No Mission Is Impossible Read online

  In the meantime, Shimon Peres invested tremendous effort in establishing an alliance between France and Israel. And in spite of the criticism, even the mockery, in government circles at home, his efforts in France bore fruit: he succeeded in obtaining large quantities of weapons and in establishing relations of trust and friendship with French cabinet ministers, army officers and members of parliament. In June 1956, Israel signed the Ge’ut (“High Tide”) deal with France for a massive supply of weapons to Israel.

  A month later, in a surprise move, Egyptian president Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. France and Great Britain, the main holders of Suez Canal stock, immediately started planning a military operation against Egypt, to bring the canal back under their power. French and British generals debated successive invasion plans in a World War II bunker under the Thames. Soon the French leaders realized that the British wouldn’t attack Egypt without a solid pretext. Therefore, they turned to Israel.

  The paratroopers were dropped close to the Suez Canal.

  (Abraham Vered, GPO)

  Shortly before sunset on October 22, 1956, several cars stopped by a secluded villa in Sevres, a Parisian suburb. The passengers furtively slipped into the house gates. These were French Prime Minister Guy Mollet, Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, Defense Minister Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, the army chief of staff, and several high-ranking generals. Their secret guests, who had arrived by special plane, were Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, hiding his distinctive shock of white hair under a wide-brimmed hat; General Moshe Dayan, concealing his black eye patch under large sunglasses; and Shimon Peres. The two delegations met in a cordial atmosphere. Later in the evening, though, they were joined by British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd.

  With Lloyd’s arrival, a cold wind seemed to penetrate the villa. The British foreign secretary apparently couldn’t forget that only eight years before, Britain was still the ruler of Palestine and Ben-Gurion was its most formidable opponent. “Britain’s Foreign Secretary may well have been a friendly man, pleasant, charming, amiable,” Dayan wrote. “If so, he showed near-genius in concealing these virtues. His whole demeanor expressed distaste—for the place, the company and the topic.”

  But Lloyd was there—and the most secret summit after World War II was under way.

  After a first round of talks that continued into the night, Lloyd left to report to British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. “It seems that Lloyd didn’t fall in love with Ben-Gurion,” Peres noted that night, “but there is no doubt at all that this feeling was mutual from the moment they met.”

  The conference continued the following day. Several ideas about an action that could justify an Anglo-French intervention were discussed. The various ploys were rejected, one after the other. The French and the British suggested that Israel attack Egypt, conquer the Sinai Peninsula and create a threat to the Suez Canal; France and Great Britain would then intervene to “protect” the canal from the fighting forces.

  But Ben-Gurion refused to launch an all-out war against Egypt, just to provide France and Britain with a pretext; he also feared that Israel would have to carry the brunt of such a war on her frail shoulders for several days, perhaps a week, until the Franco-British invasion started.

  The following day, while the French and the Israelis were having lunch, General Maurice Challe, the French deputy chief of staff, asked to speak. He suggested that the Israeli Air Force stage an attack on Be’er Sheva and bomb the city. Egypt would be accused, and the Anglo-French forces would intervene immediately. Ben-Gurion, his face flushed with fury, jumped from his seat. “Israel is strong because she fights for a just cause,” he said. “I shall not lie, either to the world public opinion or to anybody else.” In the sepulchral silence that settled over the room Challe sat down, his face red with embarrassment. The others buried their noses in their plates. The conference seemed about to collapse.

  And then Moshe Dayan conceived the magical formula.

  Dayan, born in kibbutz Degania, raised in the cooperative village of Nahalal, was a charismatic Israeli hero. A member of the Haganah—the Jewish defense organization under the British mandate—he had grown up among Nahalal’s Arab neighbors, knew them well and respected them. In War World II he had participated in a British patrol operating against the French Vichy forces in Lebanon. An enemy sniper’s bullet shattered his binoculars, driving the eye piece into his left eye socket. The eye was lost but the pirate patch that replaced it made the face of Dayan famous all over Israel and later the world. A gifted orator, a lover of poetry, an amateur archaeologist and a womanizer, he also was a fearless warrior. As chief of staff he transformed the IDF into a lean, tough force and commanded the reprisal raids against Israel’s restive enemies. Yet, he soon realized that reprisals could not solve the growing tension between Israel and her neighbors, especially Egypt. He supported the idea of attacking Egypt before it mastered the massive influx of arms from the Soviet bloc and was a willing participant in the Sevres conference.

