(A) In his column "From
My Archival Memory," Arye Dissenchik, editor of Ma'ariv, wrote on June 3 1976:
After the large-scale operation carried out in November [sic. December] 1955, in which more than 50 Syrians soldiers and officers we
killed, rumors were spreading that PM and Defense Minister Ben-Gurion was
unhappy with the operation's dimensions and was surprised at the large number
of Syrian casualties. I met with Dayan the day after the operation and asked
him: "What is the reason of Ben-Gurion's anger?"
"I have not heard any rumors," he said.
"Had it been better if there were many casualties on the Israeli side and
only a few on the Syrians'?"
I asked him: "Was the operation carried out as
planned?"
"In accordance with what had been planned
beforehand," Dayan said, "the forces were brought to their planned [attack] positions. And as was agreed upon. I was to receive a final green
light from BG on 03:00 in the morning - or a red one in case of a cancellation.
Close to 00:30 I phoned BG's adjutant and military secretary, Colonel Nehemiah
Argov, and told him: "Everything is ready as agreed upon. Please wake up
BG and ask him for his final order. Within 10 minutes Nehemiah Argov phoned me
back and said abruptly: 'Green light. This is it.' I'm not sure whether he
talked with BG. It may be that he did not want to wake him up, and said what he
said on his own, relying on the deliberations and decisions which took place in
daytime, to which he was privy. He was a true messenger of BG, and maybe he did
wake up BG and the green light was [actually] given by him."
(B) Moshe Dayan's autobiography is
strangely silent about the planning of Operation Kinneret, apart from a single
disingenuous sentence - "Nehemiah [Argov] informed me that BG had approved
an operation against the Syrian emplacements on the eastern shore of the
Kinneret." (December 11, 1955). Avnei
Derekh, 170.
(C) General Uzi Narkiss
served at this time as head of the Operations Branch of GHQ. In his autobiography he writes:
"Operation 'Olive Leaves' did not bring
peace to the region. On the contrary, it was an additional push toward the
one-way road which would lead to the Sinai Operation. On the internal political
level it was a clear sign of the final abandonment of the defense policy
followed by Moshe Sharett upon becoming Prime Minister in December 1953. His
line, based on restraint, forbearance and on looking to the Western powers and
the UN for mediation, had been progressively gnawed at since Ben-Gurion returned to the
Defense Ministry in February 1955, and even more so after Ben-Gurion also became PM [in
November], becoming at this point completely devastated. Looking back in
retrospect, it becomes clear that Ben-Gurion had enlarged the operation intentionally
in order to put Sharett up against an established fact of the dominance of his
activist policy. [- - -] We, in the high command, opted from the beginning for
the activist line and interpreted the operation as a successful one even though
the number of our casualties seemed higher than the inevitable minimum."
Elsewhere Narkiss describes CoS Dayan's
disappointment at the lack of an Egyptian counter-attack following the IDF
assault on their positions at Nitzana (November 2), which killed some 70
Egyptians. Dayan reportedly gazed into the distance and listened attentively,
hoping to hear the noise of approaching Egyptian tanks, but nothing happened.
"Moshe, what exactly are you driving at," I
asked him.
"That Nasser would mount a counter attack so that
then we would rout him for good," he answered.
Uzi Narkiss, Soldier of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1991) 116, 163-64 [in Hebrew].
Uzi Narkiss, Soldier of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1991) 116, 163-64 [in Hebrew].
