Indirect approach
Completely avoiding direct confrontation between enemies has always been
wishful thinking, even in the eyes of thinkers, such as Sun Tzu or Liddell Hart,
who saw a decision without battle as the ultimate military achievement one could
imagine. 16 What the indirect approach can offer is a way of creating optimal
conditions for encountering the enemy by upsetting its equilibrium before
engaging it physically, and of minimizing the scope, intensity, duration, and
casualties during military encounters. As such, it constitutes an important aspect
of operational art. It is no wonder, therefore, that the IDF adopted it even without
learning it from books.
Liddell Hart’s biographer, who, like the great thinker himself, presented the
IDF as one of his best pupils, cited Yitzhak Rabin’s admission that the implemen-
tation of the indirect approach during the War of Independence had ‘largely
coincided with Israel’s choice of methods designed to overcome her inferiority in
arms and numbers and the vulnerability of her people and territory’. 17 Although
IDF commanders were hardly exposed to Liddell Hart’s writings, 18 here too they
applied the indirect approach based on common sense and good intuition.
Three resounding failures of direct attacks on Latrun during the War of
Independence, intended to open the way to the besieged Jerusalem, only height-
ened the awareness among Israeli commanders of the need for an indirect
approach. And, indeed, most of the important successes of the indirect approach
at the operational level during that war can be attributed to ground manoeuvres
aimed at encircling or enveloping enemy troops: for example, the capture of the
Arab towns of Lydda and Ramla during Operation Danny in the summer of 1948
following a pincer attack, the envelopment of Kaukji’s liberation army during
Operation Hiram in the autumn of that year, and the encirclement of the
Egyptian forces during Operation Horev in December 1948–January 1949. Dur-
ing Operation Yoav on the Egyptian Front in the autumn of 1948, the indirect
approach also took on other forms. For the first time, it was carried out via an air
attack, with the bombing by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) of Gaza airport, which
inflicted damage on Egyptian aircraft. On the ground, IDF troops managed to
sever Egyptian transportation lines from Gaza to Rafah and from Iraq-al-
Manshiya to Beit Jubrin, and to block the retreat lines of Egypt’s main effort
forces.
In 1956, IDF units were advancing quickly westward, deviating from Chief of
Staff Moshe Dayan’s instructions to avoid direct confrontation with the Egyptian
strongholds by bypassing them. Two main Egyptian strongholds—Abu Agheila
and Rafah—were captured, the former partially, on 31 October, in an indirect
approach, and the latter completely, during the night of 31 October–1 November,
in a direct approach. More typical of the indirect approach, however, was the 9th
Brigade’s advance along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Eilat, along an axis
considered by the Egyptians impassable, culminating in a combined pincer attack
on Sharm el-Sheikh by the 9th Brigade and the paratrooper brigade, after the
latter arrived from the Mitla Pass.
172 The Evolution of Operational Art