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Overview
In 1954 reporter Uri Dan met a young military commander named Ariel Sharon and followed him closely for more than half a century. Dan became Sharon's trusted advisor and a witness to the defining moments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--from secret meetings with heads of state to open warfare in the Sinai. This riveting combination of political history, narrative biography, interviews, and correspondence sheds new light on the conflict in the Middle East and provides an intimate, definitive portrait of Ariel Sharon--a man whose life is inextricably intertwined with Israel's destiny. With Hamas governing Palestine, Ariel Sharon gravely ill and the party he founded, the Kadima, in control of the Knesset, this book couldn't be more timely.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466892798 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/24/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 683 KB |
About the Author
Uri Dan is an accomplished reporter and contributor to the New York Post, the Jerusalem Post, and to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. He has written a number of books including To the Promised Land, Blood Libel, and Eichmann Syndrome.
Uri Dan is an accomplished reporter and contributor to the New York Post, the Jerusalem Post, and to the Israeli daily Ma’ariv. He has written a number of books including To the Promised Land, Blood Libel, and Eichmann Syndrome.
Read an Excerpt
Ariel Sharon
An Intimate Portrait
By Uri Dan
Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © 2006 Michel Lafon Publishing S.A.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9279-8
CHAPTER 1
1948
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
On November 29, 1947, the U.N. General Assembly voted on Resolution 181, which stipulated the division of Palestine into two separate states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under international control. The Arab countries' rejection of this plan led to the first Israeli-Arab war, unleashed on May 15, 1948, the day after the proclamation of the independent state of Israel. The armies of Transjordan, Egypt and Syria, aided by Lebanese and Iraqi troops, attacked Israel.
I was only 12 at the beginning of the war of independence, but I know how brutal the battles were. I trembled when the Arabs of Jaffa attacked in 1948, and I cried when Jerusalem's Old City, and with it the Wailing Wall, fell into the hands of the Jordanians.
At the time, Sharon led an infantry regiment. On the Latrun road, the formidable Arab Legion had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). On the 50th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, Sharon told me about the lessons he learned from this episode:
* * *
Ariel Sharon, exactly 50 years ago, in May 1948, you were seriously wounded during the battle of Latrun, undertaken to force the blockade of Jerusalem and to take back the police station that the Jordanians were occupying. How does your memory of that episode — your frantic race across a burning battlefield, in the scorching summer, dressed in shorts and sandals and shaking with pain — influence you?
Shoes, not sandals. In shorts, yes. And I wasn't running, but was crawling with great difficulty. Yes, that battle had a lasting influence on me in many ways, particularly regarding the treatment of the wounded.
How so?
Not everyone managed to escape. Some soldiers remained on the battlefield. Men from my group. I was commanding the assault section of the division charged with opening the road to Jerusalem and liberating the village of Latrun. We then had to descend to the Trappist monastery and if possible continue to the police station. That was the goal of the mission. We attacked at dawn on May 26, 1948.
At dawn?
Yes. We were supposed to attack during the night, but disagreements within the general staff held us up. The bus that was to transport my section was parked near the army encampment north of Kibbutz Hulda, and I saw senior officers having an animated discussion inside. Time passed. Obviously I didn't know the reason for their disagreement; I only knew that I had to take the left side of the village and go down to the monastery of Latrun. What I feared most of all was being stuck down there in the middle of the day without having completed my mission. And the discussions went on and on ... Many years later, I learned that there had been a bitter debate between the heads of the newly formed 7th Brigade and the battalion commanders. The latter were against the attack because of the Jordanians' numerical superiority. In the final analysis, it was Ben-Gurion who insisted on the attack — he has said as much in his diary. He was afraid that a cease-fire would be implemented before we had succeeded in reaching defendable borders. It was a constant cause of discord between him and the chief of staff office. Several times, conscious of the passing time, he demanded more combativeness.
And it was only later that you discovered all that?
Oh yes, much later. That night, between May 25 and 26, 1948, I was just waiting impatiently for the order to leave. We had been at war for almost six months and my section had already taken part in several operations, with numerous losses. Time was running out, when we wanted to move and act. I also began to worry when I learned that we would have two 65-mm Mexican cannons. I had never seen a cannon in action, and I had the feeling that we would have no choice but to use them! I had explained to my men the importance of this operation in forcing the blockade of Jerusalem. No one questioned the relevance of our mission, despite the losses we had sustained since the beginning of the conflict. Ten men in one place, 15 in another, 40 in another still. All the time, painful losses. However, throughout that war I never had the feeling — and I think this was characteristic of my generation — that we were powerless against the Arabs. I don't remember a single instance of despair.
