Battle for Jerusalem (1967)

Background

From 1949 to 1967 Jerusalem was a divided city: East Jerusalem, with the Old City, was under Jordanian administration, and Israelis had no access to the Western Wall. In May 1967 Egypt moved troops into Sinai and signed a defence pact with Jordan, and on 5 June Israel struck the Egyptian air force. Jordanian artillery then opened fire on Israeli Jerusalem, and Israel turned its attention east, where an Israeli garrison of 122 men on Mount Scopus was a particular worry.

On the morning of 5 June Defence Minister Dayan redeployed the 55th Paratroop Brigade under Mordechai Gur to Jerusalem from Southern Command. The Jordanian side was under pressure from Egypt, which broadcast claims of victories and, on the morning of 6 June, ordered Jordan to withdraw its forces across the river. King Hussein had committed his army to the war, and Jordanian forces were concentrated in the West Bank, where the Jerusalem sector formed the southern grouping from Ramallah through Jerusalem to Hebron.

The city was thus both a military objective and a political one. Israeli commanders feared that a UN cease-fire might freeze the lines with the Old City still in Arab hands, which in the account of one popular history (Morashá) was Menachem Begin's warning to Dayan before dawn on 6 June.

The armies

The Israeli units were an improvised mix. Brigadier-General Uzi Narkiss's Central Command had the Jerusalem Brigade, mostly reservists, many in their thirties and forties; the 55th Paratroop Brigade of Colonel Mordechai Gur, itself reserve troops and brought up from the south; and the Harel Brigade, a mechanised formation under Colonel Uri Ben-Ari. The order was not to use armour or artillery in the Old City, which made the last stage a task for infantry.

The Jordanians were the Arab Legion, described by Morashá as the best in the Arab world and trained by the British. Brigadier Ata Ali commanded in Jerusalem. The 27th Infantry Brigade, called the Imam Ali Brigade, held the city, with the 40th and 60th Armoured Brigades elsewhere in the West Bank. A Patton-equipped brigade stood near Jericho. The Jordanians held trenches and bunkers behind the line: at Ammunition Hill the garrison was a reinforced company of about 150 men, more than Israeli intelligence, which expected a single platoon, had allowed for. Israeli aircraft had already destroyed the Jordanian Air Force on 5 June, so the Jordanians fought without air cover.

The battle

5 June: shelling and Government House. The Jordanians began firing on Jerusalem between about 08:30 and 10:00, depending on the source, and by 11:15 howitzers were firing a barrage of 6,000 shells on Israeli Jerusalem, killing 20 civilians and wounding over 1,000. Israeli aircraft destroyed all 21 Jordanian Hawker Hunters that day, and the Jordanian 40th Brigade lost dozens of tanks to air attack. Jordanian troops took Government House, the former UN headquarters dominating the Bethlehem road, in the early afternoon. Reserve Battalion 161 under Asher Dreizin, with two infantry companies and eight tanks, counterattacked; several tanks broke down and two of the three that attacked were knocked out. All but ten of Dreizin's men became casualties. CDB90's JERUSALEM engagement starts at 16:00.

Night of 5–6 June: Ammunition Hill and the Red Line. Gur's paratroopers attacked across the armistice line in three sectors: Ammunition Hill, Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi Joz, and the American Colony and Rockefeller Museum area. At Ammunition Hill fighting began about 02:30 at the police academy and the hill. It was a trench-by-trench fight and ended about 06:30; Israel lost 36 killed (the Jewish Virtual Library says 21) and the Jordanians 71 (JVL says 70). On 6 June the Harel Brigade fought at Tel al-Ful, Shu'fat and French Hill, north of the city, against up to 30 Jordanian tanks, half of which were lost.

6 June: encirclement. By the morning Mount Scopus was in Israeli hands and, in Morashá's phrase, three of the four access routes into the city were held. Latrun, Nevei Shmuel and Beit Iksa fell, completing the encirclement. The Jordanian command was in disarray: an Egyptian order at 10:00 to withdraw across the Jordan was resisted by Hussein and then countermanded. Meanwhile paratroopers and the Jerusalem Brigade took the neighbourhoods around the Old City.

7 June: the Old City. Along the Nablus Road (Wikipedia gives no date) the paratroopers lost about 30 men, half of the force involved, against Jordanians who lost 45 dead and 142 wounded. On Dayan's order (Times of Israel; Morashá has Rabin ordering the breach the afternoon before) the paratroopers entered the Old City through the Lions' Gate on the morning of 7 June, and at 10:21 Gur reported that the Temple Mount was in Israeli hands; CDB90's engagement ends at 10:15. The flag was raised facing the Western Wall, Rabbi Goren led prayers and Dayan, Rabin and Eshkol visited. A second Jordanian withdrawal from the West Bank was complete by the night of 7 June.

Aftermath

Israel held all of Jerusalem and the Old City and had access to the Western Wall for the first time in nineteen years. The West Bank fell in the same days: Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jericho were taken, and Nablus surrendered on 7 June. Jordan lost, by Wikipedia's infobox, about 700 killed, 6,000 wounded or missing and 550 captured in the campaign, and Israel 288 killed and 2,400 wounded; the same article's text gives 550 Israeli dead with a citation-needed tag, so the figures are uncertain.

The consequences were large and are still argued over. The occupation of the West Bank shaped the politics of the region for decades, and Wikipedia's article on the war estimates that between 280,000 and 325,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from the occupied territories. In Israel the capture of the Old City and the Western Wall is remembered as the emotional high point of the war, and Ammunition Hill is a museum and memorial. The 182 soldiers commemorated there for the battle of Jerusalem, and Morashá's note of heavy losses among commanders, are reminders of what two days cost.

Historians still ask how much of the Old City decision was military necessity and how much political opportunity: Morashá's account has the timing driven by fears of a UN cease-fire. The Jordanian side is less well covered in the sources read here.

Wargaming it

Jerusalem is a game of three scales. For the night of 5–6 June, Ammunition Hill is a platoon-per-stand tactical scenario with trench lines and bunkers on a table of about 1.2 by 1.2 metres at 1:72 or 1:100; it is famous for the garrison being larger than expected. For the whole battle, a company-per-counter map of the city, with the paratroop, Jerusalem and Harel Brigades each making a separate effort, shows how the Old City was isolated before it was entered.

The key timing is political. The Israeli player must take the city before a cease-fire (give the Jordanian player a hidden turn on which the UN stops the war), and the rule that armour and artillery may not be used against the Old City turns the last assault into an infantry problem. The Jordanian player has the defenders' usual asset, prepared positions, and one dilemma: whether to hold, withdraw to the Jordan, or counterattack with the armour from Jericho, given the contradictory orders from Egypt and Hussein on 6 June.

The what-ifs are easily set: a Jordanian garrison reinforced by the Patton brigade from Jericho; the Egyptian withdrawal order being obeyed; Government House held by the Israelis. CDB90's 27,682 against 13,600 gives the Israelis a two-to-one edge that probably overstates what was committed in the city itself.

Maps and pictures