August/September 1992, Page 23, 24

From the Hebrew Press

Israel Considers War With Syria as It Ponders 1982 Invasion of Lebanon

By Israel Shahak

The 10th anniversary of the invasion of Lebanon, which fell on June 5, 1992, was commemorated in Israel by a profusion of analyses, some containing previously unpublished data. They further vindicate the conclusions of Col. Emmanuel Wald of the Israeli General Staff in his 1987 book, The Curse of the Broken Vessels: The Twilight of Israeli Military Might (1967-1982).

Col. Wald's highly critical assessment of the performance of the Israeli army in general, and during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon in particular, was published in Hebrew by Shocken Press of Tel Aviv. For that, the army first tried to place him in a mental hospital and, after that attempt backfired, dismissed him. The book he wrote provides the best available analysis of the Israeli army's structure and also of the aims of Israel's invasion of Lebanon which, according to Wald, "had been under preparation during the preceding 14 months." He also says of the invasion that, "during its first days, it was quietly approved by the U.S."

Wald says that under Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's master plan, code-named "Oranim," in eastern Lebanon the Israeli army was supposed "to defeat the Syrian troops deployed in the Bekaa Valley, between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains, all the way to the district of Baalbek," in the north of Lebanon.

"The occupation of Baalbek by the [Israeli] army was to pose a direct threat to Damascus" from the north, where the approaches to the Syrian capital were unfortified, according to Wald. Had the war unfolded differently, the plan probably would have been carried out.

In June 1982, the Syrian troops in Lebanon were stationed at a distance from the Israeli border and also from the area then controlled by Major Sa'ad Haddad, commander of the Israeli-directed South Lebanon Army. Separating the Syrian troops from Haddad's troops were three PLO brigades. Except for a small Syrian force in Beirut, all Syrian troops were deployed in central and eastern Lebanon.

On June 6, 1982, the Israeli army opened a three-pronged advance into Lebanon. Its advance on the eastern front was halted, however, by the Syrian army in the battle of Sultan Yakub. The central Israeli advance also was halted by the Syrian army, at the battle of Ain Zahalta.

Following those battles, the Israeli army was unable to resume its advance until after the cease-fire of June 12. Those two defeats by Syrian forces were decisive factors in thwarting Sharon's plan to conquer all of Lebanon and destroy Syria as a military power.

Unless Israel wins a war quickly, it cannot win at all.

Three recent articles now permit a reconstruction of these battles. They are: "Sultan Yakub, a Battle Which is Not Yet Over," by Menachem Paz (Davar, June 5); "Ten Years After a Mishap," by Yuval Peleg (Yediot Ahronot, May 28); and "Anyone Moving Was Fired Upon," by Noam Taper (Ha'aretz, June 5). The articles are based upon extensive interviews with participants in the battles.

Descriptions of the Sultan Yakub battle by Paz and Peleg show that a large force of Israeli tanks, unsupported by infantry, was ordered to advance northward by night and at top speed, a very unusual order.

Shortly after midnight, the force was halted by an ambush laid by Syrian infantry and artillery, which inflicted heavy casualties on the Israelis. The latter grasped the full scale of their plight only after sunrise, and then began radioing appeals for reinforcements.

The appeals were disregarded, and the force was ordered to keep advancing. Its commanders reported to headquarters that "the only options we now have are to be killed, to commit suicide or to retreat," and that they were contemplating mass suicide. Only then were they permitted to retreat.

The order to advance in such an unusual manner, according to Paz and Peleg, relied on erroneous information supplied by Israeli Military Intelligence that Syrian soldiers were retreating in panic and abandoning their equipment. The advancing Israeli force "was ordered not to fire at any Syrian tanks it sees" in order "not to wreck valuable equipment." Both authors describe the surprise of Israeli soldiers on discovering that the Syrian soldiers were fighting, not fleeing.

The two authors conjecture that some Syrians must have been spotted running away somewhere, and that the single observation had been the basis for an inacurate generalization. Much more likely, however, is that this colossal intelligence blunder is attributable to racist assumptions on "the Arab nature" dogmatically held by all branches of Israeli intelligence.

Racist Assumptions

One day before the advance on Sultan Yakub, the Israeli air force had destroyed all Syrian missile launchers and had downed a considerable number of Syrian aircraft. Israeli intelligence communicated these successes to the Syrian soldiers in the path of the advance by all means available. The intelligence assumption was that Syrian soldiers would then panic and retreat in conformity with their "Arab nature."

A similar overall picture emerges from descriptions of the battle of Ain Zahalta. According to Wald, the advance on the central front was to be carried out by a division which included armor, infantry and other units. Its armored brigade, commanded by Colonel (now General) David Rubin, was ordered to rush forward at top speed, unsupported by infantry, in the same manner as the advance on Sultan Yakub.