Even when you faced the best prepared army of all, the Arab Legion?
Yes. In fact, we didn't know much about them — only that the Legion had already conquered the Old City of Jerusalem.
What happened during this battle that influenced your military philosophy?
It was a terrible battle. We didn't arrive until five in the morning. A thick fog covered the fields. Just as we began advancing, the fog lifted all at once and we were in a hail of gunfire. The whole hill opposite erupted in fire. That hill ... When you go down from Jerusalem toward Tel Aviv you can hardly see it, but if you come from the south, you clearly see the olive grove planted on the side that goes up to the village.
What were you armed with?
We had just received Czech weapons. Until then, half my men — my section consisted of 35 — had firearms, and the other half only had grenades. The Russians had allowed us to secure Czech rifles. We also had submachine guns, Israeli-manufactured Stens, and Bren machine guns and other similar weapons. We suffered casualties from the beginning of the conflict. It was impossible to advance under sustained fire. Some units of the Arab Legion were commanded by British officers, and I met one of them nine years later, during my course at the Staff and Command College in Camberley, England.
I gave the order to fire the 52-mm mortar. A boy from my moshav, Azriel Ratzabi, got up to put a shell into the mortar. A bullet went through his lungs and killed him. I managed to bring my section up to a little path, beneath Latrun. It was impossible to go any further. From eight in the morning, the Jordanians began rushing down the hill. They crossed the road and went into the olive trees, issuing shouts that froze the blood. We shot at them, they withdrew and then advanced again. It didn't stop.
Were they villagers or soldiers?
Legionnaires. We remained stuck at the foot of the hill until midday. Every time we tried to climb, they shot at us. Around noon, Iraqi planes entered the battle. Everything around us was burning. We were dying of thirst: the khamsin (a hot desert wind) exacerbated the dry, scorching heat, and we had not brought any water.
Not even gourds?
We had nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had been wounded at midday. A bullet in the stomach, which came out at the thigh. I also had an arm in plaster, a souvenir from an accident that had happened a month earlier.
Did someone look after your wounds?
No. We also had no bandages.
Were you losing blood?
Yes, but luckily no vital artery was affected and I remained fully conscious. Getting out of that sticky situation seemed impossible to me. Of our men, 15 were already dead, 11 were wounded and 5 had been taken prisoner. Of the whole section, only 4 men were still fit. After we had pushed back the enemy offensive, we were stuck with a broken radio transmitter, without means of communication or the possibility of withdrawing. The Jordanians approached from time to time, and we would shoot and throw grenades. That went on from eight in the morning until noon. Then our two cannons opened fire. I thought that the offensive against us would resume and that enemy reinforcements would arrive, but at one o'clock there was a sudden and total silence. Enemy fire had ceased. I lifted myself up a little and suddenly saw behind us, from the east, Arabs advancing silently. They weren't soldiers. They were coming down the hill that had been occupied by our forces, Hill 314, which today overlooks the district of Neve Shalom. I understood that the artillery fire was meant to cover their retreat. Faced with this new situation, I gave the order to withdraw, telling my men not to move toward the evacuation point for the wounded at the village of Beit Joz — the current site of Kibbutz Harel — and also to avoid the Latrun road, where the Jordanians had a mechanized unit with cannons. I was half dead of thirst, exhausted, and the withdrawal seemed to demand a superhuman effort. I saw the four fit men of the section go ahead of me, and I didn't even resent them for it.
They didn't help their injured commander?
They passed ahead of me and the other wounded, very simply because there was no way of evacuating us. We were in a critical situation — all our forces had beaten a retreat and we had been abandoned. I feared that Arab villagers would come to kill the wounded, as was their custom. Gathering the last of my strength, I began to crawl, on all fours, on the ground covered with hot ash. As I was wearing only shorts, my knees were covered with burns; my hands were, too. Another wounded man, a soldier who had joined my section two days before, was crawling beside me. He had a smashed jaw and was a terrible sight. But at that moment it was the arms and legs that counted, particularly the legs. He was moving several feet away from me, to the left. I could not remember his name. He couldn't talk because of his broken jaw, and I didn't have the energy to speak. It was a strange race between us — climbing as best we could — and the villagers who were coming down the hill. The Jordanians held the whole line of Latrun: the police station, the monastery, the village of Dir Eyub and its surroundings. The soldier who was crawling beside me took another hit, a bullet in the shoulder, although the Jordanian fire had stopped. The people of Beit Soussin were attacking from their village, south of the old Jerusalem road that goes through Shaar Hagai.
