Operation Yoav

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Operation Yoav (also called Operation Ten Plagues or Operation Yo'av) was an Israeli military operation carried out from 15 October - 22 October, 1948 in the Negev Desert, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Its goal was to drive a wedge between the Egyptian forces along the coast and the Beersheba-Hebron-Jerusalem road and ultimately to conquer the whole Negev. Operation Yoav was headed by the Southern Front commander Yigal Allon.

The force consisted of three infantry brigades, the Negev Brigade, the Givati Brigade, and the Yiftach Brigade, an armored battalion from the 8th Armored Brigade and the largest artillery formation that had ever been available to the IDF at the time. On 18 October the Oded Brigade also joined in the operation.

In the evening of 15 October the Israeli Air Force bombed Gaza, Majdal and Beit Hanun. A battalion of the Yiftach Brigade mined the railroad between El-Arish and Rafah and various roads in the Gaza area. Two battalions of the Givati Brigade drove south east of Iraq El-Manshiyeh, thus cutting the road between Faluja and Beit Guvrin.

1 Pretext
2 Palestinian communities captured in Operation Yoav
3 Brigades participating in Operation Yoav
4 See also
5 External links and references

[edit] Pretext

In the central and northern parts of Palestine, the Israelis had managed to make substantial territorial gains before the second truce of the war went into effect. But the southern Negev Desert, allocated to a Jewish state in the 1947 Partition plan for Palestine, was still under Egyptian control. Therefore Operation Ten Plagues (after the punishment God sent to the Egyptians for holding the Israelis captive in the Old Testament) was made and approved at a Cabinet Session 6 October 1948.

The pretext to launch the operation came at 14 October 1948 when 16 trucks heading for a Jewish settlement was fired on as it passed through Egyptian positions. Ralph Bunche who had became UN mediator after the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte asserted:

[The Israeli] military action of the last few days has been on a scale which could only be undertaken after considerable preparation, and could scarcely be explained as simple retaliatory action for an attack on a [Israeli] convoy.

He urged the Israelis to cease the attack and to return to its pre-14 October lines, but Israel refused by saying that it "stands by its claim to the whole of the Negev."