Battles of Mount Hermon (1973)

Background

Israel took the southern shoulder of Mount Hermon in June 1967. At about 2,000 m it looks down on the Golan, the Galilee and the Damascus plain, and Israel built an outpost there that housed some of its most sensitive radar, signals-intelligence and electronic-warfare equipment, with an approach road and a ski lift below it. In Israel it was known as 'the eyes of the State'. Syria kept its own positions higher up the ridge.

In October 1973 the outpost was still unfinished: the bunkers and tunnels were built, but the trenches, fighting positions and command post were not. Northern Command did not see the Hermon as a main axis of advance and expected raids at most. On Yom Kippur, 6 October, it held about 55 men, mostly technicians, intelligence and air force personnel, with a section of 13–14 Golani infantry. The fourteen-man reinforcement ordered on the alert never arrived.

Syria put the Hermon at the top of its target list. Its plan for the opening afternoon of the war, the same afternoon its divisions attacked the Purple Line below, gave the post to the 82nd Paratroop Battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Rifai al-Joju, its best unit, using details of the position gathered through a Druze agent in 1970–71.

This page takes the three fights for the mountain together: the Syrian capture on 6–7 October, the Golani counter-attack of 8 October, and Operation Kinuah ('Dessert') on 21–22 October, launched as a ceasefire was being negotiated so that Israel would hold the mountain when the shooting stopped.

The armies

Israel. The Golani Brigade, Israel's regular northern infantry brigade under Colonel Amir Drori, owned the sector, but on 6–7 October its battalions were scattered across the northern Golan fighting the main Syrian offensive. On 8 October Drori attacked with what he could gather: a reduced 51st Battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Yehuda Peled, two companies of the 17th Battalion's squad commanders' course under Lieutenant-Colonel Dov Dror, half the reconnaissance company and two tanks. The half-tracks were taken from emergency stores without machine-gun mounts, and the whole 17th Battalion shared one radio net. For Kinuah, under Brigadier-General Yekutiel Adam, Golani attacked with the 51st and 17th Battalions, the reconnaissance company and a motorised force with tanks and a bulldozer, while Colonel Haim Nadel's 317th Reserve Paratroop Brigade flew two battalions onto the upper ridge in CH-53 helicopters of 118 Squadron. A Sayeret Matkal team under Yoni Netanyahu watched the post beforehand.

Syria. The 82nd Battalion, part of the commando forces, was the elite of the Syrian army. It fought light: AK-47s, RPD machine guns, RPG-7s, B-10 recoilless rifles and Strela shoulder-fired missiles, plus Israeli machine guns taken in the outpost. The 183rd Commando Battalion came across the slopes on foot on the night of 6–7 October. The Syrians had altitude, stone sangars among the rocks and Syrian artillery on call from below.

The battle

6–7 October: the Syrian coup de main. This fight is not in CDB90. At about 14:00 Syrian guns opened on the outpost and MiG-17s attacked it. Four Mi-8 helicopters that had waited over Lebanon came in to land blocking parties on the access road; one crashed, killing most of the 16 men aboard. At about 14:45 some 200 men of the 82nd Battalion came down on foot from the Syrian Hermon. A handful of Golani infantry held the gate with rifles and one working machine gun, and the outpost commander called Israeli artillery onto his own position, but the Syrians broke into the upper storey and cleared the central hall with grenades and smoke. Contact was lost at about 16:00 and the post was in Syrian hands by about 17:00. Around 21:00 the commander and 16 others broke out; the Syrian blocking force caught them below the upper ski lift and only about ten got back. Golani tried a night relief, but Northern Command recalled it to block the Masada road. The rest surrendered or were found in the tunnels by 12 October; 31 men went into captivity, and Soviet advisers later removed the equipment. Rabinovich called it 'the single most humiliating episode' of the war for Israel.

