Israel and Its Enemies

Against the unknown and against the foe our borders will spread--From sea to sea and mountain to mountain.

ARIEL ("ARIK") SHARON, the paratroop general who heads the southern command of Israel's defense forces, is so fond of the Hebrew couplet that he has hung it over the entrance of his Beersheba headquarters. But the exuberant confidence that once made it so fitting has disappeared in Israel. A note of doubt is creeping in. From Mount Hermon down to the Red Sea, Israel dispatched her Arab foes with relative ease in three wars. But now there is a new unknown to cope with in the form of Russia's dramatically increased presence in the Middle East, and it is an ominous one. Said one Israeli last week: "We are knocking out every Egyptian gun we can find, probably hundreds in recent months. But no sooner do we destroy them than two days later the Russians replace them. It's like a science-fiction plot--a war against an endless army of ants."

The Soviet presence, to Israel's alarm, has vastly revived the Arabs' enthusiasm for battle. From Israel's point of view, the fighting between Arab fedayeen and Arab soldiers in Jordan last week was only one scene, and not necessarily an encouraging one, in a far broader theater. Even while gunfire blazed in Amman, other guerrillas raided Israel along the Jordanian border. Israeli troops patrolled inside Lebanon to contain guerrilla activity there, but the fedayeen nevertheless managed to loft Soviet-made Katyusha rockets into the frontier town of Kiryat Shemona. Syrian artillerymen firing Russian guns shelled a border defense settlement called Nahal Gishor, killing a girl soldier. Suez rocked with the sound and fury of the heaviest fighting of all.

Last Resort

If Moscow's infusion of men and missiles has not yet altered the region's strategic balance, it certainly has stirred misgivings, not only in Israel but also in the U.S. It has, moreover, pushed President Nixon closer to a decision that is certain to hurt Washington in every Arab capital and to complicate U.S.-Soviet relations.

The turmoil in Jordan last week overshadowed and probably delayed the decision, but did not reverse it. Some time in the near future the Nixon Administration will inform the Israelis that they can have more U.S. planes. Not as many as they want--Premier Golda Meir has requested 25 U.S.-built Phantom jets and 100 Skyhawks--but some. There will be strings. The U.S. will probably continue to refuse to replace planes lost in actions against Lebanon or Jordan. It will also urge Israel to drop its demand for direct, unconditional talks with the Arabs and to indicate a readiness to part with at least some of the territory acquired during the Six-Day War. Even so, Arab reaction to the decision is bound to be severe. Libya is expected to sever diplomatic relations with the U.S. and may also crack down on U.S. oil companies operating there. Hostile demonstrations are certain to be staged against U.S. embassies, not to mention American diplomats, businessmen and possibly even tourists.

Despite these dangers, Washington is aware that the U.S. is Israel's last resort, and an outright rejection could be dangerous. Rather than be outgunned and outmaneuvered eventually, Israel might carry out a pre-emptive strike that could draw Russians and perhaps Americans, too, into a Middle East war. Some observers also note that Israel, with a nuclear reactor in the Negev as a source of enriched plutonium, could build a nuclear weapon in a matter of months. Though the Israelis have vowed that they would not be the first to introduce nukes into the Middle East, would they stick to that resolve if the U.S. failed them?

Secretary of State William Rogers explained last week why the U.S. will be giving more planes to Israel, while at the same time pressing both Israelis and Arabs to grant major concessions in order to make negotiations possible. The U.S. "is not pro-Israeli and not pro-Arab but pro-peace," he said. But the Secretary added on CBS' Face the Nation: "It is in our best interest that Israel survive as a nation."

Is Israel's survival indeed threatened?

Not imminently, to be sure. Yet the Israelis cite some frightening figures detailing the extent of Moscow's involvement, which has already cost the Kremlin close to $3 billion and is growing more expensive by the day. They claim that Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq, the so-called "frontline" Arab countries, now possess 3,750 tanks, mostly Soviet T-54s and T-55s; some 4,000 big guns, ranging up to 122-mm. cannon and 160-mm. mortars; and 1,230 planes, mostly MIG fighters but also Sukhoi and Tupolev bombers. Israeli estimates of Soviet equipment in the Middle East have sometimes been off by 25% and other sources give considerably lower figures. In any case, what alarms the Israelis even more than these statistics is Russia's recent dispatch to Egypt of advanced MIGs, SA3 antiaircraft missiles and thousands of Russians to man them.

Since a near encounter between Russian and Israeli jets in April, the opposing forces have established a kind of invisible line of demarcation extending into Egypt roughly 25 miles west of the Suez Canal. The Russians venture no farther east than the line and the Israelis--on combat missions--no farther west. Thus, Israel's air force, its "flying artillery," ranged unopposed over Egyptian gun sites on the west bank last week. The Egyptian cannon had been booming away at the sand, concrete and steel fortresses on the east bank that form the Bar-Lev Line (see box, page 30). In one ten-day period, the Israeli air force is estimated to have dropped more bombs than did all combatants during the entire 1967 war. Israelis refer to it as the "war against the war of attrition."

