Word: golan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sands of the Sinai Peninsula and the craggy hills of the Golan Heights, the smoldering carcasses of planes and tanks mingled with the rusting wreckage left over from the Six-Day War of 1967. Blackened bodies of slain troops littered the terrain. From Damascus to Cairo and over the neighboring countries of Lebanon and Jordan, dogfights swirled high in the sky, antiaircraft shells and missiles exploded and wreck age fell. On the ground, armies of Arabs and Israelis last week maneuvered and fought each other with an intensity never before witnessed in the seemingly endless conflict in the Middle East...
...attack on Sinai and the Golan Heights was carried out with a finesse and synchronization that not even most Arabs suspected that the Arabs possessed. For one thing, details of the invasion were the best-kept Arab military secret in 25 years; combat commanders were not informed of the upcoming attack until they had need to know. Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence picked up signs of gathering forces, but could not bring themselves to believe that the Arabs were actually going to attack. It was only ten hours before the assault began that Israel finally concluded that the Arabs meant...
...Israelis were content to let the Egyptians sit there while they concentrated their effort more than 300 miles away at the far end of Israel on the rolling Golan plain above the Sea of Galilee. Here, along a 60-mile front, the Syrians had massed nearly 1,000 tanks. And here the Israelis, forced to fight a simultaneous two-front war, decided to make their first major counterattack...
...Israeli breakthrough on the Golan forced battlefield decisions on both sides. For the Syrians, the choice was between falling back to defend Damascus or standing fast on the El Quneitra-Damascus road in an effort to halt the Israelis. For the Israelis, the decision was how far they should try to move along the road to Damascus. By week's end at least one Israeli force had penetrated more than ten miles beyond the cease-fire line set in 1967; but other Israeli troops were still meeting stiff resistance at the cease-fire lines. The Syrians were standing...
Bloom agrees fervently with all of Israel's military goals. He says Israel should occupy and establish civilian settlements in the Sinai peninsula; that it should hold the Golan Heights for its strategic value; and that the United States should heavily arm Israel...