was unavoidable and incvitahll'; accordingly, hl' sought to disguise t hl· I[)I :'s defensive organization. Sharon's defensive plan aimed to maximize visual synergy, lines of fire and movement across the terrain. The isolated, semi-autonomous strongpoints were to be located so that each could be seen from those adjacent to it, and spaced apart at the distance of artillery fire so that they could cover each other. The strongholds were essentially command and logistic centres from where what Sharon called 'armoured fists' - tank battalions - could be mobilized against the enemy's main effort in crossing the canal. Moreover, equipped with command, control and longrange surveillance facilities, underground bunkers, anti-aircraft positions and emplacements for tanks and artillery, each strongpoint had a semi-independent battle capacity. 17 An expanding network of roads and signal stations was to weave the strongpoints together. Towards the rear, the emplacements gave way to military training bases, airfields, camps, depots, maintenance facilities and headquarters. While unable to convince the IDF General Staff of his plans for the Sinai, Sharon, in his role as director of training, dispersed the various training schools under his command throughout the depth of the West Bank. Moreover, Sharon saw military installations as a first stage in the domestication and naturalization of the vast Occupied Territories: the layout and infrastructure of the camps were to become the blueprint for their civilian colonization by settlements. 1H Beyond that, it was an innovative geographical time/ space arrangement with the system of defence in depth requiring a different form of military organization. 19 linear fortifications rely on the ability of central command to control all areas of the extended linear battlefield equally; in contrast, defence in depth seeks the relative dispersal of military authority and the increased autonomy of each semi-independent battle unit?' Although nested in traditional military hierarchies, the system's diffusion of the command structure allows independent units to develop what the military calls 'flexible responsiveness', according to which local commanders can act independently, on their own initiative, and in response to emergent necessities and opportunities without referring to central command. Diffused command has heen a standard component part of a military response to the chaotic nature of battles in which chains of command and communication are often severed and the overall picture of battle is often blurred. Sharon's command style was well suited to such a situation. It was encapsulated in his oft-repeated statement 'tell me what to do but don't tell me how to do it'. Although this was indicative of the command style of the IDF, Sharon took it further, seeking to break as much as possible with standard command structures and organizational forms. Equally, he often avoided - or pretended to avoid - intervening in his subordinates' actions, providing them only with general guidelines and making them believe that they themselves had planned their own missions.
If the principk ol htll'>ll ddl'llll' I~ to prohibit (or 111l11lllt) till' l'lll'lllY fro111 gaining a foothold hl'l'olld 11, whl'll tlu· linl' is hrl·adll'd at a single Io,·ation murh like a kaking bucket of watl'r it ts rt·tukrl'll usdl·ss. A nl·twork ddi.·m'l', on tlw other hand, is flexible. If one or morl' of its stongpoints arc attacked and capturl'll, the system can adapt itself by t(,rming new connections across its depth. Till' category of 'depth' is thus not only spatial but conceptual, and is used to dl'snilll' the level of synergy between various elements that compose a military system. The degree of a system's depth lies in its distributed capacity to reorganize com1ect ions, and the degree to which these connections can permit, rq,'1.llatc and respond to information flow from strongpoints positioned in other areas in the battldicld. The relation between the system's components is a relative fi!-,YUrc ddined hy tlw speed and security of travel across its depth, between the different strongpoint~:'' While the rationale of the Bar Lev Line was to stop the I \gyptians fn llll disturbing the geopolitical status quo that the line delineated, Sharon's plan conversely encouraged an Egyptian attack; Israeli forces would then counterattack the moment the enemy's supply lines became overextended: 22 'If the l·:gyptians did try to cross [the canal], we could afford to let them get a mile or two insidl· the Sinai. Then we would be able to harass them and probe for their weak points at our convenience ... [after which] we would be in a position to launch till' kind of free-flowing mobile attack we were really good at.'21 Therefore, while the line is a military-geometrical instrument that seeks to separatl' two distinct hostile realms, the spatial-organizational model of the network crt·atl'S a more diffused and dynamic geography. Following this logic, the system of ddi.·nl'l' in depth has the capacity to exchange space and time alternately. At the beginning of an attack it trades space for time - the attacker is allowed to gain space while the defender gains organizational time; later, it exchanges time for space as tIll' trapping of the attacker within the web of the network enables the defender later to progress into and attack the latter's unprotected rear. The Israeli public was exposed to the classified disputes between Sharon, Bar Lev, and the other members of the General Staff that reached their peak in 1969. Sharon was leaking them to the press, which in turn used his anonymously delivered comments to portray the military and political elites as reactionary 'slow thinkers', a tactic that had particular impact on Bar Lev, whom the Israeli public loved to mock for his slow, ponderous manner of speaking. The disagreement was also presented as a conflict between the tank offict:rs with their heavy-handed, technical way of thinking and the pioneering maverick frontiersman/ commando-soldier embodied by Sharon. 24 By the summer of 1969, when Bar Lev realized he could no longer contain Sharon's ability to mobilize the media against the rest of the General Staff, he dismissed him from military service on a technicality: Sharon had forgotten to
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FORTIFICATIONS
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