  Ben-Gurion, however, kept refusing to launch an all-out war against Egypt. So how to start a war without starting a war? At that crucial moment, when the entire conference depended on a solution to the pretext dilemma, Dayan came up with a plan.

  Let’s start the war from the end, Dayan said. He suggested parachuting a small Israeli force into the Sinai, about thirty miles east of the Suez Canal, creating an apparent threat on the waterway. France and Great Britain would declare the canal in danger and dispatch ultimata to Egypt and Israel to retreat to new lines, ten miles on each side of the canal. That meant that Egypt would be asked to evacuate the entire Sinai Peninsula, allowing Israel to conquer it and reach the vicinity of the canal. Israel would accept the ultimatum, while Egypt would certainly reject it. That would be the pretext for the French and the British to launch their military operation against Egypt thirty-six hours after the Israelis.

  Ben-Gurion hesitated, but after a sleepless night accepted Dayan’s plan. When meeting with Dayan and Peres in the villa garden the following morning, he asked Dayan to draw the projected campaign for him. Nobody had any paper, so Peres tore his cigarette pack, and Dayan sketched on it the Sinai Peninsula; a dotted line represented the flight of the planes that would drop the paratroopers, and three arrows showed the main axes of the subsequent Israeli offensive. Ben-Gurion, Dayan and Peres signed, laughing, the small piece of cardboard, and it became the first map of the Sinai campaign.

  Back in the villa, Dayan’s plan was unanimously adopted and on October 24 a secret agreement was signed among France, Great Britain and Israel. On his return to Tel Aviv Ben-Gurion called a cabinet meeting. He didn’t tell the ministers about his trip to France or the agreement they had made, a copy of which he carried in his breast pocket. Yet, he obtained the cabinet consent for an operation against Egypt. As always when in a state of utter tension, Ben-Gurion fell sick with high fever. But that night Menachem Begin, Ben-Gurion’s staunch rival, was invited to Ben-Gurion’s home for the first time in his life. While Begin sat on a stool beside Ben-Gurion’s cot, the Old Man described the decision to go to war, and Begin congratulated him warmly.

  On October 29, Raful Eitan and his paratroopers jumped deep behind enemy lines, reached their destination and dug in for the night. In the wee hours, Israeli aircraft parachuted jeeps, recoilless guns and heavy mortars.

  While Raful’s men were still in the air, Arik Sharon crossed the Egyptian border with the paratrooper brigade, riding armored troop carriers and reinforced by AMX tanks. The column advanced through Sinai, conquering several Egyptian fortresses in fierce battles and after thirty hours approached Raful’s compound.

  While waiting for Arik, Raful jokingly prepared a cardboard sign: STOP! FRONTIER AHEAD! Shortly after 10:00 P.M., on October 30, the armored column reached the sign. Davidi and Sharon, covered with fine desert dust, jumped from their jeeps and hugged Raful. The mission was accomplished.

  Or so it seemed. Sharon had other thoughts. In the last two years he had turned th
e paratrooper corps into an elite commando unit that had carried out most of the reprisal raids against Israel’s neighbors. The price had been heavy—many of the best fighters had been killed and Meir Har-Zion himself had almost died during the al Rahwa raid in September 1956. A bullet had blasted his throat and he was choking to death when the unit doctor, Maurice Ankelevitz, drew a pocketknife, stuck it in his windpipe, performing an improvised tracheotomy under fire, and saved his life.

  Yet, in spite of the wounded and the dead, the paratrooper corps was submerged by a wave of volunteers, most of them members of kibbutz and moshav agricultural settlements. The battalion became a brigade. Sharon, now a lieutenant colonel, had become the best fighter in the IDF. Dayan liked him and Ben-Gurion admired his fighting skills, even though he criticized his integrity. On October 30, 1956, Sharon was, as always, hungry for battle.

  He had barely finished hugging Raful when he decided to conquer the famous Mitla Pass—a winding canyon road in the nearby mountain ridge—and be the first to reach the canal with his paratroopers.

