178 ISLAM AT WAR
The Israelis, for their part, performed brilliantly. By now they had mas-
tered the art of complex offensive operations by large-scale forces. The
Egyptian forces could rarely defend themselves, but they could fight with
courage.
In the battle for the Abu Ageila stronghold, fought on October 31, 1956,
the Egyptians were strongly emplaced and confronted with substantial
Israeli forces. Rash and ill-conceived Israeli frontal assaults proved di-
sastrous, with the Egyptians inflicting heavy casualties on the Israelis,
including their commander. However, the Egyptians were so fearful of
being cut off that, despite their victory, they slipped away during the night.
Abandoning this position allowed the Israelis to cut off the Egyptian and
Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip, which led to their eventual destruc-
tion. Strongly posted, the Egyptian forces could fight, but like many ar-
mies through history, they could be defeated more easily by the fear of
being surrounded than by actual attack.
One major difference between the Israelis and the Egyptians in this
campaign was that the Israelis lost high numbers of officers and NCOs in
battle and the Egyptians lost far fewer. This contrast indicates a signifi-
cantly different style of warfare, and it also indicates the Israeli leader-
ship’s commitment to the war and no parallel commitment by the Egyptian
leadership. The Israeli command structure led the battle from the front
lines, a military practice with a long history of success, while the Egyptian
command structure did not.
If one looks back at the history of warfare in the Islamic world, Mu-
hammad was wounded in battle. At the battle of Badr both sides sent
forward champions to fight. When Muhammad sent an army off to hold
a potential Byzantine attack inA.D. 633 he lost three commanders. The
bulk of the sultans of the Mamluk Empire were warriors who had literally
risen from the ranks. Though it would be of a stroke, the last sultan of the
Mamluk Empire died on the battlefield. In the Ottoman Empire either the
sultan or the grand vizier accompanied the army into the field for centuries.
This tradition of leaders and officers being in the front ranks of Muslim
armies appears to have vanished, and their absence in the past two cen-
turies may be one key to explaining the almost total lack of success of
Islamic military operations against non-Muslim countries.
The 1967 war was the result of Arab political pressures and persistent
armed incursions into Israel. Syria had been making increasingly aggres-
sive movements along the strategic Golan Heights and suddenly realized
that it had probably provoked the Israelis into a major response. The
Syrian president went to Egyptian president Nasser and formed an offen-
sive/defensive alliance. Nasser was most eager for this as it fit in with his