The Gates of Gaza: Israel's Road to Suez and Back, 1955-1957 [Hardcover]

Mordechai Bar-On (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1994

The secret alliance between Israel, Britain, and France to destroy Nasser's rule in Egypt was a pivotal event in the history of the modern Middle East. The "Suez crisis" brought about both a humiliation for the old imperial powers and a remarkable victory for Israel. Mordechai Bar-On was General Moshe Dayan's personal assistant during the Suez Campaign and has drawn on both his own diary and many years of research to produce a gripping, definitive account of the Israeli side to the war. The Gates of Gaza describes the fears, suspicions, and agonizing debates that resulted in Ben-Gurion's decision to enter the clandestine pact, the overwhelming military victory in the Sinai, and subsequent withdrawal in the face of pressure from the United Nations. What was at the time a frustrating conflict for Israel should now be seen, in Dr. Bar-On's view, as a crucial event in securing the new nation's position in the Middle East and providing a breathing space before the great Arab challenge of 1967. The Gates of Gaza is an extremely important source for the history of Israel and for understanding one of the postwar world's most complex and fascinating crises.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This fresh interpretation of the Suez crisis is based on recently declassified material and the author's own recollections; as defense minister Moshe Dayan's personal assistant, Bar-On was a witness to many of the events considered here. He reveals how the 1955 Egyptian-Czech arms deal and Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal presented Israel with two major threats to its security, then discusses steps the Jewish state took to ensure that the inevitable confrontation would take place under conditions favorable to itself. In his vivid account of the military campaign that followed, Bar-On argues that Israeli generalship exemplified the proper subordination of military priorities to political exigencies: Dayan made changes that ran counter to military doctrine in the allocation of forces, choice of targets, timetables and operational tactics to satisfy political demands. The author explains a major paradox in connection with the 1956 conflict: Though arrayed against each other on the battlefield, both Israel and Egypt emerged as victors. France and Britain were the losers. Bar-On concludes his study with a discussion of ways the Sinai Campaign influenced the outcome of the 1967 Six-Day War.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this comprehensive and richly detailed history, Bar-On, who was Gen. Moshe Dayan's personal assistant during the 1956 Suez Crisis, presents an authentic account of Israel's role during this period. Employing declassified Israeli defense archives as well as his own personal records, the author notes the Israeli reaction to the Egyptian-Czech arms deal in 1955, which spurred the nation to take a position to halt what it perceived to be an "aggressive" Egyptian policy. Bar-On discusses the feints against Syria and Jordan, and his personal recollections enhance his description of the intricate and delicate negotiations with the British and French. The military engagements, reactions from the Eisenhower administration, and the difficulties with the United Nations regarding withdrawal are all considered. A definitive contribution on the topic; absolutely essential for anyone interested in the period or the region.
- Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (March 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031210586X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312105860
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,285,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for the Suez War, May 1, 2009

By 

Matthew Smith "Roger Mexico" (TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gates of Gaza: Israel's Road to Suez and Back, 1955-1957 (Hardcover)

This is a very important book for all readers looking to understand this war. While this work is not a definitive book over this war because of its Israeli-centric focus, it is still vitally important to understanding that Israeli perspective. This book is an in depth look from the Israeli perspective of the political and military lead up to the Sinai campaign into the actual campaign and into the aftermath.

One of the main things I took from this work though was the failure of intelligence during the Cold War years to see the world in anything beyond polar extremes. This goes for Western powers such as the US as much as it does for Israel. The US and Western powers failed to understand that people like Nasser might actually be playing both sides for their own political gains. Instead the quest for third world domination became a zero sum game in which all was either lost or won. As for Israel it was simply not even considered that the Egyptian arms deals could have any other purpose other than the annihilation of the Israeli state. No one even considered that Egypt may be playing a different game with different motivations. Of course Israel can be forgiven this failure a little more readily since they had much more to lose than the US for instance, but it is still remarkable.

