Operation Pleshet (Hebrew: מִבְצָע פְּלֶשֶׁת, Mivtza Pleshet) was an Israeli military action near the village of Isdud from May 29 to June 3, 1948 during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Isdud was on the Israeli southern front against the Egyptian Army, and the operation was aimed at capturing the village and stopping the Egyptian advance northwards. While only the June 2–3 engagements are officially named Operation Pleshet, the events immediately preceding are historiographically joined with it.
The preceding events consisted of an aerial bombardment, followed by small-scale Israeli harassment of the Egyptian lines, and later a ground assault (Operation Pleshet). The original plan was to attack on June 1–2, but this was canceled due to an impending ceasefire, and re-attempted on June 2–3. The Israelis, under the Givati Brigade's umbrella command, attacked in two main forces: one from the north (3 companies) and one from the south (4 reinforced companies). The Israelis had little intelligence on their enemy and were forced to retreat. They failed to capture territory, and suffered heavy casualties. However, following the operation, Egypt changed its strategy from offensive to defensive, thus halting their advance northwards.
Two unsettled historiographic debates exist revolving around the operation: whether the Egyptians were intending to advance toward Tel Aviv, which most historians agree was not the case; and whether the operation was a turning point on the Israeli southern front. Traditional Israeli historiography, supported by early Arab accounts, maintains that it was a turning point, while later Arab sources, and some New Historians, dispute this. Morris views the halt as a turning point, but doesn't believe the operation by itself "was the crucial action."
Background
Prior to the founding of the State of Israel, the Yishuv leadership anticipated an attack by regular Arab armies, of which Egypt's was the strongest in terms of manpower, arms and equipment. As such, Plan Dalet took stopping a potential Egyptian attack into account, and the Isdud Bridge over the Lakhish River was blown up as part of Operation Barak on May 12. In the eyes of the Givati command, this part of the operation was of marginal importance. A platoon from the 54th Battalion, two mules and 300 kilograms of explosives were allocated for it. The mules fled the scene, and the explosives were divided among the soldiers, who delivered them to the bridge. It took two attempts to destroy it, as some of the explosives did not work the first time.
The original bridge was built over the Lakhish River (Wadi Sukrir/Wadi Fakhira) during the Roman period, and re-built by the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century. A parallel railway bridge was added when the coastal railway (Lebanon–Egypt) was laid. After numerous armed raids in the area during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the British authorities set up a series of pillboxes in the area, one of them next to the bridges.
Egypt invaded the newly declared State of Israel on May 15, 1948. Their strength was approximately one division, commanded by Major General Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi. Their advance was three-pronged: The main column moved north through what is today the Gaza Strip and attacked Kfar Darom, another column went east toward Beersheba, and a third attacked kibbutz Nirim. On May 17, a small force split off from Beersheba to link up with more Egyptian forces at Auja al-Hafir, on May 19 the main column attacked Yad Mordechai, and on May 20, the main force in Beersheba set out to link with the Jordanian Arab Legion in Hebron.
On May 21, Cairo sent an urgent message to its units in Palestine, saying "we want al-Majdal today". Following the Israeli Operation Bin Nun, on May 25, the Jordanian Arab Legion pressured the Egyptians to move northwards to the Ramla–Aqir–Yibna area, in order to connect later with the legion at Bab al-Wad. Doing so would divide the Israeli forces into two—the Negev, and the rest of Israel. The Egyptian commander al-Mwawi, was opposed to such a move, but the leadership in Cairo dismissed his worries, and on May 28 ordered a quarter of his total combat forces to move north from Majdal.
Gamal Abdel Nasser wrote in his memoirs that already by May 25, the Egyptian forces were spread so thin that they had no mobile reserves to assault a Jewish force, and considered it strange that they would be ordered to allocate a major contingent to fight in an unfamiliar area. Following-up his victory in the Battle of Yad Mordechai on May 23–24, al-Mwawi pushed north along the coast, bypassing the relatively well-defended Israeli village of Nitzanim. His column was reinforced by sea near Majdal, where he sent part of his force to the Majdal–Hebron road, hoping it would be able to link with another column, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Abd el-Aziz, south of Jerusalem. Reduced to about 2,500 men, al-Mwawi resumed his march northwards. Brigadier General Muhammad Naguib was put in charge of the column by al-Mwawi, because the original commander was on vacation in Egypt.
On the afternoon of May 29, 1948, the observation post in Nitzanim spotted an Egyptian column, including tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and artillery moving north up the coastal road. The figure it reported at 16:45 was about 1,300 vehicles, although Yehoshua Goldrat, the operations officer of the Givati Brigade, being familiar with Egyptian formations, estimated that it was a brigade with about 500 vehicles. Estimates from the General Staff stood at 200 vehicles and 2,000–3,000 soldiers. At the time, the Israeli decision makers did not know where the Egyptians were headed. They envisioned one of three possibilities: A march on Tel Aviv, about 40 kilometers (25 mi) northwards—the view adopted by David Ben-Gurion; an attempt to connect to the Transjordanian Arab Legion in the Hebron area and capture the Negev—proposed by Nahum Sarig of the Negev Brigade; or an attempt to connect with the remaining Arab forces in Lydda and Ramla.
The IDF command did not see the forces in the western Negev as sufficient to fully stop an Egyptian invasion, wherever it was headed, and ordered an operation to stop or delay the advancing column. The command also feared that the Arab forces would try to create facts on the ground before the impending UN-imposed ceasefire. The two Arab forces that were considered a threat were the Iraqis in the Triangle (Jenin–Nablus–Tulkarm) and the Egyptians at Majdal–Isdud. Thus, Golani Brigade and Carmeli Brigade were to attack Jenin, Alexandroni Brigade was to harass Tulkarm, and Givati was to attack Isdud.
