55th Paratroopers Brigade

The 55th is a reserve paratroopers brigade whose personnel come from the active Paratroopers Brigade. In recent operations it has served under Division 98; reporting from 2023–2024 documents its fighting in Khan Younis, later service in the Metula sector and Lebanon, and training for the northern arena.[8][7] Its best-known historical role remains its participation in the 1967 Jerusalem campaign under Motta Gur.[3]

A decision to establish an additional reserve paratroopers brigade was made in 1966, and the winter of 1966–1967 was designated for its formation training.[4] The 55th was organized as a reserve formation drawing on highly trained paratroopers who had completed their required active military service a few years earlier.[1]

Mordechai "Motta" Gur was appointed commander of the brigade in 1966.[3] Before taking that post, Gur had served extensively within the paratroopers' corps: he commanded a company under Ariel Sharon during the cross-border raids of the 1950s, was appointed brigade adjutant in 1957, commanded the Golani Brigade from 1961 to 1963, and served as head of the IDF General Staff operations branch in 1965.[3] His appointment brought a seasoned operational commander to the nascent reserve unit.

The brigade's three principal battalions during the Six-Day War were Battalion 66, commanded by Yossi Yaffe; Battalion 71, commanded by Uzi Eilam; and Battalion 28, which initially served as the brigade reserve.[6] Other Israeli formations participating in the Jerusalem campaign included the Jerusalem Infantry Brigade (16), the Harel Mechanized Brigade (10), a Jerusalem tank company, and the Air Force.[9]

The 55th Brigade's original assignment in the Six-Day War was not Jerusalem but the Sinai Peninsula. The brigade was to parachute south of al-Arish and capture the city, and it had staged in orchards near Kibbutz Givat Brenner, close to Tel Nof air base, ready to board aircraft.[6] After the war began and the military situation shifted, the planned drop was canceled and the brigade was redirected to Jerusalem.[6]

On June 5, 1967, at 14:30, orders arrived for the brigade to move to Jerusalem.[10] Gur initially received an order to send a single battalion; shortly afterward, the command was expanded to send the entire brigade.[4] The soldiers traveled to Jerusalem by bus with only about twelve hours to prepare for an assault.[5] Their new mission was to capture built-up areas in coordination with the Jerusalem and Harel brigades and open a route to Mount Scopus, the Israeli enclave in eastern Jerusalem that had been isolated from the western part of the city since the War of Independence.[5][4]

The brigade's intelligence picture was thin from the outset. Central Command held detailed area files that had not reached the brigade; Eilam recalled that the unit began with only maps and a single large aerial photograph.[6] Poor intelligence led the paratroopers to encounter far greater resistance than anticipated.[1]

Ammunition Hill was a fortified Jordanian position overlooking Mount Scopus and the Jerusalem–Ramallah road. During the British Mandate, the site had been converted into a military installation; after it came under Jordanian control following the 1948 War of Independence, Jordanian forces reinforced it as an observation post that cut Mount Scopus off from western Jerusalem.[10] Its defenses included interlocking fortified communication trenches and a reinforced-concrete central bunker.[10][11]

Battalion 66 was assigned to take Ammunition Hill and the adjacent Jordanian Police Training School. The plan, assembled in the field during the night of June 5–6 with minimal intelligence, called for Company D to breach the fences near the Police School, Company B to take the school, Company C to clear the hill, and Company A to advance toward Sheikh Jarrah.[12] The attack began at approximately 2:30 a.m. on June 6.[12] Facing them were approximately 150 dug-in soldiers of the Jordanian el-Hussein Regiment.[13]

The narrow communication trenches intended to channel the assault became an immediate liability. Soldiers carrying weapons and equipment found it difficult to move or cover one another inside the confined passages; squad commanders therefore positioned machine-gun teams outside the trenches to support the men fighting within.[10] As daylight exposed the paratroopers to fire from the hill's bunkers and nearby positions, casualties mounted. Two tanks were later brought forward to help a platoon clear a transverse trench and collapse several bunkers, but the central bunker's thick reinforced-concrete walls resisted attempts to breach them until another force arrived with explosives.[12]

