A picture taken on November 16, 2005 shows former Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon addressing a press conference in Jerusalem. PHOTO | AFP
Had Ariel Sharon never entered politics, he would still be known around the world as a military commander and tactician.
In
both roles, he was extraordinary, because his methods diverged from
normal military practices, even in the unconventional Israeli army.
Consider
the Yom Kippur War. On October 16, 1973, ten days after Egypt’s army
surprised the Israelis by crossing the Suez Canal, Sharon turned defeat
into victory by leading his own troops across the canal through a narrow
gap in the Egyptian front.
The Israelis swiftly
spread out behind the Egyptians, overrunning anti-aircraft batteries and
blocking supply and reinforcement routes.
Within six
days, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had to plead for an immediate,
unconditional ceasefire: so many Egyptian units were cut off, wrecked by
air strikes, under attack, or fully encircled that no major forces were
left to stop the advancing Israelis – not even to guard the road to
Cairo.
The Egyptian high command was convinced that
Sharon’s crossing was only an overnight raid by light forces. Their
reasoning was sound: The Israelis did not control even their own side of
the canal, so they could not possibly reinforce the first wave of a few
hundred men with a handful of tanks.
Rather than
pulling their units back across the canal to chase the raiding Israelis,
the Egyptian commanders believed that their forces could capture all of
them by converging towards one another, thus closing the two-mile gap
that Sharon had exploited.
Sharon’s superiors agreed
with their Egyptian counterparts. They ordered Sharon to stop sending
forces across the canal. But Sharon did not obey, pleading
communications difficulties while sending as many of his forces as
possible across the canal. He calculated that attacking the Egyptians
from their own rear would induce organisational collapse.
That
is exactly what happened. But Sharon’s fellow generals were furious at
him. In 1953, at the age of 25 and already a wounded veteran of the
1947-49 War of Independence, Sharon was recalled to active duty to
establish Israel’s first commando unit.
Sharon was
given a free hand to raise and train his unit. Instead of insisting on
discipline, his men wore whatever they liked, never saluted anybody, and
never drilled. But they launched devastating night raids while
suffering few casualties, even when going up against Jordan’s Arab
Legion, by far the best Arab military force.
Sharon
sought natural fighters rather than dutiful soldiers, and he carefully
planned each raid, always sending some men well beyond the target of the
attack to ambush any reinforcements.
Within three
years, Sharon commanded an entire brigade in the 1956 Sinai campaign,
which he led in a swift advance across the desert to link up with
paratroopers who had been dropped deep into Egyptian territory at the
entrance to the strongly defended Mitla Pass.
There
Sharon was to stop but did not, instead fighting a bloody battle to
conquer the pass. His immediate superiors wanted him out, but the top
leadership instead promoted him to command a division.
But,
even for the unconventional Israeli army, Sharon was too
unconventional. When he was passed over for promotion to Army Chief of
Staff and retired from active duty, a wise Israeli general warned his
colleagues that he would return as Defence minister, and that if he lost
that office – as he did after the 1982 Lebanon War – he would return as
Prime Minister.
Only now has Sharon met an enemy he cannot outmanoeuvre.
Mr
Luttwak is a senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, Washington, D.C. (c):Project Syndicate, 2014.
www.project-syndicate.org
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