The Golan Heights constitute a plateau some 45 miles long from Mount Hermon in the north, which rises to a height of some 9,000 feet, to 600 feet above the Yarmuk valley in the south. To the east, the rough, boulder-strewn lava surface of the plateau rises gently towards the Damascus Plain. To the west, the escarpment — averaging 1,500-2,500 feet in height and dominating the Huleh valley, the Sea of Galilee and the entire northern ‘finger’ of Israel stretching up to the Lebanese border — drops suddenly down to the Jordan valley. The area is interspersed with volcanic hills called ‘tels’, the highest of them being Tel Abu Nida, which rises to a height of 3,600 feet above Kuneitra. Over a period of nineteen years the Syrians had converted the area of the Golan Heights into a deep defence zone, with bunkers and tank and gun emplacements sited along the heights overlooking the cease-fire line with Israel. These very formidable defences stretched back along the main axes leading to Damascus, and the Syrian Army manned the entire zone permanently. The fortifications in the rear were no less formidable than those in the front-line. Over the years, the front had erupted from time to time as the Syrians, taking advantage of their position on the Heights, would harass Israeli settlements below in the valley with tank and artillery fire.
With the outbreak of the Six Day War, the Syrians, who had in fact been the major element in causing the Egyptian mobilization and deployment in Sinai, behaved in a very controlled manner. They wanted to appear to be involved by issuing bombastic war communiques, but at the same time they did everything to avoid becoming too heavily involved. The Syrian Air Force attempted to bomb the Haifa oil refineries, whereupon the Israeli Air Force reacted and destroyed the bulk of Syria’s aircraft. During the period in which the Israeli forces were fighting in the Sinai and the West Bank, Syrian artillery kept up a heavy, constant bombardment of the Israeli forces in eastern Galilee. Artillery exchanges developed all along the front. On three different occasions, the Syrians mounted probing, company-size reconnaissances in force against two Israeli kibbutzim and were beaten back. Syrian artillery and armoured units engaged the Israeli villages in the valley below the Golan Heights as they had done over the years. But no major move of Syrian forces took place. King Hussein characterized in his memoirs the behaviour of the Syrians as downright treachery, describing how, despite his pleas for reinforcements and Syrian promises, not one Syrian brigade had been moved to Jordan by the end of the war. And, as the true picture of the Israeli successes against the Egyptians and the Jordanians emerged, the
Syrians restricted themselves to shelling Israeli units and villages along the border, and to a few ‘reconnaissances in strength’ in the area of Kibbutz Dan and the village of Sha’ar Yashuv.
The Syrian forces were organized in three divisional groups. Eight brigades were concentrated on the Golan Heights west of Kuneitra, with three infantry brigades forward and three infantry brigades behind them. In addition, the strike force of the Syrian Army, namely two armoured brigades and two mechanized brigades, were moved forward, part along the road between Kuneitra and the Bnot Ya’akov Bridge, and part in the area of Kuneitra itself. Each of the infantry brigades included an armoured battalion of tanks in addition to self-propelled assault guns. Facing this force was Major-General David Elazar’s Northern Command, consisting of three armoured brigades and five infantry brigades (including GHQ Reserve); in addition to the Syrian frontier, however, these troops guarded the northern border with Jordan and the Lebanese border.
The Israeli Minister of Defence, General Dayan, was hesitant about launching an attack against Syria, which might draw the Russians into armed conflict; but, as the war proceeded, pressure grew from the villages in northern Israel to reply in strength to the Syrian harassment and to occupy the Heights from which this was taking place. Only after the Egyptians had collapsed in the Sinai and the Jordanians had been ejected from the West Bank were orders given by General Dayan to General Elazar to attack. On Friday morning, 9 June, forces of the Israeli Northern Command attacked, the Israeli Air Force leading, while Syrian forward positions were reduced one after the other according to plan by open-sight tank fire. The Israeli main effort in the northern part of the sector was in the Tel Azaziat/Q’ala/Za’ura area, the aim being to open a road through Banias at the foot of Mount Hermon, which would in turn provide access to the Mas’ada-Kuneitra road from the north. This area was chosen because it was steep enough for the Syrians to have fortified it comparatively lightly against armour, and yet it was not steep enough to be impassable, as would be the case farther south: the Syrians in their deployment had obviously relied on the difficulties of the terrain in their defensive calculations. At the same time, secondary attacks were mounted by reserve infantry units against the Dardara/Tel Hillal/Darbashiya complex immediately north of the Bnot Ya’akov Bridge.
The northern sector of the Golan Heights front was entrusted by General Elazar to a divisional task force commanded by Brigadier-General Dan Laner, who was his Chief of Staff in Northern Command. Laner had been an outstanding officer in the Palmach, and a comrade in arms with Elazar in many of the fierce battles fought in the War of Independence. (A tall, attractive officer with a commanding appearance, a member of a kibbutz, he had taken short spells in the regular army but was not a regular army officer. He was to prove his ability as a divisional commander in the battles fought in the Golan Heights in 1973, leading one of the major prongs that counterattacked and advanced towards Damascus.) His for9e consisted of an armoured brigade commanded by Colonel Albert Mandler and the ‘Golani’ Infantry Brigade commanded by Colonel Yona Efrat.
(Colonel Mandler was to die in the 1973 War leading the division that held the line of the Suez Canal.)
