUSIONS,
Notes,
Index,
Also by Martin Van Creveld,
Copyright,

Editorial Reviews

"A provocative, ruthlessly honest, and ultimately persuasive argument for reorienting basic Israeli defense policies. Advocating partition as the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, van Creveld believes that the future security of the Jewish state requires the pursuit of a distinctively Israeli variant of the Revolution in Military Affairs."

- Professor Andrew J. Bacevich, author of American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy

From the Publisher