  The pass seemed to be empty of enemy forces. The day before, an armored convoy coming from Egypt had crossed the canal and penetrated the pass, but Israeli jets had attacked and destroyed it completely. The black carcasses of the burned vehicles still smoked all along the Mitla road.

  Sharon sent a radio message, asking permission to take the Mitla Pass. But the General Staff radioed him a clear order: “Don’t advance, stay where you are.” Sharon, Raful and the other commanders didn’t know that the goal of the paratroopers’ drop at the Mitla approaches was not fighting or conquering, but to serve as a pretext for the Anglo-French intervention.

  In the early morning another message arrived from the staff: “Do not advance!” But Arik did not give up. At 11:00 A.M. Colonel Rehavam (“Gandhi”) Ze’evi, the Southern Command chief of staff, arrived at the compound in a light Piper Cub plane. Arik again requested permission to enter Mitla, but Gandhi allowed him only to send a patrol to the pass, on the condition that he wouldn’t get entangled in fighting.

  Arik immediately assembled a “patrol team” under the command of Motta Gur. At the head of the column Arik placed six half-tracks; behind them the half-track of the tanks force commander Zvi Dahab and Danny Matt; then three tanks; then the brigade deputy commander, Haka Hofi’s, half-track; six more half-tracks full of paratroopers; a battery of heavy 120-millimeter mortars; and several equipment-carrying trucks. The paratrooper commando joined the column not as fighters but as tourists who came to enjoy the trip to the canal. Davidi made a funny hat out of a newspaper, to protect himself from the sun.

  And Arik called all this battalion-sized convoy a “patrol.”

  At 12:30 P.M. the convoy entered the pass. They quickly advanced in the narrow canyon, between two towering mounts.

  And there the Egyptians were waiting.

  Hundreds of Egyptian soldiers were entrenched in dugouts, natural caves in the rock and behind low stone fences. On the roadside, camouflaged by bushes and bales of thorns, stood armored cars carrying Bren machine guns. Companies of soldiers were positioned above them, armed with bazookas, recoilless guns, anti-tank guns and midsized machine guns. And on a third line above, in positions and cubbyholes in the rock, lay soldiers armed with rifles and automatic weapons.

  At twelve-fifty, the half-tracks advancing in the pass were hit by a lethal volley of bullets and shells. A hail of bullets drummed on the half-tracks’ armored plates. The first half-track swayed to and fro and stopped, its commander and driver dead; the other soldiers, some of them wounded, jumped off the vehicle and tried to find cover.

  Motta Gur’s half-track was about 150 yards behind. He ordered his men to advance toward the damaged vehicle. Three half-tracks reached the immobile vehicle and were hit too. Motta got around them and tried to escape the ambush, but he was hit as well. He and his men sought refuge in a shallow ditch beside the road.

  Haka, who was in the middle of the column, realized that his men had blundered into a deadly ambush. He ordered Davidi to get back and stop the vehicles that had not entered the pass yet. Davidi unloaded the mortars and opened fire on the hills. Haka himself broke through the enemy lines with a company and two tanks. The armored vehicles bypassed the stuck half-tracks and emerged on the other side of the pass, two kilometers down the road.

  Mitla, full of burned, smoldering vehicles from the Egyptian convoy from the day before, now became a killing field for the paratroopers. Four Egyptian Meteor jets dived toward the column, blew up eight trucks carrying fuel and ammunition, and hit several heavy mortars.

  Motta sent an urgent message to Haka, asking him to come back into the pass and rescue the trapped soldiers. He also requested from Davidi that Micha Kapusta’s commando should attack the Egyptian positions from behind.

  Micha’s commando—the finest paratrooper unit—climbed to the tops of the hills. His platoon commanders started moving down the northern slope, annihilating the Egyptian positions. But at this point a terrible misunderstanding occurred.

  The commando fighters that destroyed the enemy positions on the northern slope clearly saw the road. They didn’t notice that the slope turned to a sheer drop almost at their feet, and most of the Egyptians were entrenched there. They also failed to notice other Egyptian positions that were located on the southern slope, across the road.

