Battle of Karameh

Background

After the Six-Day War of June 1967 Israel held the West Bank, and Fatah and the other Palestinian guerrilla groups moved their bases to the Jordanian side of the river. The flat, irrigated east bank of the Jordan Valley suited them: refugee camps behind, a long border in front, and the river and its ditches as an obstacle to Israeli armour. Raids across the river multiplied, with 42 attacks in January and February 1968 and 36 more in March, and Jordanian infantry and artillery at times gave them covering fire.

Jordan's position was uneasy. After heavy clashes on 15 February, in which Israeli tanks, artillery and aircraft hit the town and camp of Karameh, the Jordanian army surrounded the town and demanded that the guerrillas surrender their weapons; it lifted the siege a day later. King Hussein warned that any action must come through the state, but could not enforce it. By March Karameh, about 4 km east of the river and 22 km from Amman, held Fatah's headquarters and Arafat himself.

The Israeli army had drawn up plans for raids on Karameh and on Safi, south of the Dead Sea, in October 1967 and twice scheduled and cancelled the Karameh operation. On 18 March 1968 a bus carrying schoolchildren hit a mine near Be'er Ora in the Arava, killing two adults and wounding between ten and 28 children by different accounts. The cabinet approved the raids that night. On 20 March the guerrilla leaders met at Karameh. The PFLP chose to withdraw into the hills; Fatah decided to stand and fight, to dispel what it called the myth of Israeli invincibility. The Jordanian command, fearing an attempt to seize a bridgehead on the East Bank, had advised Arafat against a fight, but prepared to meet the attack itself.

The armies

Israel. The operation, called Tofet ('Inferno') by the Israeli army, belonged to Major-General Uzi Narkiss's Central Command. Shmuel Gonen's 7th Armoured Brigade, with two under-strength tank battalions and about 40 tanks east of the river, was to cross the Allenby Bridge and block the south and the Salt road. Danny Matt's 35th Paratroop Brigade, three battalions on half-tracks with a few Centurions, was to take Karameh itself, while its reconnaissance unit was flown by helicopter to the ridges east of the town to catch fleeing guerrillas. Colonel Rafael Eitan's Jordan Valley Brigade, reinforced by a Sherman battalion, AML-90 armoured cars and a paratroop battalion, was to cross at the Damiya Bridge and block the north. Engineers were to bridge the river at Damiya and the King Abdullah Bridge. The air force was to drop leaflets and lift the blocking force. The plan assumed the Jordanian army would stay largely out of the fight.

Jordan. Major-General Mashhur Haditha al-Jazi's 1st Infantry Division, reinforced with the 60th Armoured Brigade, held the three roads up from the valley, with light covering forces forward and its main positions dug into the foothills. Artillery, including 155 mm Long Toms, was sited on the ridges overlooking Karameh, every junction pre-registered. Haditha had rebuilt his units' confidence after 1967 and ordered his main positions held at all costs.

The guerrillas. Fatah had perhaps 220–250 men at Karameh and the PLF/PLA about 80, lightly armed; other accounts give up to 900.

The battle

Night to 05:30: the crossings. The paratroop brigade set out from Nabi Musa in the Judean Desert at about 01:00. At 05:30 Israeli forces crossed at three points, and the 7th Brigade's leading tanks were over the Allenby Bridge at 05:35, overrunning the Jordanian bridge posts before the bridge could be blown. Haditha says he was told at 05:00 that the first tank was crossing, and ordered his guns to open fire at once.

06:00–11:00: Karameh. The heliborne blocking force left late, delayed by cloud and poor co-ordination, but the leaflets telling Karameh to surrender were dropped on time. Matt later said the defenders had 23 minutes' warning; Bar-Lev said that anyone with a vehicle, Arafat included, simply drove off. The reconnaissance teams landed among guerrillas who had already pulled back to prepared positions in the hills and were fighting from the moment they touched down. At about 06:56 two paratroop battalions broke into the town from the east and west, behind five Centurions that drove straight through and blocked the road north. House-to-house fighting against guerrillas with automatic weapons, anti-tank weapons and mortars, and against Jordanian troops, lasted until about 11:00. Matt later said that some fought to the end, throwing grenades into the half-tracks. At 11:00 the paratroopers were ordered to stop, demolish the buildings they held and withdraw; the heliborne force was lifted out at the same hour without taking all its objectives.

