The Tough New Commanders

An entire generation of military leaders has already made of the war in the Middle East a lifetime occupation. Last week three of the region's most skilled and tenacious commanders emerged at the forefront of the struggle, the operational heads of the Egyptian, Syrian and Israeli armies. The new commanders:

EGYPT, LIEUT. GENERAL SAADEDDIN SHAZLI:

In any country this brilliant, aggressive and fiercely devoted soldier would stand out as a talented strategist. The mastermind behind Egypt's assault on the formidable Bar-Lev Line on the east side of the Suez Canal, Shazli, 52, has long awaited his chance to prove the Arabs' military prowess. Educated at the Egyptian military academy and trained in the Soviet Union, he has been an officer since the first Palestine war of 1948. After the 1967 Six-Day War, he commanded Egypt's "special forces" and later the elite commando unit that forayed across the Suez Canal into Israeli occupied territory. In 1971, in the course of President Sadat's top-level purge of the Egyptian military, he replaced Lieut. General Mohammed Sadek as Chief of Staff.

Since then he has been a prime force in soothing passions among feuding Arab factions, with the goal of constructing a coordinated battle plan for Syrian and Egyptian forces against Israel. A specialist in both airborne and guerrilla warfare and the holder of a master's degree in political science, Shazli is extremely popular among his men. He maintains an almost mystical belief in the destiny of the Arab peoples. "Let us regain the glories of Arabism," he said at a meeting in Cairo of the Arab Chiefs of Staff, "and prove to the whole world that we are men of war, who either live proudly or die honorably."

SYRIA, MAJOR GENERAL MUSTAFA TLAS: This perfervid Arab patriot is Deputy Commander in Chief of the Syrian army as well as Defense Minister. Tlas, 45, has been an uncompromising opponent of any attempt at a negotiated settlement of the Middle East crisis. A believer in "people's war," and author of a book on guerrilla fighting, he was one of the first Syrian army regulars to give support to the Palestinian commandos in their war against King Hussein, with a brief but disastrous invasion of Jordan in 1970.

After graduating from the Syrian military academy, Tlas began his career as an army regular, while at the same time becoming a prominent figure in the Baath Party. In the split between military and civilian factions that developed in the Syrian leadership, Tlas sided with the army, throwing his weight behind President Hafez Assad in the latter's 1970 coup. Since then he and Assad have concentrated their attention on improving the quality of Syria's armed forces, with Tlas traveling to Moscow, Peking and, most recently, Hanoi in quest of military equipment and advice.

Tlas is popular with the armed forces in part because of his unflinching policy of retaliation against Israeli attacks. Since 1970 he and Assad have consistently favored a coordinated command with Egypt, a policy that led directly to the two-front assault on the occupied territories on Yom Kippur.

ISRAEL, LIEUT. GENERAL DAVID ELAZAR: Nobody in Israel has been more contemptuous of the Arabs' military capacity than this longtime protege of Israel's respected former Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev. Born in Yugoslavia, like Bar-Lev, Elazar, now 48, went to Israel in 1940, soon joined the Palmach, the strike force of the underground Zionist army, and fought in the 1948 war of independence. His military career advanced rapidly as he followed Bar-Lev from command to command until he succeeded him as Chief of Staff in 1971. Last April Elazar predicted, "I don't believe the Egyptian forces have the faintest chance of winning a battle."

Even now that the Arab offensive has been more successful than he expected, the nasal-voiced general vows that he will "break the bones" of his adversaries. He has done it before. Twice he commanded Israeli forces that captured territory in the Sinai, once in 1948 and again in 1956. In 1967, it was his daring use of Israeli innovations in armored warfare, especially the use of tanks at night and in hilly fighting, that was decisive in rolling back Syrian ground forces. Leading the assault from a front-line halftrack, Elazar took the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War in a mere 15 hours, audaciously advancing straight into withering Syrian artillery fire. Terse and direct, Elazar is known by his Yugoslavian nickname, "Dado." He is also called "Bulldog," for, as one Israeli officer put it: "His bulldog fighting technique is to take a good big bite and then hang on."

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