Orange-Juice Air Force

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan has promised that any Russian pilot who crosses the demarcation line will have company. Dayan has ordered Israeli pilots, the world's most seasoned, to shoot down any plane that appears there. Since 1967, Israel has downed 101 Egyptian planes and 23 Syrian at the loss of only 20. The kill rate in dogfights is about 20 to 1. Even U.S. pilots in Viet Nam have not taken part in as many dogfights.

The Israeli air force of 320 combat planes is a formidable fighting unit. The average age of combat pilots is 24, and the majority of them were raised in the tough life of the kibbutz. To fly they must join the air force for five years rather than the three-year tour that other officers serve. Pilots carry out as many as five missions a day. "They're flying the eyeballs off these guys," comments a Western military attache. Some of the combat is at such close quarters, says one pilot, that "often our planes come back black and scorched from the explosion of planes they hit."

The air force is the object of the sort of adulation that was last seen 30 years ago this summer, when Winston Churchill's R.A.F. "few" fought off the Nazis in the Battle of Britain. In the Israelis' case, the few are chosen with painstaking care. Air Force Commander Mordechai Hod, 44, once said that if he picked 300 youths at random from a Tel Aviv street, no more than one would qualify for pilot training. Those who make it are rarely the hard-drinking, fast-living flyboys of fiction. TIME Correspondent John Shaw, visiting one base, described them as members of "an orange-juice air force that seldom drinks except when occasions like a promotion, new baby or visiting dignitary call for everyone to knock back a Scotch." Pilots are rarely publicized, even though a ranking ace has now shot down eleven Arab planes. The reason for anonymity is not so much to prevent any personality cult as it is to keep the Arabs from learning who the aces are. During the '67 war five Israeli pilots were killed by Arabs after bailing out of crippled planes over enemy territory; recently another pilot crashed trying to ride his disabled ship back toward Israel rather than risk parachuting over Syria.

Israel's air force started out 22 years ago with British Hurricanes and Spitfires, plus some German Messerschmitts provided by the Czechs, then moved on to French Mysteres, Vautours, Mag-isters and Ouragans, some of which are still in service after 15 years. Now French-built Mirages fly cover for the Phantoms and Skyhawks. The Phantom, operational so far only in the U.S., Britain and Iran, in addition to Israel, is a heavy-duty workhorse that reaches 1,600 m.p.h., carries 17,000 Ibs. of armament, fires its electric machine guns at the rate of 100 rounds per second, can swoop to 100 feet to drop bombs, and can range far across the Middle East from Israeli bases. The Israeli government, with 40 Phantoms in service and ten more soon to come under a 1968 agreement, would like another 25. At the same time, Israel hopes to purchase four times as many Skyhawks, a far slower (675 m.p.h.) but also far cheaper plane ($4,000,000 for the Phantom; $1,200,000 for the Skyhawk). Israeli pilots call the Skyhawk the best all-round tactical bomber in the world. Originally developed for the U.S. Navy, the Skyhawk carries only half as much armament as the Phantom. But it is highly maneuverable, takes hard punishment and offers a small target. Skyhawks also require about six hours of maintenance for every hour of combat; the intricate Phantom requires about five times as much. Moreover, Israeli ground crews have learned to refuel and rearm a Skyhawk in about six minutes--half the time a U.S. Navy crew requires.

The air force does not actually need 125 U.S.-built planes at this time, and indeed the Israeli government would be hard pressed to make the $220 million payment. But there is a nagging worry that sentiment might shift against Israel in the U.S., as has happened in many parts of the world; in that event the country would be left without a supplier. Thus Israel wants the planes now, while it can still get them. At the same time, the sale, which has the support of sizable groups in both the House and Senate, is regarded in Israel as a kind of litmus test of U.S. intentions.

The Longest Odds

Few would deny that Israel's air force is the best in the Middle East. Arab air forces were largely decimated during the Six-Day War and are still being rebuilt by Russia with new MIGs and Sukhois. Qualified pilots are more difficult to come by. Egypt has 415 planes, but it has also lost perhaps a quarter of its pilots; the ratio of planes to pilots presently seems to be about 4 to 1. As a result, Egyptian flyers have been offering far fewer challenges since last September, sometimes bailing out after only minor damage to their planes.