Prelude
At 11:00 on May 29, the Egyptian 2nd Battalion passed through Isdud, and at 12:00–13:00, the 9th Battalion took the village itself, their progress hampered only by occasional machine gun fire from Nitzanim. Later on the same day, the 2nd Battalion stopped at the Lakhish River, about 3 km (1.9 mi) north of Isdud. The Egyptians began preparations to cross the river by erecting a Bailey bridge. Volunteers from Sudan and Saudi Arabia also joined the Isdud position.
Shimon Avidan, the commander of the Givati Brigade, which was responsible for the southern Shephelah area (including most southern Israeli villages at the time), asked to allocate forces to stop or hinder the Egyptian advance. A number of 65 mm Napoleonchik cannons were given to Givati, and units from the Palmach's Negev Brigade were poised to assist it, despite a severe shortage of manpower and munitions in the brigade. On May 28, Czech technicians at the Ekron Airbase finished assembling four Avia S-199 planes (a Messerschmitt variant) brought from Czechoslovakia, which were meant to harass the Egyptian air force base at El Arish, thus forming the IDF's first fighter squadron. Despite being untested, the Chief of Operations Yigael Yadin ordered the planes to assist Avidan's forces. According to Lou Lenart, an American pilot who flew one of the fighters, Avidan told the pilots that Givati "were desperate because between the Egyptian army of ten thousand men with several hundred vehicles and Tel Aviv stood only about 250 Israeli soldiers. The Egyptians were so confident of victory that they were lined up bumper to bumper behind the bridge".
Airstrike
At 18:00, the four Avia 199 fighter planes left Ekron to bomb and strafe the Egyptian lines concentrated near the bridge. Each plane was armed with two 70 kilograms (150 lb) bombs, two 13 mm machine guns and two 20 mm cannons. The pilots were Lou Lenart, Mordechai Alon (Kalibansky), Ezer Weizmann and Eddie Cohen, in that order. The attack was disorganized, and the damage it did was minimal. Lenart came from the north and dropped his bombs in the middle of Isdud. He then circled and strafed the Egyptian troops from the southeast and then the north again, before his cockpit was hit by ground fire and he decided to return to Ekron. According to him, the 20mm cannons in his aircraft ceased to fire after the first ten rounds, and he began to smell cordite. Alon also made three bombing and strafing runs on a large concentration of vehicles south of Isdud. He returned to Ekron by flying over the sea. Weizmann circled and attacked the Egyptian vehicles from the south, then the west, and then the south again. His 20mm cannons stopped firing after just one round.
The Egyptian army unleashed its full anti-aircraft arsenal and hit Alon's plane, but he managed to crash-land unharmed back at Ekron at 20:05, performing a ground loop. Weizmann landed at 20:15. Eddie Cohen, a volunteer pilot from South Africa, crashed and died, although it is unknown whether he was hit by anti-aircraft fire, or a technical problem caused the plane to malfunction and crash, or both. A report by Dan Tolkovsky, the Israeli Air Force operations officer at the time, stated that Cohen likely attempted to land at the Hatzor Airbase instead of Ekron, where eyewitnesses saw a burning plane crashing in the distance. He was the first Israeli Air Force KIA, and was buried in Tel Aviv (Nahalat Yitzhak) after his remains were found at the end of 1949.
Even so, despite minimal casualties, the Egyptians were caught by complete surprise and the Israeli air attack had a profound psychological effect. This was the first time that such aircraft had been used. The Arab armies had previously had complete air superiority and had no knowledge of the existence of fighter aircraft in the Israeli Air Force. An intercepted Egyptian radio message stated: "We have been heavily attacked by enemy aircraft, we are dispersing". The official Egyptian report assessed that there were only two airplanes, and that they were Spitfires. According to Ezer Weizmann, the airplanes had not been tested before the attack, and there was no evidence that they could fly or fire their weapons. However, the pilots considered this a minor issue in light of the fact that they were making history by being the first to fly Israeli fighter planes. The combination of the appearance of the IAF, the introduction of Israeli artillery, the Israeli defenses and the threat to his flank convinced al-Mwawi to stop. He concluded that his forces were overstretched and that his positions needed to be consolidated. He left Brigadier General Muhammad Naguib in command of Isdud and ordered him to dig in.
Operations on May 30 – June 1
Between May 29 and June 2, the Israel Defense Forces constantly bombarded the Egyptians in Isdud with Napoleonchik cannons and Givati patrols harassed the Egyptian lines. The 51st Battalion was tasked with laying mines along the main road near Isdud, Yavne and Hill 69. The 3rd Company of the 53rd Battalion, commanded by Yosef Geva, was tasked with harassing the enemy lines, while the 1st Company of the 54th Battalion, commanded by Aryeh Kotzer, was ordered to assault several targets. In his book In the Fields of Philistia, Uri Avnery, who participated in the battles, wrote of the harassment operation that during those days the Egyptians were fearing an Israeli attack and were firing in all directions and launching flares in hopes of discovering their enemy.
Of the preparations, he wrote:
On the night of May 30, the 54th Battalion's 1st Company attacked the area around Isdud's railway station, but was outgunned and had to retreat with four wounded. According to the company's report, the food that was given to them was rotten and further deteriorated the soldiers' ability to fight. On May 31, the Egyptian radio described the attack as a victory, and claimed hundreds of dead Israelis. The 3rd Company was unsuccessful, as intelligence on precise Egyptian positions was sparse, while the company gave its position away quickly. An Egyptian mortar scored a direct hit on one of the company's squads, which caused casualties and panic. One of the soldiers ran for cover, but lost direction, and ended up in Isdud. He walked around the village unnoticed and found a chance to return to Givati, and provided the command with invaluable information for the operation.