World: Disarming Ventures

BECAUSE they sometimes have difficulty in buying arms abroad, the Israelis have resorted to subterfuge on a number of memorable occasions in order —so to speak—to bring home the bacon.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Israel set up a dummy movie company in Britain, ostensibly to shoot a film about the New Zealand air force's role in World War II. The Israelis bought four Bristol Beaufighters and a Mosquito with the understanding that the planes would not leave the country. One morning the five planes, cleared to fly as far as Exeter to shoot some battle scenes, took off and kept right on going, later turning up in the Israeli air force. They also purchased three old B-17 bombers, ostensibly for a Honduran airline, then flew them to the Middle East in time to bomb Cairo and Damascus during the 1948 war.

The Israelis have also acquired considerable equipment in their battles with the Arabs. Last fall they used captured Soviet armored cars, still bearing their original Egyptian markings and manned by Israeli commandos dressed in Egyptian-type uniforms, to stage a ten-hour raid along Egypt's side of the Suez Canal. In their most recent raid, commandos slipped across the Gulf of Suez, made a 90-minute forced march to an Egyptian radar site near Ras Gharib and dismantled the seven-ton Soviet-made radar unit. Helicopters whisked the entire installation, housed in two huge vans, 17 miles into Israeli-held territory, along with four captured Egyptian technicians. The year-old P12 radar unit has a range of nearly 200 miles, controls both conventional antiaircraft fire and ground-to-air missiles, and is especially good at detecting low-flying planes. No other P12 has yet been seen in the West, and Israeli intelligence officers call it a more valuable catch than a MIG-21.