They descended slowly, looking for wounded men to finish off and for possessions to loot. The way in which the Arabs dealt with our wounded certainly spurred us on; no need to deny it. Still crawling silently, we had reached the first terrace. My companion in misadventure helped me climb it, and we continued dragging ourselves along to the second terrace. Again he helped me get over it, and in this way, terrace by terrace, we arrived at the other side of the hill. What a relief. There I found the rest of the company, who were beating a retreat.
The company's second in command, Moshik Lanczet, who was also wounded but less severely, tried to haul me onto his back. I weighed only 68 kilos at the time, but I was still too heavy. I could nonetheless lean against him, and we hobbled across the burning fields, avoiding the road to the west and the hills to the east. We wanted to get to Kibbutz Hulda, several kilometers away. To this day, I cannot understand why I was so upset that I could not remember the name of the soldier who had helped me escape.
Suddenly, I saw a jeep coming with a moshav girl, Rivka Bugin, at the wheel. She had come to see what was happening at the front. Rivka had served in the British army, driving trucks in the Libyan desert. She was a wonderful girl who, sadly, died afterward. She was accompanied by her brother, Shmulik Bugin, the famous driver of Infernal Tiger, the IDF's only armored vehicle, taken from the Jordanians. Seeing them coming and going, looking for wounded, I suddenly remembered the name of my soldier: Yacov Bugin, their cousin.
Despite everything that's happened to me since, I still remember the shudder that went through me. Arriving near what is today the Nachshon crossroads, I almost collapsed. Someone took me in their arms and put me in an armored car.
Had you fainted?
No, but I had a moment when everything went fuzzy. I don't remember exactly. There was smoke everywhere. At Kibbutz Hulda, I was laid out on a stretcher. It was a long drive to the Hadassah hospital in Tel Aviv. My face was covered with a towel, and I heard people talking about me:
"Yet another goner!"
"Who is it?"
"Arik."
"Where was he hit?"
"In the genitals."
I was happy to still be alive, but what a blow!
From Hulda we went to Mazkeret Batia. The convoy of ambulances stopped next to the synagogue. The women of the moshav brought jugs of milk to quench our thirst. I couldn't drink because of the wound in my stomach. I still remember the image of those women solicitously taking care of us while I worried frantically about the injury to my genitals. The convoy set off again, passing through Naan, and arrived at Bilu camp, transformed into a military hospital, where the injured were gathered. My stretcher was placed on the ground, and a charming volunteer nurse asked me to urinate. I couldn't. She asked for a catheter to be brought, and I said, "Wait, I'll try again." This time I succeeded. She kissed me on the mouth, and then I realized that my wound was not where I had feared.
Later we took the road to Tel Aviv. We had just reached the entrance to the Hadassah hospital in Balfour street when Egyptian planes attacked the area. Everyone who could jumped out of the ambulances, while the wounded lay inside them until the bombing was over.
In 1967, after the Six Day War, I accompanied you to the site of the battle of Latrun, and you told me that that event had marked you.
A lot, yes, and in many ways. In fact, there wasn't a single senior officer on the ground, and that was what was lacking at the critical moment. I was commanding a section, but there was no one there to analyze the situation and make decisions. For example, if our forces had received the order to keep on until nightfall while their evacuation was organized, we would have saved a lot of men, including some wounded. An officer capable of understanding the situation would have ordered, "We won't leave, even if there are more losses." In the end there would have been fewer losses, and the wounded who stayed on the ground would not have been killed.
Could the officer also have given the order to withdraw?
But withdrawal was impossible!
One thing has concerned me since Latrun: the need for a commanding officer in the theater of operations who is capable of making decisions according to the real evolution of the situation, rather than relying on occasional radio-transmitted messages.