The Israelis have the edge in pilot skill, plane performance and radar- and radio-control systems. That has bred in them a measure of cockiness and that hard-to-define quality known as chutzpa, or sheer gall. Colonel Uri Yarom, an Israeli helicopter pilot, once gave a classic demonstration of chutzpa when he was dispatched to evacuate an injured sailor from an Israeli freighter in the Mediterranean. Yarom's gas ran low before he could find the freighter; noticing that U.S. helicopters were landing aboard the 40,000-ton Sixth Fleet carrier Wasp, Yarom followed them onto the deck. He was immediately summoned to the bridge, where a U.S. officer demanded, "Who are you?" "An

Israeli flyer," replied Yarom. Furious, the American shouted: "How dare you land on one of our carriers?" "Excuse me," said Yarom, a twinkle in his eyes. "From above it looked like one of ours."

Yarom knew full well that the largest ship in the Israeli navy could have fitted comfortably on the Wasp's flight deck. The Israeli navy includes one frigate, one destroyer, four submarines and twelve missile boats. Five of the missile boats were spirited away from a Cherbourg dock last Christmas in an escape that caused international excitement. Egypt, by comparison, has five destroyers, twelve submarines and 20 missile boats divided between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. A sixth destroyer was sunk by Israeli planes in retaliation for an Egyptian attack on an Israeli fishing boat.

It is on the ground that the odds are longest against the Israelis--at least in terms of numbers. With a population of 2,800.000 v. 51 million Arabs, Israel can mobilize an army of 275,000 against Arab armies of 398,000 men. The Israelis depend on air superiority and wits to protect themselves. One reason that Israeli soldiers have hunkered down for so long on the Bar-Lev Line under barely tolerable siege conditions is that their string of hedgehog forts and minefields serve as a kind of trip wire. The line, using relatively few men, is designed to delay any kind of major Egyptian cross-canal attack until troops stationed in the desert behind them can come up to help.

Day-to-Day Danger

For a mobile army whose motto has always been "Attack," the static warfare of the Bar-Lev Line is an often demoralizing experience. So is the war of attrition that Israel is being forced to fight on all its borders. Casualties have been heavy. In May, 61 soldiers and civilians were killed, the heaviest one-month toll since the 1967 war; on the basis of population, this is the equivalent of losing 4,300 U.S. troops in one month in Viet Nam. During the six days of the '67 war, 777 soldiers and 26 Israeli civilians were killed. Since the war, 558 soldiers and 112 civilians have died, and the nation is feeling uneasy. "Before the Six-Day War," says Bar-Lev, "there was general danger but day-to-day security. Today we have general security but day-to-day danger."

Israel's overworked generals are often worn out at 50. Though Bar-Lev at 46 is completely gray, he routinely works 14-hour days in his Tel Aviv office. He is expected to win an extension of his three-year tour of duty as the chief when it ends next December. Born in Austria and raised in Yugoslavia, he entered Palestine in 1939 at 15. He served in the

Jewish underground before independence, as an infantry battalion commander in the Negev in 1948 and as commander of a tank brigade in 1956. Between wars, Bar-Lev, who still proudly wears the black beret of a tank soldier, developed blitzkrieg tactics. Using his "charging armor" concept, Israeli tanks in 1967 dashed past several Egyptian fortifications in Sinai, struck first at the stunned third-or fourth-line defenses, then swung back to mop up the first and second lines. Israeli tanks reached the Suez Canal in less than 48 hours.

Israel's top officer is anything but a martinet. He invariably holds doors open for women soldiers, a rarity in egalitarian Israel, and speaks so slowly that one fast-talking general facetiously suggested he be allowed to make reports in the painful pauses between Bar-Lev's words. His interests are broad. Bar-Lev and Wife Tamar recently dined with three close friends and their wives--Liberal Israeli Columnist Amos Kennan, Poet Chaim Hefer and Painter Inche Mambush. It was the equivalent, joked an Israeli who knows them all, of General William Westmoreland's dining with Linguist Noam Chomsky, Novelist Norman Mailer and Painter Andy Warhol.

No Surrender

On duty, Bar-Lev is intently military.

He spends two or three days a week in the field. One day last week, puffing at his inevitable Cuban cigar (he smokes 15 a day), he hopped into a light plane, piloted himself to Sinai and was lifted by helicopter to an oasis where Israeli troops had assembled for a raid into Egypt. Bar-Lev pep-talked them, then helicoptered on to the Bar-Lev Line. "I don't like that name," the former tank commander says of the line, "but it seems I'm stuck with it."

Bar-Lev has no intention of surrendering the Bar-Lev Line at the moment, or any other territory captured during the 1967 war. "We intend to hold our positions along the canal until the Arab countries are ready to discuss a settlement," he said last week in an interview with TIME'S John Shaw and Marlin Levin. "We intend to hold every part of our present borders until we find a suitable political solution. We now have borders that give us tremendous strategic advantages we didn't have before." Other observations:

RUSSIAN INVOLVEMENT: "I think the Russian involvement could not be avoided. Nasser realized that with his own forces only he was unable to continue with this policy of a war of attrition. He had three alternatives. He could come to terms with us. He could restore the ceasefire. He chose the third --to ask the Russians for more help. Now Russian involvement has become an issue for the Western world."

