Operation Yoav (also called Operation Ten Plagues or Operation Yo'av) was an Israeli military operation carried out between October 15 - 22, 1948 in the Negev Desert in 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 batallion from the 8th Armored Brigade and the largest artillery formation that had ever been available to the IDF at the time. On October 18 the Oded Brigade also joined in the operation.
In the evening of October 15 the Israeli Air Force bombed Gaza, Majdal and Beit Hanun. A batallion of the Yiftach Brigade mined the railroad between El-Arish and Rafah and various roads in the Gaza area. Two batallions of the Givati Brigade drove south east of Iraq El-Manshiyeh thus cutting the road between Faluja and Beit Guvrin.
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. Bu the southern Negev Desert, that was alloted 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 October 6, 1948.
The pretext to launch the operation came at October 14, 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."
Palestinian communities captured in Operation Yoav
Palestinian communities captures in Operation Yoav
OperationYoav (also called Operation Ten Plagues or OperationYo'av) was an Israeli military operation carried out from 15 October - 22 October, 1948 in the Negev Desert, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
OperationYoav was headed by the Southern Front commander Yigal Allon.
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.
Operation Assaf was an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation against the Egyptian Army between December 5-December 15, 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
It was a small operation, executed between two larger operations in that theatre, OperationYoav and Operation Horev.
The operation was carried out mainly with Golani Brigade's Gideon Battalion infantry forces, for whom this was the first operation in southern Israel or in flat desert terrain (Golani was normally stationed in the lush and hilly Upper Galilee region, near the Golan Heights for which it is named).
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