The question of the wounded is the second thing that has haunted me since Latrun, and which has never given me peace. The Arabs massacred the wounded. They didn't take prisoners, even in the Legion units under British command. Now the wounded remained on the battlefield at Latrun ...
How did that influence you later, when you commanded paratroopers and armored vehicles, during the Six Day War and after the crossing of the Suez Canal?
It became an unbreakable rule for me: the wounded are not to be abandoned on the battlefield. That also applies to prisoners, even if you have to take hostages. The IDF never broke this rule. That is why, on October 7, 1973, arriving at the canal front with my division, I insisted on rescuing the surrounded men in the fortifications of the Bar-Lev line who were calling for help — and it was still possible. Some of them said to me afterward that they had recognized my voice, sure that I would save them. I managed to get some of them out, despite the categorical opposition of the senior command.
The command center at the front?
Yes. For me, the question of the wounded and of prisoners is a moral one of the greatest importance. It is unthinkable to evaluate it in terms of figures and statistics.
I believe you acted in this way in the case of Sergeant Yitzhak Jibli, a prisoner in Jordan in 1954?
Exactly. And also in 1952, when we captured two Jordanians to exchange them for two soldiers from the Givati brigade who had crossed the border by mistake during a patrol in the region of Kalkilya. The Jordanians refused to give them back. I was then an operations officer in the northern command.
What did you do to make your paratrooper and armored vehicle units aware of the fate of the wounded?
The order was categorical: the wounded are not to be left on the ground. Never. Not in any circumstances.
Because of what you experienced during the battle of Latrun?
Not only that. I didn't react to what I experienced but to what I saw. Fifty years have passed since Latrun, and the fate of the wounded has continued to obsess me. I can still see those youngsters, 17 to 20 years old, and also men who were older than me.
You were 20?
Yes. I remember their faces. I knew them all, without exception. At the time, the structure of the army was still regional.
They all came from your region, from Sharon?
Yes.
The IDF had just been created and it suffered a loss that day. How did you feel?
During the war of independence, we had victories and some crushing defeats. Nonetheless, despite the heavy losses, I never experienced the slightest feeling of despair or powerlessness. I don't remember a single moment when I lost confidence, and I think that was the same for everybody. I lived through several of the IDF's brutal defeats — Latrun, the attack against Iraq El-Manshiyeh, the Faluja Pocket — without ever losing the certainty that we would triumph in the end. Sure, we sometimes failed, and that meant many lost comrades, but I never saw soldiers in tears.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ariel Sharon by Uri Dan. Copyright © 2006 Michel Lafon Publishing S.A.. Excerpted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Foreword * 1954: My First Meeting with Ariel Sharon * 1948: The War of Independence * 1956: The Suez Campaign * 1957: An Outstanding Officer * 1962: Adieu Margalith * 1967: The Six Day War * October 1967: Gur's Death * 1968: Repopulating the Promised Land * 1969-1973: Sharon against the Bar-Lev Line * 1970: Sharon Returns * 1973: The Yom Kippur War * 1974: Arik, King of Israel * 1981: Destroying Osirak * 1981: "Sharon Has Destroyed Yamit" * June 1982: The Lebanese War * 1982: Sharon's Black September * December 1982-January 1983: Sharon Besieged * 8 February 1983: The Kahan Commission Report * 1983-1984: "Ariel, Don't Resign!" * January 1991: Scud Rain over Israel * 1993-1994: Arafat Returns * October 1998: The Wye Plantation Agreements * February 1999: Lily Is Ill * 28 September 2000: Controversial Visit to the Temple Mount * November 2000: Sharon Targets the Top * 6 February 2001: Prime Minister Sharon * 2001: First Impressions * February-March 2001: Condoleezza's Legs * 1 June 2001: Suicide Bomb at the Dolphinarium * October 2001: Afghanistan * December 2001: Christmas in Bethlehem * January 2002: A Boatload of Weapons * March 2002: Massacre in Pesach * April 2002: "Massacre" in Jenin * 24 June 2002: Arafat Out * July 2002: Liquidation of Hamas Leaders * November 2002 – December 2003: Arik Corrupted? * June 2003: The Road Map * September 2004: A Plan for Israel * November 2004: Arafat's Death * September 2005: After the Disengagement * 2004-2005: A Mother's Advice * September 2005: Withdrawal from Gaza * September 2005: Speech to the United Nations * November 2005: Kadima * December 2005-January 2006 * Chronology