When the Israeli General Staff made its final preparations for the assault on the Rafah area, it did so knowing that battles were raging at Mitla and Abu Ageila. No element of surprise existed. The Egyptians awaited the oncoming attack behind a labyrinth of multiple minefields and interdefensive, mutually-supporting emplacements on hard earth ridges and hillocks. The locality was manned by the Egyptian 6th Infantry Brigade, under the general command of the 3rd Division based at El-Arish, plus a tank company, two Frontier Force companies, one battalion of 25-pounder field artillery, seventeen Archers, Czech 105mm recoilless antitank guns, anti-aircraft weapons and units of the Palestinian Volunteer 87th Brigade.
To deal with this front, a divisional task force under Brigadier-General Haim Laskov was created, comprising the 1st ‘Golani’ Infantry Brigade under command of Colonel Benjamin Gibli, and the 27th Armoured Brigade under Colonel Chaim Bar-Lev, with additional artillery and engineer units. The ‘Golani’ Brigade included three infantry rifle battalions, one battalion of 120mm mortars and twelve anti-tank guns, with an additional tank company from the 27th Armoured Brigade. The 27th Armoured Brigade itself comprised one motorized infantry battalion, two companies of Super-Sherman tanks, one company of Sherman tanks and one AMX-13 light tank company.
Colonel Gibli had previously been a Director of Military Intelligence, whose name had been linked to the so-called ‘affair’, in which an Israeli spy ring operating in Egypt in 1954 was arrested, most of its members receiving long terms of imprisonment and two being executed. An argument had developed as to who gave the order for the group in Egypt to carry out acts of sabotage, and there followed serious political repercussions, leading to the resignation of the then Minister of Defence, Pinchas Lavon, and to the removal of Colonel Gibli from all intelligence functions. A ministerial enquiry into the whole affair at the request of
David Ben-Gurion in the early 1960s ultimately led to one of Israel’s most serious political crises, the resignation of Ben-Gurion, and his splitting from the Labour Party which he had led. (Colonel Gibli was later to head a large industrial manufacturing group controlled by the General Federation of Trade Unions.)
Colonel Bar-Lev, a quiet, dour, very slowly-spoken and determined individual, had been an outstanding battalion commander in the Palmach ‘Negev’ Brigade in the War of Independence. A native of Yugoslavia, he later commanded the ‘Givati’ Brigade and moved on to command the
Armoured Corps. A graduate of Columbia University, New York, in Business Administration, he was to be Deputy Chief of Staff to General Rabin in the Six Day War, and Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces in 1968. During his period of office, he constructed the defensive line at the Suez Canal that was to be associated with his name, the so-called ‘Bar-Lev Line’. He later entered politics, being appointed Minister of Trade and Industry, but in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 he was called back to uniform and played an important part in stabilizing the southern front.
The assault on Rafah was meticulously planned, and required strict timing in order to co-ordinate the movements of the two brigades. It was to be carried out in three stages. A southern force of the 3rd and 4th ‘Golani’ Battalions was to open a gap in the extensive minefields adjacent to the international border to allow armour to pass through and reach the Rafah-Nitzana road south of the Rafah junction. A central force of the 1st and 2nd ‘Golani’ Battalions was to clear the fortified hills adjacent to the Rafah-Gaza road, and a force of the 27th Armoured Brigade was to strike through the flank of the Rafah camps* to the north, meet the ‘Golani’ forces at the junction and advance south-westwards towards El-Arish and Kantara.
The 4th Battalion was the first to cross the border, just before midnight on 30 November, passing precariously through the minefields: after encountering difficulties in identifying two Egyptian positions guarding and covering them, the Battalion took control of the entry route, enabling the 3rd Battalion, on half-tracks and 6x6 trucks, reinforced by a company of Super-Sherman tanks of the 27th Armoured Brigade, to cross. However, the half-tracks struck mines and blocked any farther advance through the minefield, providing the Egyptian multiple emplacements in the vicinity with a static, flaming target for artillery and tank fire. Under an intense barrage, Israeli sappers crawled along the route and cleared a path while the soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Meir Pa’il (in later years a lecturer in military history at Tel Aviv University and a very vociferous and effective member of the Knesset for the left-wing Sheli Party) found temporary cover behind bushes and sand dunes. The advance was hampered by yet more mines, which destroyed two Super-Shermans. Only after five hours of arduous delicate manoeuvring through the minefields, illuminated by huge Egyptian searchlights and under a heavy, accurate artillery barrage, did Pa’il’s Battalion finally find its way to the main road connecting Rafah and Nitzana. By 05.30 hours, the Battalion had successfully assaulted a large emplacement overlooking the road, and commenced movement towards the Rafah junction. This was protected by three fortified positions, which were taken in an assault by the 3rd and 4th Battalions, who thereupon established a bridgehead and dug-in to await the arrival of the tanks of the 27th Armoured Brigade.