Mandler’s brigade moved to the attack from the area of Kfar Szold along a single axis leading towards Q’ala-Za’ura, under concentrated Syrian fire. Parallel to Mandler’s advance, the infantry units of the ‘Golani’ Brigade were entrusted with the task of clearing all Syrian positions in the Kfar Szold/Za’ura/Banias triangle. The approaches to the Syrian lines were completely dominated by formidable concrete emplacements and positions at Tel Azaziat, which covered by fire the entire north-eastern area of the Huleh valley. The only way to overcome this position'was to outflank it, to capture the Syrian positions behind it and then advance on it from the rear. To do this it was essential to overcome another formidable position in the rear, Tel Fakher. As the infantry force worked its way round the foothills of the Hermon, a series of desperate battles — in which men of ‘Golani’ Brigade revealed extraordinary bravery — were waged over the various fortifications constituting the Tel Fakher position. Surrounded by three double-apron, barbed-wire fences and several minefields, it was criss-crossed with trenches, machine-gun and anti-tank positions and dug-outs. It was cleared only after fierce hand-to-hand fighting. In the first attack on a fortification, the position was taken, but only three men out of the attacking forces survived unhurt; in the attack on a second position, the commander of the assault and most of his officers and NCOs were put out of action. Under withering fire, some of the Israeli troops, many of whom died in the process, threw themselves on the coils of concertina wire, creating a human bridge over which their comrades could cross and attack. As the battle waged to and fro, the brigade reconnaissance unit was thrown into action and, by 18.00 hours, Tel Fakher had been taken by units of the ‘Golani’ Brigade in one of the fiercest battles ever waged by this crack infantry force. Backed by a few tanks, an additional force of the ‘Golani’ Brigade continued the attack from the rear against Tel Azaziat and, as darkness fell, that key position was in the hands of the Israelis, who now proceeded to move towards Banias.
Meanwhile, led by bulldozers and engineering units, Mandler’s brigade fought its way up the steep ascent under concentrated artillery fire. The entire column moved up along a single axis, led by an engineer detachment with a company of bulldozers. All the bulldozers were hit in the action, and each one of them lost several crews during what proved to be a most costly advance: despite this, somehow or other the advance continued. The Israeli losses were heavy, and the leading armoured battalion suffered considerable losses. Nevertheless, Mandler’s units pressed forward, taking Na’mush and over-running the Syrians in their positions. The unit then moved south-east towards Q’ala. A young lieutenant, bleeding from his wounds, commanded the last two tanks in the battalion still operational in the final assault. The Syrians held on desperately. The Israeli survivors of knocked-out tanks in the leading battalion followed the remaining tanks fighting as infantry. The remainder of Mandler’s brigade bypassed the attack of the lead battalion on Q’ala and advanced on Za’ura. As this force
Moved from Za’ura on Q’ala, the Syrians withdrew rapidly. Thus, by the end of the first day of fighting, the ‘Golani’ Brigade and Mandler’s brigade were holding a line along the first crest of the northern Golan Heights.
Farther south, two infantry brigades attacked across the Jordan at Mishmar Hayarden and took Darbashiya, Jalabina and Dardara. They captured the Upper Customs House, thus enabling units to open up the route for armoured forces. As soon as this was accomplished, units of Colonel Uri Ram’s armoured brigade, which had moved up from the fighting in the West Bank against the Jordanians, pushed up the hill, taking the village of Rawiya. At the same time, paratroop units captured the Syrian positions east of Darbashiya, enabling an additional armoured penetration that could now reach the main road between Kuneitra and the Bnot Ya’akov Bridge.
The next morning, on 10 June, Colonel Bar-Kochva’s armoured brigade, which too had arrived from the West Bank, joined the ‘Golani’ Brigade to attack Banias and move on Ein Fit and Mas’ada on the southern slopes of Mount Hermon. Parallel to this, Mandler’s brigade moved eastward from Q’ala towards Kuneitra, while Ram’s brigade, advancing to Kfar Nafekh, attacked also towards Kuneitra. Thus, the Israeli forces in the northern half of the Golan Heights were advancing in an arc towards Kuneitra: the ‘Golani’ Brigade and Bar-Kochva’s brigade through Mansoura; and Mandler’s brigade via the road junction at Wassett.
At mid-morning on 10 June, the Syrian forces broke and began to blow up their positions. Panic developed as the Israel Air Force intensified its attacks, and the Syrians began to flee. Many abandoned tanks were encountered by the Israelis as they advanced. Kuneitra was occupied by Mandler’s forces without any fight by 14.00 hours. Part of the ‘Golani’ force was meanwhile helicopter-lifted to the lower peak of Mount Hermon, some 7,000 feet high, and occupied that strategic position.
Parallel to these operations. General Elad Peled had launched his division — which now included Colonel Avnon’s infantry brigade and Colonel Gur’s paratroop brigade moved up from Jerusalem, in addition to some armoured units — on the morning of Saturday 10 June. The attack took place in the southern area of the Golan Heights in the area of Tawfik and the Yarmuk valley. Following heavy air bombardment, armoured and paratroop forces attacked and overcame Tawfik; then, leap-frogging by helicopter, paratroopers took Fiq and El A1 and moved eastwards towards Butmiyeh and Rafid junction. Infantry and paratroop units mopped-up after them and also in the area along the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Gradually, the line was stabilized and a perimeter acceptable to the Israeli General Staff on the Golan Heights overlooking the Damascus Plain was achieved in time to accept the United Nations imposed ceasefire, which became effective at 18.30 hours. The perimeter now extended from the western peak of the Golan Heights along a line east of Mas’ada, Kuneitra and Rafid junction, turning westwards into the Yarmuk valley to the Jordan valley.
World History