  Suddenly, Micha’s men were hit by a hail of bullets and missiles from the southern slope. Micha thought that the trapped paratroopers by the road were firing at him. Furious, he yelled at Davidi on his radio to make Motta’s people stop firing, while Motta, who couldn’t see the enemy positions on the southern slope that were firing at the commando, did not understand why Micha didn’t continue his advance.

  These were tragic moments. “Go! Attack!” Davidi yelled at Micha, while Micha saw his men falling. The paratroopers dashed forward under heavy fire. Some reached the edge of the rocky drop without noticing it and rolled down, in full sight of the Egyptians, who shot them.

  Facing heavy fire, Micha decided to retreat to a nearby hill. But another Israeli company appeared on top of that hill and mistakenly started firing on Micha’s men. Micha’s fury and pain echoed in the walkie-talkies. His soldiers were fired at from all sides, by Egyptians and by Israelis.

  At last Davidi understood the mix-up that had caused Motta’s and Micha’s contradictory reports. He made a fateful decision: send a jeep that would attract the enemy fire into the pass. Davidi’s observers would then locate the sources of the Egyptian fire.

  For that mission he needed a volunteer who would be ready to sacrifice his life.

  “Who volunteers to get to Motta?” he asked.

  Several men jumped right away. Davidi chose Ken-Dror, his own driver.

  Ken-Dror knew he was going to his death. He started the jeep and sped to the pass, immediately becoming the target of heavy fire. The jeep was crushed and Ken-Dror collapsed beside it. His sacrifice was in vain. Motta and Micha didn’t succeed in pinpointing the sources of enemy fire.

  Davidi sent a half-track with four soldiers and a lieutenant to the pass. The carrier reached Motta, loaded some wounded soldiers and returned, unharmed.

  And the sources of the shooting still were not discovered.

  Davidi again ordered Micha to storm the Egyptian positions. His soldiers ran again down the slope. Another platoon was hit by crossfire from the southern hill. And Micha suddenly saw the abrupt drop at his feet and understood where the Egyptian positions were.

  At that moment he was shot. A bullet pierced his chest, he lost his breath and he felt he was going to die.

  “Dovik!” he shouted at his deputy. “Take over!”

  A bullet hit Dovik in the head. The two wounded men started crawling up the hill. In front of them they saw other paratroopers. They feared their comrades would shoot them by mistake. “Davidi! Davidi” they shouted hoarsely.

  At 5:00 P.M. a rumble of tanks suddenly echoed in the narrow canyon. Haka’s two tan
ks returned from the western exit of the pass and turned the tide. They first set their guns toward the southern hill and blasted many of the enemy positions. Egyptian soldiers started fleeing in a disorderly way but were mown down by the paratroopers’ machine guns. Simultaneously, two paratrooper companies reached the crests of the two ridges rising on both sides of the road. They came from the western entrance to the pass and systematically mopped up the Egyptian positions. They agreed that their finishing line would be a burning Egyptian half-track in the center of the canyon. Other fighters would come from the east and destroy the remaining enemy positions on the northern and southern hills.

  At nightfall fifty paratroopers scaled the hills—half of them, commanded by a twice-decorated veteran, Oved Ladijanski, turned to the southern ridge; the other half, under the leadership of a slim and soft-spoken kibbutz member, Levi Hofesh, attacked the northern one. Their goal was to reach the burning half-track with no Egyptian soldier left behind.

  Oved’s unit moved up the hill in silence, holding their fire. They reached a fortified machine gun position, hewn in the rocky slope. They attacked it from below with hand grenades, but some of those bounced off the rock and exploded. Oved threw a grenade toward the machine gun, but the grenade rolled down. “It’s coming back,” Oved whispered to the soldier beside him, pushed him aside and covered him with his body. The grenade exploded against Oved’s chest and killed him. One of his comrades succeeded in dropping a grenade into the position, burst in and killed the Egyptians cowering inside.

  The survivors of Oved’s unit kept advancing and destroying the enemy positions. Levi Hofesh did the same on the northern hill. He realized that the Egyptians had placed their forces in three tiers, one above the other. He divided his soldiers in three detachments, and each mopped up one of the enemy lines. The fighting was desperate; the trapped Egyptians had nothing to lose. It took the paratroopers two hours to advance three hundred yards. Shortly before 8:00 P.M., Levi completed his operation, leaving behind ninety Egyptian dead.