RUSSIAN INTENTIONS: "They can continue what they are doing in Egypt or even withdraw a little. They can come closer to the canal. The third possibility is that they cross the canal. The factor that will determine what the Russians will do or won't do is the reaction of the U.S. and the reaction of Israel."

ISRAEL'S INTENTIONS: "The fact that we have not attacked any target deep in Egypt since April does not mean that we are not able to. If we find it necessary, we might even do it. It is not a question of ability."

Bar-Lev has few morale problems in his army; Israeli soldiers have long been convinced that they only have to lose once to the Arabs to lose everything. As a result, surprising numbers of recruits volunteer as paratroopers, pilots, and, perhaps toughest of all, naval commandos, whose rigorous training includes a 110-mile obstacle course. For any serviceman, the proudest insigne is the unit crest with a red background designating a battle unit. The "jobnik"--a soldier with a desk job--is looked down on.

In the heady days after the Six-Day War, the all-victorious Israelis were wont to crack jokes about the unusual transmissions on Arab military vehicles --with one forward gear and three reverse gears. Many Arab units are, of course, still jokes. Only once since 1967 has an Arab plane intruded over Israel --when a lone Syrian MIG roared over Haifa last January and broke a few windows with its supersonic boom. Egyptian Sukhoi pilots often unload their bombs and head for home the moment antiaircraft fire begins crackling. Yet under Russian prodding and training, some sort of esprit is finally stirring in the

Arab armies. Three weeks ago, an Egyptian commando party ambushed Israelis on the Bar-Lev Line and killed 13 of them. For an army that tossed away its shoes and fled in panic in its last major war, such a raid can have an exhilarating effect. To prevent its air force from being demolished in three hours as it was in 1967, the Egyptians have built hundreds of concrete "hangarettes" and scattered them around the country to limit destruction. Their force of 1,000 T-54 and T-55 tanks are no longer clustered in depots. Egyptian artillery on the Suez Canal is massed in the Russian manner, and there the Egyptians have been inflicting casualties.

Elsewhere along Israel's 1,349 miles of postwar border, opposing forces are no better than they were before the '67 war. Lebanese and Jordanian troops, as last week's fighting in Amman indicated, spend as much time trying to control the fedayeen as they do fighting the Israelis. Syria does little to irritate Israel, since Damascus is only a five-minute jet flight from Israeli airbases. Iraq, although it maintains a 10,000-man expeditionary force in Jordan, has done little fighting. The threats to Israel there-fpre lie principally in the west.

One threat should worry Europe also.

The Russians, simply by stationing land and air forces on the North African littoral, have outflanked the southern defenses of NATO. Russian jets enjoy access to 43 Arab airfields right now, and could adapt another 60 in short order if they chose. Only last week, the former Wheelus AFB outside Tripoli was re-christened Ugbah Ben Nafe base as the U.S. flag was hauled down and the green, black and red flag of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's revolutionary Libyan government was hoisted. The 2,100-acre base could easily handle Russia's largest planes.

Another threat from the Russians is that they might ultimately decide to move their planes forward to the canal or install missiles there. Most observers believe, nonetheless, that Soviet policy in the Middle East is still to maintain tension and encourage a gradual erosion of U.S. influence without actually provoking a war. With those objectives, Moscow has not been helpful in furthering peace efforts. Four-power talks among the U.S., Russia, Britain and France have gone nowhere. Soviet Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Dobrynin, at Moscow's order, continues to give the U.S. what the State Department calls "unsatisfactory explanations" of the Russian aims in Egypt; U.S. Ambassador Jacob Beam has got no clearer answers at the Kremlin. The Russian tone toward the U.S., meanwhile, has turned ominously icy. On four consecutive days last week, the three top men in the Soviet Union came out with strong denunciations of U.S. policy, particularly in Indochina and the Middle East.

Israelis worry that Russia may decide to risk some losses in order to test its equipment in Egypt, just as U.S. military men have used Viet Nam as a kind of testing ground. The SA-3, after all, has never been fired against an actual enemy, and 25 years after V-E day, there are few, if any Russian pilots with combat experience.

In spite of growls from the Russian bear, Bar-Lev, for one, does not believe that the Middle East is heading for outright war. The prospects for peace seem even more remote. A young girl graduating from high school last week put the feeling of her generation in particularly poignant terms. "We shall stay strong in bombs and bullets." she said, "but staying strong inside is harder. The boys in my class are going straight to the army. I know I shall never see some of them again."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.