07:00–16:00: the southern block and the Salt road. One of Gonen's battalions pushed south to the al-Mazar junction to block the roads to Na'ur and the Abdullah Bridge, and sat there all day in a Jordanian killing zone under tank, recoilless-rifle and artillery fire; at 13:00 a tank battalion of the 60th Armoured Brigade counter-attacked it and lost seven or eight tanks. Eight of the eleven Israeli tanks there were hit. The second battalion, heading east on the Shunat Nimrin–Salt road, ran into Jordanian Pattons; its lead tanks were knocked out, and the rest spent the day on a low tell recovering them under accurate fire. At the Abdullah Bridge Jordanian shelling hit the bridging column, destroying cranes and trucks, and the crossing was abandoned. Israeli air strikes, some 360 sorties during the day, did not silence the Jordanian guns.

08:00 onwards: the north. Paratroopers took the Damiya Bridge intact, but Eitan's blocking force bogged down in a wadi, took the Jordanian post at Damiya and was then stopped by heavy fire at the al-Musri junction at about 08:00. The rest of its day was spent recovering stuck and burning vehicles.

11:00–evening: the withdrawal. Bar-Lev and Major-General Israel Tal flew to Narkiss's command post at 11:00; Tal recommended breaking contact before dark and in effect took over the operation. Haditha says that at 11:00 the king told him the Israelis were asking, through the Americans, for a ceasefire, and that he answered by intensifying his fire; no Israeli source consulted mentions such a request. The withdrawal, slowed by orders to recover every vehicle possible, went on under fire into the evening; Gonen judged that recovering two stranded tanks would need another battalion, and they were left. Sayigh dates the end of the withdrawal to 17:30, Carta's atlas (via Wikipedia) to 20:40, and the northern sector's last recovery work ran to 22:00. CDB90's single engagement, Kerama (568), runs from 05:30 to 21:00.

Aftermath

Israeli losses were given as 28–33 killed and 69–161 wounded, with 27 tanks hit and four left behind; the IDF's journal Ma'arachot gives 33 and 161. Jordanian losses were 40–84 killed and 108–250 wounded; guerrilla dead are put at 100–200, with 40–150 prisoners. Some 175 buildings in Karameh were blown up.

Israeli commanders said the raid had achieved its aim of destroying the base. Sayigh agrees that Israel achieved its tactical objectives, but the abandoned tanks were paraded through Salt and Amman, and Karameh, Arabic for 'dignity', became a symbol across the Arab world. Sayigh and Lawrence Tal both credit the Jordanian army with most of the fighting, yet the guerrillas reaped the reward: Fatah said 5,000 volunteers applied to join within 48 hours, Arafat was named its spokesman on 14 April, and King Hussein declared that 'we are all fedayeen'. Jordanian officers came to feel their victory had been taken from them, a resentment that fed the road to Black September in 1970. The UN Security Council condemned the raid in Resolution 248.

In Israel the losses shocked the public. There was no commission of inquiry; Narkiss left Central Command soon afterwards. Haaretz in 2011 called it one of the darkest chapters in Israel's military history, and Israeli participants have written that the army underestimated the Jordanians.

Wargaming it

Karameh is a one-day raid with a clock, and suits company-as-unit or platoon-level play on a map running from the Jordan River to the foothills, about 15 km by 25 km.

The Israeli player has air supremacy, better-trained crews and the initiative, but scattered task forces: two armoured blocks, a heliborne cordon, a brigade clearing a town, and engineers trying to bridge a river under observed fire. The objectives are to kill or capture guerrillas and to get out again, ideally with every vehicle. Victory should be scored on guerrillas caught, Arafat above all, against Israeli losses and abandoned equipment, so that a stubborn rescue can cost the game.

The Jordanian player has a strong position on the ridges, pre-registered artillery and a tank reserve, but no air cover and orders that forbid giving ground. The guerrillas are few and fragile, but each turn they survive raises their political score.

Key terrain: the Allenby, Damiya and Abdullah bridges, Karameh, the al-Mazar and al-Musri junctions, the Shunat Nimrin–Salt road and the ridges above them. Ground soft from irrigation should slow armour off the roads. What if the leaflets had been held back until the cordon was in place? What if the air force had struck the Jordanian artillery at the outset? What if the Jordanians had stayed out, as Israel expected?

Maps and pictures