One of the battle's most notable acts of individual courage came from Eitan Naveh, identified as the first soldier to leave the trenches to provide cover for his comrades. Naveh was a paratrooper from Moshav Moledet and a member of the Nahal outpost at Almagor. He had spent the afternoon of June 5 with a Jerusalem family in Beit HaKerem, playing with their young son. During the assault, he ran through the combat zone to cover his fellow fighters and clear their path before being shot and killed. He was 23 and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor—the only participant in the battle to receive that decoration.[10][12] In a final letter to his wife, Naveh wrote: "We are about to leave. We paratroopers are ready for any order given to us and are waiting for the decisive moment. We will not embarrass the firm."[10]

The fighting lasted about four hours before the central bunker was destroyed.[11] Several accounts report that 36 paratroopers and 71 Jordanian soldiers died, while 15 Israeli soldiers received decorations.[5][12] After the fighting, survivors of Battalion 66 stacked stones into a memorial for the paratroopers killed there and placed a helmet on top; they also erected a smaller memorial for the Jordanian soldiers. The Ammunition Hill memorial site was inaugurated in 1975 and declared a national memorial in 1987.[14]

While Battalion 66 was engaged at Ammunition Hill, Battalion 71 under Uzi Eilam advanced through Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz toward the Rockefeller Museum.[6] The fighting along those routes proved costly and disorienting. Eight members of the battalion had been killed by the time Eilam reached a casualty collection point, and one building where five of his soldiers died became known within the unit as "the house of death."[6] Eilam later characterized the operation as "a successful battle with many mistakes."[6]

The 66th Battalion also suffered heavily on its route toward the Rockefeller Museum. Unfamiliar with the area, soldiers took a wrong turn into a narrow alley and came under intense Jordanian fire; only 30 paratroopers—roughly half the original force—emerged unharmed from the route they subsequently called the "Alley of Death." A third group, from Battalion 71, secured a position on Mount Scopus.[5]

Across the night of June 5–6, the paratroopers seized the Police Academy, Ammunition Hill, the Mandelbaum Gate area, the American Colony, and Wadi Joz, opening the road to Mount Scopus and reestablishing contact with the Israeli enclave there.[15][16] The fighting was improvised throughout: the paratroopers crossed into no man's land after midnight and came under Jordanian fire before entering eastern Jerusalem. Dozens were wounded during the opening advance.[14]

On June 7, 1967, the IDF General Staff ordered the capture of the Old City, and Central Command activated the Paratroopers Brigade for the operation.[15] By that morning, most Jordanian troops had retreated from Jerusalem; Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered the Old City's encirclement and instructed the army not to damage its holy places.[5] The brigade captured the Mount Scopus ridge and the Mount of Olives before advancing toward the Old City walls.[15]

Gur chose the Lions' Gate, also known as St. Stephen's Gate, as the entry point. Accounts differ on the degree of resistance there: Encyclopedia.com describes a sharp battle in which paratroopers supported by a small armored force broke through the gate, while the Jewish Virtual Library says the force met no resistance after most Jordanian troops had withdrawn.[16][5] The soldiers then advanced toward the Temple Mount and Western Wall. At 10:08 a.m., Gur radioed: "The Temple Mount is in our hands and our forces are by the [Western] Wall."[5] Brigade communications officer Ezra Orni hung an Israeli flag over the Dome of the Rock, prompting Dayan to radio Gur: "Do you want to set the Middle East on fire?" The flag was taken down.[5]

A notebook map drawn by Gur during the Jerusalem battles traced the brigade's advances across the city. Its pages contained descriptions of the fighting at the Police Academy and Ammunition Hill, the breakthrough through the Lions' Gate, the route to the Western Wall, and the location where Gur made his radio declaration. Gur later gave the map to an American donor; collector Zvi Vilder subsequently purchased it at public auction and unveiled it publicly in connection with Jerusalem Day.[17]

