Page 357 - כשהצבא החליף מדיו

Gurion from the government and the appointment of Moshe Dayan

as Chief of Staff late in 1953. Until the end of his military career at
the end of 1949, General Ya‘akov Dori skillfully and with resolve
led the transfer of the IDF from a wartime to a peacetime force.
Until his resignation at the end of 1952, General Yigael Yadin was
deeply involved in most of the issues dealt with here. Between this
impressive intellectual figure and the stormy personality of Moshe

Dayan, the role of the third Chief of Staff General Mordechai
Makleff has not received fitting recognition in the public memory.
Despite the fact that he chose to serve as Chief of Staff for only

one single year, Makleff made several important contributions to the
development of the IDF, and the present volume attempts to correct
this distortion.

During his year of service as COS, General Makleff was well
aware of the gathering of a storm. The Pan-Arab turn of the young
officers who came to power in Cairo; the radicalization of the
regime in Damascus; the intensification of the violence of the Arab
infiltrators; the new pro-Arab orientation of the Soviet Communist
regime; and the attempts by the Western power to placate Egypt —
all these pointed more drastically to the danger that another war may

sooner or later erupt between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors.
This book concludes by describing Makleff’s attempts to prepare the

forces under his command for this eventuality.