8 October: the Golani counter-attack. This is CDB90's Mount Hermon I (593), a clear Israeli defeat. Drori got Hofi's approval at 06:47 after two escapees said men were still alive inside. After a ten-minute briefing at the Wadi Sa'ar bridge the force moved off at 08:00 through Majdal Shams in cloud and wind. The 51st Battalion climbed the ridge on foot and at about 09:45 ran into the 183rd Commando Battalion on Hill 1614; with a single 155 mm gun in support it took the hill at about 14:30. On the road the two tanks and the 17th Battalion's half-tracks passed the 'tank curve' and were stopped by mines and a Syrian counter-attack party of about 20 men in the rocks 500 m beyond. Dror was killed clearing the mines, eight of his Company B died near the upper ski lift, and the company climbing towards Hill 2072 was pinned in crossfire. Drori ordered a withdrawal under fog from about 11:30, and the fighting ended around 16:00.

21 October: the heliborne landing. CDB90's Mount Hermon II (600) covers 14:00–16:00 on 21 October, which matches the paratroop lift rather than any Golani action. The first helicopters took off at 14:00; by about 17:30 two battalions of the 317th were on the upper ridge. Seven MiGs and two Syrian helicopters bringing reinforcements were shot down. That night the paratroopers took the Twists position, blocked the road from Arneh and ambushed the trucks coming up it at about 01:30, then took the Cliff position. Shortly after 03:00 they found the main Syrian post abandoned.

21–22 October: the Golani assault. CDB90's Mount Hermon III (601), an Israeli success. About 400 Golani troops climbed from Majdal Shams in three groups: the 51st Battalion, the reconnaissance company on the left, and tanks and a bulldozer on the road. At about 02:00, two-thirds of the way up, Syrian commandos lying beside the road hit five of the six tank commanders, and the reconnaissance commander was killed at close range. Drori was wounded at about 05:00 and Peled minutes later. After dawn the artillery came in; at 08:00 the 17th and 51st Battalions stormed Hills 16 and 17, and between 10:00 and 11:00 Golani reported the outpost taken. A paratroop battalion moving down caught retreating Syrians and took 17 prisoners.

CDB90 also tags Nafekh (589, 7 October) as First Mount Hermon. That was the fight for the Israeli headquarters on the plateau, not on the mountain, and this page leaves it out.

Aftermath

The three fights cost Israel roughly 95 killed and 150 wounded, with 31 taken prisoner; Syrian losses were roughly 165 killed and 115 wounded, most of them in the last battle. Resolution 338 of 22 October called for a ceasefire, which took hold on the Syrian front two days after Golani retook the post. The paratroopers held the Syrian summit through the War of Attrition that followed in the Bashan salient. Under the 1974 disengagement the Syrian Hermon went back to Syria and Israel kept the outpost.

The loss on 6 October had lasting costs. Syrian interrogators and Soviet technicians got equipment, documents and codes, and Israel lost its best view over the Damascus plain for the rest of the war. Some prisoners were killed in Syrian hands. After the recapture a Golani private told Israeli television that the Hermon was 'the eyes of the country', and the phrase became an Israeli idiom for the mountain.

The Israeli conduct of the battles is argued over. The 8 October attack went in after a ten-minute briefing, without fire support or a picture of the Syrian positions. Kinuah has been criticised too: historian Uri Milstein called its planning and execution flawed, and paratroop officers had offered to clear the post from above. Drori later rejected the charge that Golani refused help out of pride. In Syria the capture is remembered as a high point of the October War; a Syrian general who climbed with the assault force recalled raising the flag there.

Wargaming it

The Hermon is a rare thing in modern war: three self-contained infantry battles on one mountain, all small enough to game at 1:1 or with a model per fire team, on a single table a few kilometres across.

The first fight is a raid scenario. The Syrian player has a fixed plan, helicopters that may crash on landing, and a few hours of daylight; the Israeli player has a half-built bunker full of technicians, one working machine gun and the option of bringing his own artillery down on himself. Victory might rest on whether the garrison holds out until dark.

The second is an ambush on a mountain road: an Israeli column committed on a ten-minute briefing, tanks that cannot leave the road, mines at the 'tank curve', and Syrian commandos dug into rocks above it. Fog and low cloud, which cut visibility to a few dozen metres, should be a random event that can save either side.

The third is the big set piece: a night climb against a defended crest, with a paratroop landing above it that can be dropped in or held back. The open questions make good variants. What if Drori had been allowed to attack on the night of 6–7 October, before the Syrians dug in? What if Golani had climbed from the east, as Peled proposed, or the paratroopers had come down on the outpost from above? Altitude, thin air and casualty evacuation down steep slopes deserve rules of their own.

Maps and pictures