In the central area, the 1st and 2nd Battalions assaulted stronger emplacements adjacent to the Gaza-El-Arish road. Because of
* In the Second World War, Rafah had been a major British Army centre, with numerous camps.
Malfunctioning explosive equipment, the soldiers had to cut their way through rolls of concertina wire under heavy and medium machine-gun fire. Only then, with supporting fire from a tank platoon borrowed from the 27th Armoured Brigade, could they advance through various key, fortified, hill emplacements, and take the vast military camps and storage depots, left behind by the British from the Second World War, behind the junction.
The motorized infantry battalion of the 27th Armoured Brigade, comprising four rifie companies and a troop of AMX tanks, went into action along the northern road at 04.00 hours against two strongly-fortified anti-tank positions on ridges covering the road. These positions, held by a reinforced platoon and two rifle companies with seventeen antitank guns, fell after two hours of bitter hand-to-hand fighting in the communication channels and bunkers. The battle was fought chiefly with bazookas, which succeeded in destroying the seventeen Egyptian anti-tank positions. By 10.00 hours on 1 November, the ‘Golani’ and 27th Armoured Brigade forces met at the junction, in the presence of the Chief of Staff, General Dayan, who had accompanied the 27th Armoured Brigade during its advance. Dayan describes in his Diary* the enthusiasm of the troops as the dust-covered infantry men of the ‘Golani’ Brigade met the advancing units of the 27th Armoured Brigade: ‘We fell into each other’s arms in the classic tradition of a Russian movie.’ But within thirty minutes, units of the 27th Armoured Brigade were on their way westwards towards El-Arish. A seven-jeep reconnaissance unit led the Brigade, followed by engineers, infantry on half-tracks and two troops of AMX light tanks, and an artillery troop of four 105mm self-propelled guns. At El Jiradi, a few miles east of El-Arish, the Brigade encountered a strongly-defended set of emplacements, based on an infantry company equipped with Archer tank destroyers, anti-tank artillery and a battery of 120mm mortars. This force held up the Brigade for an hour, during which time the position was taken by a flanking operation from the south and rear, in a combined armour and aerial attack.
General Dayan decided not to enter the town of El-Arish that evening, but to wait for the dawn at a distance of some three miles north-east of the town. His hesitation was influenced by the fact that the Israeli Southern Command was not certain of the strength of the Egyptian military force in the town. It was known that, in addition to the Egyptian 4th Brigade led by Colonel Saad ed-Din Mutawally of the 3rd Division based in El-Arish, reinforcements had been despatched from west of the Canal and, despite constant Israeli air attacks on the advancing column, the 1st Motorized Division had reached the town. Another reason for Dayan’s delay was the necessity to concentrate, reorganize and deploy the Brigade, which had scattered along the Rafah-El-Arish road. No doubt, the knowledge that an Israeli armoured brigade was hovering on the outskirts of the town had its own psychological effect on any Egyptian defenders therein. At noon on 1 November, in fact, orders had been received by the Egyptian garrison
Moshe Dayan, Diary of the Sinai Campaign, 1966.
In the Sinai to withdraw to the western bank of the Suez Canal, following the first Anglo-French air attacks on bases and airfields in Egypt.
Dayan describes in his Diary* the gruesome scene in the military hospital in El-Arish, with the bodies of soldiers who had been abandoned in the midst of operations and treatment littering the building. Sporadic sniping continued and, as Dayan was standing at the open window of a building looking out on to the street, an Egyptian soldier fired a burst from his machine-gun, killing Dayan’s signalman who was at his side.
Thus, on the morning of 2 November, when the 27th Armoured Brigade entered El-Arish and continued westward, the only factors to hamper its progress were the hulks and wreckage of armour and lorries destroyed by the heavy air bombardment of the previous days. By that evening, a task force had completed its advance 100 miles westward, reaching Romani and halting just ten miles east of the Suez Canal. En route, the task force had collected valuable war booty left new and intact by the retreating Egyptian forces — 385 vehicles, including 40 Soviet-built T-34 tanks and 60 armoured cars. Direct contact was now established with the 7th Armoured Brigade on the central axis, and with 202 Parachute Brigade, which had advanced through the Mitla Pass to the banks of the Gulf of Suez. With the backbone of the Egyptian military forces in the Sinai broken, Dayan could now give the order setting into motion the final stages of the campaign — to clean up the 25-mile-long, 6-mile-wide Gaza Strip, and to free the Straits of Tiran — all this against the background of mounting political pressure directed from the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
World History
