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... along two axes in the Suez sector, while another force of his division continued on another route to Ras-Star on the Gulf of Suez, south of the Canal. From there, the force continued south along the Gulf of Suez and reached Abu- Zenima, where it met up with the paratroopers coming from E-Tur. General Sharon's division continued its advance south-west to the heart of Sinai and conquered Naked. In a more southern sector, Colonel Albert's independent tank brigade fought and defeated the Egyptian armored force which threatened to cut-off Eilat. The possibility of war breaking out in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem intensified the tension and preparedness of the Central Command under the command of General Uzi Narkiss.
Although all the forces were prepared for defense rather than attack, during the morning hours the news on the radio announced the start of the battle on the Egyptian front. A short time afterwards, the first shots were fired in the Jerusalem sector, first from light weapons and quickly followed by heavy Jordanian artillery shelling along the while length of the cease-fire line with Israel. When the Jordanians opened fire, the Central Command pressured the General Staff that it be allowed to react. However the General Staff rejected this demand since it did not want to open up another front while the Idf's main effort was being directed at the Egyptian front. Israel sent a message to Jordan that she had no hostile intentions and if Jordan would not enter the war, Israel would even understand a "salvo of honor" on Jordans part, an expression of their identification with the Egyptians and part of their obligation towards the Arab world. However, the continuation of the barrage led to an understanding that the Jordanians had decided to open their own front.
Indeed, Jordanian army forces penetrated and took control of Government House, the house used as the headquarters for the UN observers. The Israeli response was fast. At 3: 35 p. m. on 5 June, 1967, a task force of the Jerusalem Brigade gained control of Government House and routed the Jordanian soldiers from the rooms. On completion of the short battle at Government House, the Jerusalem brigade continued under the command of Colonel Eliezer Amitai to conquer a series of neighboring Jordanian posts, up to Tour Baker and the Bell position, eastern Jerusalem from the South.
At the same time as the Jerusalem force fought in the south-east sector of the city, the armored forces of the Harel Division under the command of Colonel Uri Ben-Ari started their advance on the Jordanian posts in the areas of Radar Hill, Sheikh Abed El-Aziz and Bet-Is in the north-west of the town and enemy deployments along the Jerusalem-Ramallah highway. A reserve brigade of paratroopers under the command of Colonel Mordechai (Motta) Gur was brought to Jerusalem. Their task was to make a nighttime breakthrough of the Jordanian lines at the Police School posts and Ammunition Hill in the northern part of Jerusalem, from where they would be able to join up with the defenders of Mount Scopus enclave. One battalion broke through the area of the Police School conquering it and Ammunition Hill. The second battalion broke through in the Nahalat Shimon sector to capture Wadi Juz and the American Colony. The third battalion followed after the second and proceeded towards the walls of the Old City and the Rockefeller Museum.
The night battle, which started at 2. 00 a. m. , was cruel and bloody. The Jordanian outpost on Ammunition Hill held firm and its fighters refused to surrender. The battle ended with sunrise. The paratroopers gained control of Ammunition Hill and the Police School, while other members of their unit advanced through the alleyways of the east of the city through to the walls of the old city and the Rockefeller Museum, at the same time as joining up with the besieged Israeli enclave on Mount Scopus.
At that time, General Elad Peled's division which had been allocated for combat by the Northern Command was active in the Samaria area. The division, which was composed of two armored brigades and infantry forces, concentrated its efforts to gain control of the Data valley and the nearby junctions. Jenin was encircled and the hills surrounding the town were under Israel control. Most of the time, infantry forces from the Central Command returned fire against Jordanians in the Tulkarm and Qalqilya areas. On the second day of the 6 -Day War, 6 June, 1967, the fighting continued.
Latin was captured with daybreak, providing retribution for the blood of the fighters lost there in the War of Independence. The conquering force, an infantry brigade under the command of Moshe Yotvat, advanced in the direction of Beit Hermon and joined up with the tanks of the Harel brigade in the southern entrances to Ramallah. During the morning hours, the Harel brigade was forced to advance twice on the Mivtar Hill, the key to the northern entry to Jerusalem, until the enemy resistance was overcome. The conquer of French Hill, Givat Shaul (Tel El-Ful) and Shuafat completely opened the Israeli approach to Mount Scopus and cut off the city from the north. By the evening of the second day, the Harel brigade tanks entered Ramallah and gained control of the city.
Along the narrow waistline of the state, in the Qalqilya area, the Givat infantry brigade under the command of Zeev Shacham and reinforced with tanks started its advance eastwards to the back of the mountain which was to be taken the following day. At the Kabatiya junction, there was a fierce fight between an armored brigade from Peled's division and a Jordanian armored brigade which reached the area from the Damya bridge. A little further north from there, IDF troops completed the defeat of Jenin. The Northern Command added an additional tank division to the fight, which fought battles with Jordanian tanks along the way to Tubas. The Jordanian army attempted to supply reinforcements of additional tanks, but they were trapped by the air force on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem and destroyed. The paratroop brigade, continued to gain control of east Jerusalem up to the walls of the old city.
