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JEWISH ST / POLI SCI 328 - Lecture Notes, October 26
Lecture Notes for October 26th, 2010 Suez Crisis and lead up to the Six Day ...
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Decision Process, Choice, and Consequences: Israel's Deep-Penetration Bombing inEgypt, 1970
Avi Shlaim; Raymond Tanter
World Politics
, Vol. 30, No. 4. (Jul., 1978), pp. 483-516.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-8871%28197807%2930%3A4%3C483%3ADPCACI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C
World Politics
is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/jhup.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgMon Jun 25 18:48:45 2007
DECISION PROCESS, CHOICE,
AND
CONSEQUENCES
:
Israel's Deep-Penetration Bombing in Egypt,
1970
By
AVI SHLAIM and RAYMOND TANTER
0
F
the long series of wars generated in the course of the Arab-Israeliconflict-1948, 1956, 1967, 196970, and 1973-the 1969-1970 Warof Attrition between Egypt and Israel is the least spectacular and, pre-sumably for this reason, also the one most neglected by military his-torians. But the War of Attrition is neither uninstructive from the pointof view of strategic studies nor insignificant in terms of its actual con-sequences; for these reasons, it deserves a more detailed and sustainedstudy than it has received.' The present article cannot fill this gap. Thisessay is concerned only with the last phase of the War of Attrition andfocuses specifically on a decision which had the most crucial influencenot only on the manner in which this war ended, but on the whole mili-tary and political course of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as theinvolvement of the superpowers in this conflict. It is concerned withIsrael's decision to start bombing the Egyptian interior in January1970.The purpose is to describe and analyze the process of decision makingthat produced the bombing; to evaluate the bombing in terms of theexpectations and preferences that prompted it, as well as the conse-quences that followed; and, finally, to use this inquiry to highlight somebroader aspects of Israel's system of making national security policy.Military clashes between Egypt and Israel occurred intermittentlyfrom the end of the Six-Day War in June 1967 until the spring of 1969.But the large-scale and systematic Egyptian offensive mounted inMarch 1969 marked the beginning of the War of Attrition. On March31, President Nasser denounced theU.N.-decreed cease-fire; on June 23,he formally declared the War of Attrition. The immediate goal was toprevent the conversion of the Suez Canal into a
de
facto
border, while
1
The literature available in English includes Ahmed
S.
Khalidi, "The War of Attri-tion,"
lournal of Palestine Studies,
III,
No.
I
(1~3)
Edgar O'Ballance,
The ElectronicWar in the Middle East 1968-70
(London: Faber 1974); Lawrence L. Whetten,
TheCanal War: Four-Power Conflict in the Middle East
(Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press197~); nd Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz,
The Israeli Army
(London: AllenLane 1975).
0043-8871/3004-0483$01.70/1
World
Politics
@
1978
Princeton University PressFor copying information, see Contributor page
484
WORLD POLITICS
the ultimate goal was to force Israel to withdraw from the Canal oraccept a political settlement on Arab terms. The military strategyadopted for this purpose consisted of heavy artillery bombardment ofIsrael's positions on the Canal front, occasional air attacks, and hit-and-run commando raids. The idea was to take advantage of Egypt's mas-sive superiority in manpower and artillery and Israel's comparative dis-advantage in static warfare and well-known sensitivity to casualties inorder to exhaust her militarily, economically, and psychologically, andthus pave the way to an Egyptian crossing to dislodge Israel from theCanal.Israel's response was partly defensive and partly offensive. TheBar-Lev line was reinforced to enable it to withstand the intensive Egyptianbombardment; at the same time, commando raids were launched deepinside Egyptian territory. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were ableto demonstrate their daring and resourcefulness in these raids, but theyprovided no effective solution to the problem of checking the Egyptianoffensive. As the number of Israel's casualties increased steadily(reaching the high figure of
31
dead and 81 wounded during July),so did the pressure to respond with overwhelming military force. Thechief advocate of the use of Israel's superior air power to compel Egyptto desist was the head of the General Staff Division of IDF and formercommander of the Air Force, General Ezer Wei~man.~ut the major-ity of Weizman's colleagues in the General Staff as well as in the Cabi-net were not convinced that the time had come to resort to overwhelm-ing air power. They argued that if Egypt was planning to go to war,then Israel's limited and not easily replaceable stock of aircraft mustbe preserved to meet this contingency and not frittered away in pre-mature and inessential operations. In May, the Defence Minister, MosheDayan, rejected the early proposals for using the Israel Air Force (IAF)against ground targets in Egypt. He preferred to avoid escalation untilthe event of some drastic Egyptian operation, such as an attempt tocross the Canal.'By mid-July 1969, following four months of intensive but incon-clusive warfare, Israel's decision makers concluded that the air forcewould have to be used on the southern front. They did not ignore theoperational problems and the risks of adverse reaction on the part ofthe superpowers; but they expected that the Egyptians were planning
2See the autobiography of Weizman,
On
Eagles' Wings
(London: Weidenfeld andNicolson 1976),
271.
3
Zeev Shiff,
Knafayim me'al Suez: Sipuro she1 cheil ha'auir bemilhemet ha-hatashah
[Wings Over Suez: The Story of the Air Force in the War of Attrition] (Haifa:Shikmona
1970),
44-46.
of 00
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