The Jerusalem fighting cost the paratroopers 97 dead and 430 wounded, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.[5] Across the broader Jerusalem campaign, involving multiple Israeli formations, more than 180 Israeli soldiers were killed and many more injured.[10] The flag raised at the Western Wall by company commander Yoram Zamush of Battalion 71 bore an inscription dictated by deputy brigade commander Moshe Stempel identifying the 55th as "the brigade that liberated Jerusalem."[9]

Following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, the 55th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade was mobilized as part of Israel's military response. Battalion 71 was dispatched to Kfar Aza on October 7, where it helped evacuate a neighborhood containing approximately 50 families and participated in removing the bodies of people killed in the massacre.[7]

The brigade fought in southern Gaza from December 2023, taking part in early operations against Hamas and the battle for Khan Younis.[8] Its command post—known as the kadamit—functioned as a central war-management hub in central Israel, coordinating intelligence, air and artillery support, logistics, medical evacuation, and communications for forces in the field. Battalion 28 focused in part on locating and destroying tunnel shafts in the Khan Younis area.[2] The brigade was redeployed in late January 2024 and was subsequently listed among the reserve units withdrawn from Gaza in a February force rotation.[8][18]

The brigade later served in the Metula sector and entered maneuver operations in Lebanon. During that phase, Battalion 71 encountered Hezbollah Radwan terrorists, engaged and killed them, and then directed an Israeli airstrike that destroyed the building they had occupied.[7] On June 25–26, 2024, under the command of Colonel Oded Ziman, the brigade conducted a multi-branch exercise in northern Israel, practicing combat in complex and mountainous terrain, fire-support coordination, and urban warfare in preparation for the northern arena.[8]

The brigade's role in the Jerusalem campaign became central to its public identity and to debates over how the city's capture should be remembered.[9] A Jewish Review of Books essay discussing seven paratroopers who fought in Jerusalem—but not specifying their brigade—emphasizes their self-sacrifice and improvisation amid chaotic urban combat. It also describes differing interpretations of the war: for the kibbutzniks, it was a defense of the state against a perceived existential threat, while for the yeshiva students, the return of Judea and Samaria and the unification of Jerusalem represented what they regarded as a "miraculous restitution."[19]

Battalion 71 was later selected to make the first rubber-boat crossing of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. Its former commander, Uzi Eilam, linked the battalion's later performance to lessons drawn from the costly Jerusalem campaign.[6]

Ammunition Hill became a permanent place of national remembrance. The memorial inaugurated there in 1975 and declared a national memorial in 1987 honors the paratroopers who died in the battle and, through a separate marker, the Jordanian soldiers who fell defending the position.[14] The battle is widely regarded as one of the bloodiest engagements of the Six-Day War.[20]

Several aspects of the 55th Brigade's history and reputation remain disputed among historians, veterans, and participants.

The casualty figures for the Ammunition Hill battle are inconsistent across sources. One Jewish Virtual Library account reports 36 Israeli dead and 71 Jordanian dead; a separate day-by-day account from the same source gives 21 Israeli dead and 70 Jordanian dead.[11][21] The available accounts do not explain the discrepancy.

The brigade's designation as the exclusive or first liberator of Jerusalem has also been disputed. One investigation reports that Jerusalem Brigade Company D, Battalion 163, entered the Old City through the Dung Gate at around 9 a.m. on June 7—before the paratroopers—and that Company B of the same battalion reached the Western Wall before the 55th.[22] A veteran quoted in a separate account criticized narratives that elevated the paratroopers above the other formations that fought for the city, noting that the Jerusalem Infantry Brigade (16), the Harel Mechanized Brigade (10), a tank company, and the Air Force all played important roles alongside the 55th.[9] These competing recollections and documentary claims reflect a contested public memory rather than an uncontested chronology.

The strategic necessity of capturing Ammunition Hill has also been debated. Historians have questioned decisions made by Gur and others, while poor intelligence led the paratroopers to encounter substantially greater resistance than anticipated.[1] Finally, the framing of the 1967 capture of East Jerusalem and the Old City as "liberation" or "unification" remains politically contested. The Congressional Research Service notes that most countries do not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, view the city's status as subject to negotiation, and regard East Jerusalem as occupied territory, while Palestinians claim it as their future national capital.[23]