Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps -- there was only the Syrian army... the kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land... and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was." 1976
Already a battle hardened by the end of his teens, Moshe Dayan gained his trademark eyepatch while fighting the Vichy French in Syria during WWII after a bullet struck his binoculars. Dayan's activities in the 1948 War of Independence began when he commanded the defense of Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley. He later commanded the battalion that attacked the city of Lydda and helped halt Egyptian forces on the southern front. In August 1948, he was appointed commander on the Jerusalem front. In 1949, he participated in armistice talks with Jordanian officials at Rhodes. Dayan's military prowess allowed him to rise to the rank of chief of operations at General Headquarters in 1952, and, in 1953, he was elected Chief of Staff of the armed forces3.
Dayan became Chief of Staff during a time of severe Arab belligerence. Despite the military armistice of 1949, the surrounding Arab nations remained hostile, using maritime blockades, reinforcing an economic boycott, promoting political and propaganda warfare and supporting terrorism in Israel. Dayan insisted on strong retaliation operations. His view was that the Arabs saw terrorism as a stage of war, and the longer the terrorist attacks continued, the longer the Arabs had to build up their military strength. He wanted to force the Arabs into open battle before they gained full military power3. In 1957, Dayan led the Israeli Defense Forces in the Suez Canal incident.
Moshe Dayan