The High Cost of Non-War

...For the one alternative would appear to be taking an unacceptable gamble with national security...

...Truck drivers, scraper and tractor operators, and plain unskilled laborers willing to rough it in the desert heat-and, during the War of Attrition, to risk being shot at by Egyptians-could in one day take home (unreported to the tax collector) more than their colleagues working elsewhere could earn in a week...

...This made the minefields, tank trenches, bunkers, thickly placed observation posts, and combat units of the unfinished fourth line absolutely essential...

...Since the planned fortifications had to be good enough to stand up against armed attack and the erosions of time, the government's estimated investment of 1-2 billion Israeli pounds ($143-286 million) in the fourth line-depending on whether the dismantle-able electronic hardware is included-seemed reasonable...

...Therefore, the military experts say, a relatively thin first line of observation will suffice to alert centers of powerful on-the-ready mobile units in the event of an emergency...

...In other words, the prospect is that Israel will have to go on devoting billions of pounds and vitally needed skilled manpower, equipment, machinery, and materiel to defense line after defense line...

...In the case of the Bar Lev line, they note, hardened, exposed and disconnected posts right along the water's edge were required to assure control of the east bank of the Suez Canal...

...But the Bar Lev line was never intended to prevent an all-out Egyptian invasion along the entire length of the Canal...

...Meanwhile, Cairo's promise to renew the UN Emergency Force mandate for only three consecutive years suggests that in a few years a new line will have to be negotiated in yet another agreement that will not be a final peace settlement...

...Nonetheless, when the October 24, 1973 cease-fire stopped the shooting (with the Israeli forces only 30 miles from Cairo, and the Egyptian Third Army completely surrounded east of the Canal) fortifications were quickly built again...

...Payments have been high, cost-control has been given a back seat in the drive to meet deadlines ahead of time, and cooperation between the Defense Ministry Paymaster and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue has been tenuous at best...

...Rabin and Peres also promise a flat advance income-tax deduction on all defense contract payments...

...For it involves concentrated punch rather than reliance on strung-out positions, swiftly shifting to the attack rather than maintaining rigid lines of defense, and the ability to surprise rather than susceptibility to the unexpected...

...Several months of implementation will have to pass, though, before Israel can know if it was right in hoping the new line, besides providing a better defense posture, will lead to the kind of gradual de-escalation of tensions that makes defense less a matter of life and death...

...The Army, in a hurry to build each of the successive defense lines, has eagerly sought anybody with the machinery, know-how and manpower to do the job...

...Does the desire to demonstrate a determination "not to retreat further" justify costly expenditures, especially in places that will clearly have to be abandoned in future negotiations...

...and whether the pitfalls of past decisions can be avoided now that things may be planned in a somewhat less tense atmosphere...

...After the October 1973 cease-fire, the possibility of renewed war at any minute dictated the hasty erection of secure fortifications...

...The additional space means extra warning time for Israel (aided by the domestically controversial American technicians manning electronic devices designed to monitor enemy activity), as well as extra terrain to develop motion for a counterattack...

...The first was hastily erected during the 1969-70 War of Attrition to provide protection against heavy Egyptian artillery bombardment for a string of observation stations along the closed Suez Canal...

...Indeed, the failure to foresee the possibility of such an attack was one of the main criticisms of the Inquiry Committee set up to investigate the causes of Israel's setbacks in the first phase of the War...

...The sandbags, barbed wire and bunkers behind which the Israeli forces are scheduled to withdraw by next February will be the fifth line of defense constructed since the Six Day War in 1967...

...The 1974 agreement produced a no-man's-land only 2-5 miles wide that was sparsely patrolled by UN forces and relatively close to the Canal...

...Eliahu Salpeter is a member of the editorial board of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...At the heart of the issue, though, are some basic questions regarding government decision-making...

...This, they said, was due to the government's need to improvise under pressure...

...They have pledged that henceforth public committees will oversee this sector, that an expanded Army Engineer Corps will take on as much of the construction as feasible, and that a greater share of the remaining work will be given to the large semipublic companies, who seem to have better performance records than their private competitors...

...The Yom Kippur experience greatly strengthened the arguments of those strategists who have always objected to a concept of entrenched strongholds...

...Genuine structures will predominate over bunkers, the use of sophisticated equipment will be increased and the network will be designed to serve simultaneously for defense and for the Army's routine training and operational tasks...

...With a single night of preparation Egypt could have easily sprung another surprise attack...

...the penalty of surprise, however improbable, was just too high-as Israel bitterly learned in October 1973...

...But military experts insist the changes are primarily attributable to the new physical circumstances the fifth line must cope with, and tend to support their point by contrasting its rationale with that of previous lines...