In his account, Taper quotes "a battalion commander" who believes that such a questionable military decision was reached on political grounds. "The basic assumption of armor in a mountainous area" like the central Lebanon, the battalion commander explains, dictates that the higher terrain first be occupied by infantry and only then should armor seize the roads crossing it.

In Taper's account of the battle at Ain Zahalta, he explains that Rubin's force began advancing barely "two hours after the onset of the invasion" and kept moving forward for two days, encountering no resistance. It thus had traversed "more than 100 km." without relaxing for a moment and the men were already exhausted from lack of sleep.

As they approached Ain Zahalta, the brigade was ambushed by Syrian armor, which halted the advance for several hours. Although in the end the Syrians were defeated, by then Rubin's men were exhausted. They halted at 2 a.m. and "positioned their tanks and personnel-carriers one next to the other by the roadside."

The respite, for sleep, was supposed to last no more than four hours, and few guards were posted, since the men were sleeping in their vehicles. Unbeknownst to the Israeli army, however, two companies of Syrian commandos were stationed in Ain Zahalta.

"As soon as those commandos realized that the armored teams had fallen asleep, they crept undetected to the vicinity of the [Israeli] vehicles, surrounded them. . . and waited quietly from 3 a.m. until sunrise at 4 a.m., when they started firing at the vehicles with all kinds of guns," including hand-operated Sagger anti-armor missiles, Taper wrote. Seized by panic, the Israelis at first began a disorderly retreat.

Wald quotes Rubin's description of what he found after returning to the scene of the battle from consultations at the divisional command: "I saw all tanks frantically seeking their way backwards, while firing haphazardly in all directions like mad." The Syrians were defeated only after Israeli infantry and army engineers arrived and occupied the village, and thus let the battered armor move forward again.

Wald reports that after the battle, on the sixth day of the war, when the division was ordered to rush northward again, it "advanced forward so cautiously" that it had not reached its first destination, Dahr Al-Baida on the Beirut-Damascus road, before the cease-fire went into effect.

Taper summarizes the meaning of the battle of Ain Zahalta: "An entire [Israeli] division, supposed to be a major surprise of the Lebanon war, was itself taken by surprise. It took two Syrian commando companies to halt the advance of an entire [Israeli] division for two days." Taper also notes the battle's "heavy casualties."

Other battles fought with the Syrians at the first stage of the Lebanese war also have been reviewed recently in the Hebrew press. Basically, they corroborate the pattern of Sultan Yakub and Ain Zahalta, and the conclusion that the failure of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon to reach its military aims is at least partly attributable to anti-Arab racism in intelligence reporting.

In this writer's opinion, the principal purpose of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was destruction of the Syrian army. Destruction of the PLO, the formation of a pro-Israeli government in Lebanon and the stabilization of Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza, however important in themselves, were not the primary aims.

The principal Israeli aim was thwarted by the toughness and professionalism of the Syrian army, particularly that of the infantry rather than the armored forces, which manifested itself despite Israel's absolute control of Lebanese skies and Israeli superiority in sophisticated weaponry.

Current predictions of an easy Israeli victory in case of another Israeli attack on Syria presumably stem from recognition of Israeli technological superiority, or perhaps even the factor of Israeli nuclear superiority. Such predictions, in my opinion, are baseless. Specific factors that vitiate any advance predictions of such a war's outcome include excellent performance in defense by an army which performs poorly in offensive warfare, or the ability of well-trained commando forces to stop armor and to inflict heavy casualties on a technologically superior enemy.

Nor can an air force alone win wars. Factors such as those mentioned can drag out a war endlessly. Yet, unless Israel wins a war quickly, it cannot win at all.

The Effect of Heavy Casualties

As demonstrated by the aftermath of the October 1973 war, and indeed throughout the entire history of the state of Israel, Israeli Jews, as much or more than the people of other nations, are highly sensitive to their losses. When these losses turn out to be high, Israelis become susceptible to political arguments against modes of domination and oppression which they otherwise would accept.

The core of the Israeli army is composed of the country's Jewish citizens, whether conscripts or reservists, who are not paid for their military service. Accordingly, the people who do the actual fighting, or whose sons do it, are first of all interested in whether their sacrifices end in success or failure. This is why the battles with Syrian troops during the first stage of the invasion of Lebanon are at present discussed more searchingly than the battles fought during the same early stage with the PLO and with various Lebanese militias in which Israeli losses were quite limited.

Current discussions of the events of 1982 lead the writer to two personal, but seemingly contradictory, conclusions. One is that the Israeli army high command hopes for a war with Syria, not only to accomplish its grand strategy, but to overcome the stigma of the 1982 defeats. The second conclusion is that experienced Israeli soldiers and junior officers fear such a war, because they learned personally to respect the combat strengths of the Syrian army.

Dr. Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and retired professor of chemistry a the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League of Human and Civil Rights. His monthly translations, From the Hebrew Press, are available to Washington Report subscribers for $25 a year.

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