Moshe
Dayan was born in Degania in 1915. He studied science at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. Dayan helped form the Haganah underground
militia and on the outbreak of the Second World
War was imprisoned by the British authorities in Palestine.
Dayan
was released in 1941 and was recruited into the auxiliary force supporting
the British Army in Syria. During the fighting
Dayan was badly wounded and this resulted in him losing his left eye.
The
Jewish state of Israel was established
on 14th May 1948 when the British mandate over Palestine came
to an end. The neighbouring Arab states refused to recognize Israel
and invaded the country on the 15th May. The war came to an end in
March 1949. By the time the cease-fire took place Israel had increased
the control of its land by a quarter. A close associate of David
Ben-Gurion, Dayan was chief operations officer during the war.
Dayan
became Chief of Staff in 1953 and led the army during the Suez
Crisis in 1956. On
29th October 1956, the Israeli Army invaded Egypt.
Two days later British and French bombed Egyptian airfields. British
and French troops landed at Port Said at the northern end of the Suez
Canal on 5th November. By this time the Israelis had captured
the Sinai peninsula.
President
Dwight
Eisenhower and
his secretary of state, John
Foster Dulles,
grew increasingly concerned about these developments and at the United
Nations the representatives from the United
States and the Soviet Union demanded
a cease-fire. When it was clear the rest of the world were opposed
to the attack on Egypt, and on the 7th November the governments of
Britain,
France and Israel
agreed to
withdraw. They were then replaced by UN troops who policed the Egyptian
frontier.
In 1959
Dayan, a member of the Labour Party, was elected to the Knesset and
soon afterwards David
Ben-Gurion made
him Minister of Agriculture. In 1966 Dayan left the Labour Party to
set up the Rafi Party. The following year he was appointed Minister
of Defence.
In May
1967 Arab armies began assembling long the frontiers with Israel.
At the same time General Gamal
Abdel Nasser ordered
a blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba. General Dayan decided on a pre-emptive
strike. On 5th June, 1967, the Israeli airforce bombed the airfields
in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Egyptian tanks were also destroyed
in Sinai and the Israeli army reached the Suez
Canal and the west bank of the Jordan river on 7th June. Over
the next three days the Israelis captured the Golan Heights and territory
in Syria. The Six-Day War reopened the
Gulf of Aqaba. It also gave Israel control over the West Bank of Jordan
and the 600,000 Arabs living in that area.
Golda
Meir became prime minister in 1969. In this post she clashed with
Dayan who wanted to colonize the Arab territories occupied during
the Six-Day
War. For a while Meir wanted to
negotiate a peace settlement that would allow the return of Sinai
to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria.
However, she eventually sided with Dayan.
On 6th
October 1973, Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a surprise attack
on Israel. Two days later the Egyptian Army crossed the Suez
Canal while Syrian troops entered the Golan Heights. Israeli troops
counter-attacked on 8th October. They crossed the Suez Canal near
Ismailia and advanced towards Cairo. The Israelis also recaptured
the Golan Heights and moved towards the Syrian capital. The October
War came to an end when the United Nations
arranged a cease-fire on 24th October.
Dayan
was blamed for Israel's poor start to the war and was forced to resign.
However, in 1977 Menachem
Begin appointed him as Foreign
Minister and in
September 1978 arranged for Begin and Anwar
Sadat of Egypt to signed a peace treaty between the two countries.
Dayan
published
Diary of the Sinai Campaign (1966),
Story of My Life (1978) and Living
With the Bible (1978). Moshe Dayan
died in 1981.
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