...The Israeli Army, they said, by spirit and tradition, is suited not for fixed battles but for mobile actions where defense can quickly be turned into offense...

...Nor is there any end in sight...

...But work had barely begun when the political leadership started preparing for more negotiations with Washington, restricted to another interim agreement...

...Once Kissinger negotiated the initial Sinai withdrawal agreement, resulting in an Israeli retreat of 5-15 miles east of the Canal, the bulldozers were rushed into service for the fourth time...

...The objective now was a continuous series of multiple obstacles-barbed wire forests, minefields, tank-traps, observation towers, fortified firing positions-to impede an Egyptian advance over the essentially flat, open terrain...

...The High Cost Of Non-War BY ELIAHU SALPETER Tel Aviv Beyond the national debate on the wisdom of consenting to the second interim agreement with Egypt negotiated (or, as critics say, prescribed) by Secretary of State Kissinger, there is a running argument going on here about several subsidiary issues: What Israel's defense strategy should be in the Sinai...

...In these circumstances, owners of a few earth-moving machines could earn in about a month what a solid manufacturer with an expensive plant might not make in a year...

...After the renewed cease-fire, this was completely rebuilt to form the Bar Lev line-some two score small, strong fortifications theoretically capable of withstanding the heaviest artillery barrage and of serving as observation posts, forward bases for mobile units patrolling the water way, and impediments to any Egyptian attempt at gaining a foothold on the eastern bank of the Canal...

...This, plus the relevant data, would then be sent to the income tax authorities for final assessment and collection of any unpaid taxes...

...The latest Sinai accord broadens the area between the Israeli and the Egyptian lines to 15-30 miles...

...In addition, the functioning positions were severely undermanned because of the large number of soldiers away on home leave for the High Holidays...

...To the Israelis, who remain sceptical about the more present predicaments, this is one of the promising features of the second interim Sinai agreement...

...No further change would occur, they said, unless there was a final settlement...

...what types of fortifications are best suited to the new situation...

...On September 22, 1975, as the Israeli and Egyptian delegations in Geneva affixed their signatures to the Protocol of Implementation of the new interim agreement, hundreds of Engineer Corps cadre were still engaged in finishing the fourth line...

...And the country's social fabric will have to continue bearing the pressures created by the economic distortions of these nonproductive efforts...

...All this in the name of patriotic duty, moreover, if not outright heroism...

...It was also discovered that in October 1973 the fortifications were in no shape to be a serious obstacle to even a smaller-scale Egyptian crossing: Under a reorganization scheme, about half the posts had been closed down (leaving huge gaps in the chain), although the armored columns that were to assume their duties were not yet fully operational...

...Israeli planners, of course, were already designing the fifth...

...Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres have lately admitted that irregularities in defense contracting got out of hand...

...The reforms are undoubtedly necessary...

...More than the recent strategies, this concept seems to fit the traditional approach of the Israel Defense Forces, developed from the time of their beginnings in the Haganah and General Orde Wingate's Night Riders of the Palmach...

...To others, including many military experts, it was only proper to go ahead with the protection of existing lines, even if their replacement had been decided upon...

...But the important point is that fast money has helped increase the demand for bigger apartments, newer cars, fancier furniture, and more appliances in a nation struggling to prevent its foreign trade from getting catastrophically out of balance...

...The fifth line, it is understood, will deemphasize continuous, multiple installations in favor of mobile units...

...To some observers, this seemed like sheer madness...

...When the Yom Kippur War of 1973 saw the installations rapidly overrun, a rather acrimonious argument about the line's "breakdown" ensued...

...The full dimensions of the situation can be seen in the fact that the destruction of taxpayer morale, the emergence of overnight millionaires conspicuously consuming in a very small country, and the undermining of normal wage and earning structures are in large part attributable to the huge sums spent in Sinai...

...How wise is it for the civilian level to fully accept the recommendations (and budgetary requirements) of the military on the subject of fortifications...

...How much consideration can justifiably be given to "political impact" in locating a defense line's major structures...

...This third defense line was for the protection of Israeli units dug in almost eyeball-to-eyeball opposite Egyptian troops...

...Yet, ultimately, any decline in the destructive impact of defense-contract expenditures may owe as much to the nature of the new security line as to better techniques of economic control...

...Consequently, there will be less need to hire thousands of heavy earth-moving machines and their operators, and less work whose cost cannot be calculated precisely in advance...

...Following the May 1974 disengagement, Israeli leaders declared that the Army had withdrawn to its penultimate line...

...These innovations, it is widely felt, reflect some of the lessons learned from the past...

...With Kissinger's summer shuttle successfully completed and the fifth line about to be built, hopes for a formal end to the state of belligerency have been replaced by the soothing sentence in the Preamble to the Sinai accord saying it will stay in force "until superceded by another agreement...