Behind the Headlines Mood of People is Pensive

The atmosphere, the mood of the people in the towns of Israel, has changed sharply these past 24 hours. From near elation yesterday noon when–to judge by the radio–the tide of battle was turning, and turning fast, the feeling of the people has become one of uneasy concern as the expected sweeping victories are not yet announced. Because the elation was premature and overdone, so therefore is the current worried, pensive mood which grips the nation overdone.

The reason is not far to seek–many observers have noted it: the average Israeli is still thinking in terms of the Six-Day War, when the initiative was Zahal’s, the battles were fought on each front consecutively and not concurrently, and the enemy was not nearly so powerful, so well-trained or so prepared to give battle.

Editorial writers in the daily papers, aware of the hard struggle which still lies before Zahal; warned the people not to be over-exhilarated–and their articles contributed to the flat feeling which many Israelis felt when they awoke today to hear that the Egyptians are still there, and had poured more men and equipment in during the night, and that the Syrians, though slowly being ousted from the Golan Heights, had mounted a large-scale counter-attack during the night (which was repulsed).

“Indeed we have been spoiled,” wrote Yediot Acharonot in its lead article. “Spoiled a little by the army which has got us used to giddy victories after only hours of warfare….But it is not always possible to repeat giddy victories….” The Jerusalem Post was sober, too: “Despite the advances on the ground yesterday, and the supremacy in the skies which Israel has enjoyed throughout, there is every reason to believe that stiff fighting lies ahead. What we have succeeded in doing is to stunt the enemy’s advance and push him back. But the main offensive push still lies ahead. And here Israel’s armed forces will be facing an enemy that has been preparing for war for many months….”

These objective words came as a shock to most Israelis because the radio yesterday had been painting throughout the late hours a rosy picture. Repeatedly its reporters in Sinai reported the “annihilation” of Egyptian armor which they saw proceeding before their eyes. It was therefore a rude awakening to learn that new armor had crossed the water overnight.

HOW SOON? AT WHAT COST?

While there is no doubt in anyone’s mind at all about the eventual victor in this war, the questions are only, how soon, at what cost.-and above all-how will it end? In other words, will Israel, when it has cleared the invaders. go across the lines extending the campaign into a full-blown war against the enemy countries themselves? It has been reported widely and reliably that the decision, when the hostilities commenced, was to smash the Arab armies without paying heed to the artificial discrimination between those parts of them that had crossed the lines and those parts that had not.

Now, as the war proceeds and it becomes clear that it will take some days to clear the Invading forces, the government-for the decision is finally the government’s, not the army’s – is being pressed by commentators in the press to carry the war into enemy territory and not be satisfied with repulsing the invaders. This approach was developed in an article in today’s issue of the influential daily Haaretz by its noted Arab affairs expert Dan Shiftan of the Shiloah Institute.

He argued that anything less than the most serious and crushing defeat for the Arabs will be taken by them as a victory–and in the final analysis the deterrent effect for the future of Israel’s ultimate victory will depend on the way it is subjectively judged by the Arab peoples involved. Thus merely destroying the invading armies, or even destroying those parts of the armies too which did not cross the lines, would not be in Arab eyes an Israeli victory of the monumental proportions necessary to deter the Arabs from military adventurism for many years to come–which is, after all, Israel’s aim.