Their advance in the populated area was difficult, since many houses became the source of fire from Jordanian army soldiers. The Jerusalem Brigade, who captured in the Abu-Tor district in the south of the city, also faced similar prolonged house to house combat. The eagerly awaited command to take the old city was given at sunrise on the third day of the war, 7 June, 1967. The Command assigned this task to the paratroopers, who started with an attack on the Augusta-Victoria hills and the Mount of Olives, overlooking the old city. After firing in the direction of the breakthrough path, the Lions Gate, the force from the east advanced forward very quickly and broke through into the old city.
The paratroopers ran towards the Dome of the Rock, located next to the last remains of the Temple, the Western Wall, where, in the presence of the sector commander and the deputy head of the armed services, General Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the chief chaplain of the IDF blew a long blow on the rams horn, announcing the release of the Western Wall and the old city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the divided and split capital of Israel, was reunited. In the mountains of Samaria, the Harel brigade completed the capture of mountain between Ramallah and Nablus, and two battalions of the brigade continued into the Jordan valley along two axes, captured Jericho and in cooperation with a Golan infantry brigade, gained control of Nablus. The tank forces of Peled's division captured the routes to Jordan at the Damya (Adam) bridge and gained control of the northern part of the Jordan valley. During the morning hours, the Jerusalem Brigade advanced on Bethlehem, the Etzion block and Hebron. Resistance was poor, and only here and there the sound of sharpshooters was heard and silenced.
Within a short time, the whole of the Hebron mountain area was in the hands of the IDF. The battle against Syria, Israel's bitterest enemy, persisted until the fifth day of the Six-Day War, despite the Syrian's heavy bombardment of the Hula valley settlements and the Galilee. The delay in the breakthrough of the Syrian attack after the defeat of the Egyptian army across Sinai, the release of Jerusalem, and IDF control of Judea and Samaria, raised a fear that it would be the Syrians, who were the source of the tension and caused the general flare-up in the first place, who would not be affected by the IDF. The main reason for the delay in the attack against Syria was because the Northern Command forces under the command of General David Elazar were confined to the Samaria front, where brigade after brigade was taken to help fight in this unexpected front. However, the delay in the attack on the Syrians enabled the concentration of a force enlarged with reinforcements from both the Egyptian and Samaria fronts, on completion of the battles there. International political pressure threatened to impair the operational plans, and a delegation from the northern settlements traveled to Tel Aviv in an effort to convince the Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, and the government to release them from the Syrian threat once and for all.
In the end, the command was given to open the attack on the Syrian post on the Golan Heights. The attacking force had to face very difficult topographical conditions. To scale steep, rugged and rocky heights and open a line for transportation while under constant fire from above. The Syrian army sat safely in its strong fortifications on the Golan Heights.
It consisted of six infantry brigades, five National Guard battalions and about 200 tanks. The breakthrough came at 10: 00 AM on the morning of 9 June, 1967, after 2 days of heavy bombardment by the air force. It was spearheaded by Colonel Albert's tank brigade which came from the direction of Givat Ha " em north of Kfar Should and showered the Syrian posts to the north, on the top of the Heights. In a complex engineering operation, soldiers from the Engineering Corps cleared the way of mines. They were followed by bulldozers which leveled a route for the tanks on the rocky face.
The force conquered the Zaura and Kala positions while under heavy artillery fire. At the same time, the Golan infantry brigade under the command of Colonel You Eat fought a fierce battle to conquer its targets in the sector, which included the Tel El-Far post which was the most fatal of all. A force consisting of infantry, Naval and paratroopers defeated a series of other posts overlooking the Hula valley in the southern sector of the Heights and enables the passage of tanks deep into enemy territory. On the night of June 9 - 10 an attack was mounted on Jalabina and enemy positions on the region of the border and the Banyas were captured. The following day, in the morning of the 10 June, 1967, the forces renewed their advance in the north and central regions of the Golan Heights. The infantry and paratrooper units completed their defeat of targets in the area, and the tank units advanced on a number of axes to beyond the town of Quneitra, which was defeated at 3: 30 p.
m. without any battle. From there, a brigade continued traveling in the Southern Golan captured Butmiye. Another tank force entered and subdued the area at the foot of Mount Hermon, between Banyas and the Lebanese border, together with a Golan brigade and scout units. After this, they went up onto the Golan Heights and defeated Masada. The Syrian deployment collapsed and the Syrian forces were in retreat.
On the same day, a tank and paratroop force from Elad Peled's division went up on the Tuafik posts located south-east of the Sea of Galilee, and from there advanced in a north-easterly direction towards Butmiye. In the afternoon of the same day, paratroop forces from the division were landed in the southern Golan Heights to purge the posts scattered across the sector. At the same, infantry forces were active in purging the area north-east of the Sea of Galilee. Towards night, the IDF already controlled the whole of the Golan Heights and was positioned along the whole line passing from Mount Hermon in the south, around Masada, Quneitra and Butmiye junction and extending to the Yarmuk river bed. A unit from the Golan brigade later arrived on the Hermon mountain and determined seizure by the IDF. On 12 June the cease-fire line was set by UN observers along these milestones.
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