This failure of the West to understand the regional dynamics at play around the world no doubt helped push this war. The failure to understand the very real fears of the Israeli state and to recognize their need for security left Israel with very few good options, and it meant that Israel was in a position to where they would accept any help they could find. Of course this also exposes the failure of Nasser as well. His attempts at backdoor diplomacy could never assuage the fears of the Israelis while his rhetoric for the masses was geared towards the destruction of Israel. Nasser attempted to use Israel as a whipping boy so he could garner more Arab support for his pan-Arab world vision, but as Israel has demonstrated in the past Israel is a whipping boy that hits back.

Another important aspect of this book is that the author does a very good job detailing the atmosphere that surrounded the Suez war. This is crucial because one needs to remember that Israel was still a fledgling state at this point less than a decade old. As we look at Israel of today our historical perspective can be skewed by the power and stability that Israel now evinces, and so we must remember to see the situation within its proper historical perspective which the author makes sure to reproduce for readers in this book. The fear of total destruction was palpable and real.

Before I conclude I did have some problems with this book as well, and I will describe these quickly here. A major problem I had was the author discusses the level of fear in the Israeli population as well as the leadership, but the author offers the readers no discussion or analysis on the relationship between the two. Did the population help inspire the fear in the leadership or was it the other way around? A question of which came first the chicken or the egg so to speak. The author simply says that the fear existed, but doesn't analyze that fear further to see if the leadership helped engender that fear to pursue their own agenda, or did the populations fear push the leadership into directions it might not have taken under more rational consideration?

The author says that the accepted orthodoxy of the intelligence community was that Egypt would absorb the new armaments within six months, and even be ready to move into offensive operations against Israel in that time, but there is no discussion about where this estimate came from, or whether there were any dissenting views from this estimate. Simply looking at the quality of the Egyptian army at the time the six month estimation seems extremely quick, but the author does not discuss how this estimate came about.

I was hoping to see a little bit more in the way of analysis of failures and successes from the diplomatic and military side of this conflict, but the author really only lays out the history without any in depth analysis of his own. This isn't a major problem, and often I applaud historians who simply attempt to lay out the history without injecting it with their ideas, but here this author was uniquely qualified to offer readers an important analysis. I was hoping to get a little more of his professional opinion with nearly four decades to reflect and refine his understanding of these events he was intimately involved with.

All in all this is a powerful work that has greatly enhanced my understanding of the events surrounding this conflict. While I did have a few problems here and there, they did not detract from this book very much at all. As I said before this is not the definitive book on this war, but I don't think any reader can have a complete understanding of these events without reading Mordechai Bar-On's The Gates of Gaza. I highly recommend this book.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Gates of Gaza, July 22, 2001

By 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gates of Gaza: Israel's Road to Suez and Back, 1955-1957 (Hardcover)

As Bar-On explains, he has had the unusual experience of recording Israel’s role in the Suez Crisis of October-November 1956 on three occasions: during the events themselves, when as a lieutenant-colonel and head of bureau to Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, he kept daily records in a Bureau Diary; a year later, when he compiled and adapted the diary notations into a classified account of the events; and thirty years later when, using newly disclassified archival materials, he studied the same events for a doctoral dissertation at the Hebrew University.

This mix of personal experience and scholarly inquiry make The Gates of Gaza the authoritataive source on the ever-mysterious subject of how Israel got enmeshed with the British and French governments in the assault on Suez. More importantly, he establishes how, in the view of David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, and the other Israeli leaders, the road to Suez began over a year earlier—in September 1955, when the Czech-Egyptian arms deal made Moscow an active player in the Middle East and gave Gamal Abdel Nasser an enormous boost in power. Bar-On argues that the Suez war “was fought to contend with the motivations of the Czech deal” and he expertly brings to life the mood in Israel in the ensuing months, especially the sense of apprehension among the military brass.....