Yom Kippur War

• 1. Introduction

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  The Yom Kippur War carries more names than most conflicts. It is also called the October War, the Ramadan War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the fourth Arab-Israeli War. It was fought from the 6th to the 25th of October 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.

  Most of the fighting took place in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Israel had occupied both territories since 1967. Some combat also reached mainland Egypt and northern Israel.

  The opening blow fell on a day when two calendars collided. It was the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, and it was also the 10th day of the Muslim month of Ramadan.

  Several puzzles run through this story. An Egyptian president who had spoken openly of peace chose war instead. Israel received warning after warning and was still caught off balance. And a conflict that ended with armies tangled across the Suez Canal somehow opened a path that years of diplomacy had not.

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• 2. Offers Unanswered

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  On the 19th of June 1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, the Israeli government voted to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria. The price was a permanent peace settlement and demilitarization of the returned land. The vote stayed secret and was never conveyed to any Arab state. Foreign Minister Abba Eban later said it had been passed along, but no solid evidence supports his claim. The Americans learned of the decision from Eban, yet nobody asked them to carry it to Cairo or Damascus as a proposal.

  In September 1967, the Khartoum Arab Summit gave its answer. Eight states passed a resolution that became known as the "three nos": no peace, no recognition and no negotiation with Israel. The participants were Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait and Sudan. King Hussein of Jordan had said earlier that he could not rule out a "real, permanent peace." Limited fighting continued and grew into the War of Attrition, an effort to wear down Israel through long pressure.

  In December 1970, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat told The New York Times that he would recognize Israel as an independent state if it withdrew completely from the Sinai. On the 4th of February 1971, he laid out a proposal to the Egyptian National Assembly. Four days later, Swedish diplomat Gunnar Jarring put forward a similar initiative, entirely by coincidence. Egypt accepted much of it, though it differed on points such as the Gaza Strip. It was the first time an Arab government had publicly declared itself ready to sign a peace agreement with Israel.

  Prime Minister Golda Meir formed a committee to study the overture. Its members unanimously concluded that Israel would benefit from full withdrawal to the internationally recognized lines with Egypt and Syria. They also favored returning Gaza, and a majority favored giving back most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Meir was angry, and she shelved the document.

  Washington was furious at the cool Israeli response. Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco warned Israeli ambassador Yitzhak Rabin that Israel would be held responsible for rejecting the best chance for peace since its founding. Israel's reply to Jarring came on the 26th of February. It offered some form of withdrawal but refused to return to the lines of the 5th of June 1967. Eban told the Knesset that those lines could not assure Israel against aggression, and Jarring blamed Israel for refusing a full pullout from the Sinai.

  In February 1973, Sadat tried once more. His adviser Mohammad Hafez Ismail relayed a final overture to Henry Kissinger, including an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, and Kissinger told Meir. She rejected it. Two months later, Israeli leaders concluded that such a rejection would bring imminent war with Egypt, and she still did not reconsider.

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• 3. Sadat's Preparations

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  On the 24th of October 1972, almost a year before the war, Sadat told his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that he intended to fight Israel. He said he would do so even without proper Soviet support.

  He had reasons at home. One account describes his first three years in office as the most demoralized in Egyptian history, with a desiccated economy deepening the national gloom. In that telling, war was a desperate option. Sadat had also declared that Egypt was prepared to "sacrifice a million Egyptian soldiers" in a fight with Israel.

  Four months before the war, Kissinger made Ismail a concrete offer. Israel would withdraw from all of the Sinai except for some strategic points, and Egypt would regain control of the peninsula. Ismail said he would return with Sadat's reply, and he never came back. Sadat was already set on war. Only an American guarantee to fulfill the entire Arab program in a brief time could have dissuaded him.

  From the end of 1972, Egypt concentrated on building up its forces. The Soviet Union supplied MiG-21 jet fighters, SA-2, SA-3, SA-6 and SA-7 antiaircraft missiles, T-55 and T-62 tanks, and RPG-7 antitank weapons. It also provided the AT-3 Sagger antitank guided missile. Egyptian tactics were reworked on Soviet battlefield doctrine. Political generals, who had largely been blamed for the rout of 1967, were replaced with competent ones.

  The goal was limited. Egypt wanted a foothold on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, which it could use to negotiate the return of the Sinai.

  The Soviets thought little of Sadat's chances. They warned that crossing the heavily fortified canal would bring massive losses. Moscow and Washington were both pursuing détente and had no wish to see the Middle East destabilized. In June 1973, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev met President Richard Nixon and proposed that Israel pull back to its 1967 border. If it did not, he said, "we will have difficulty keeping the military situation from flaring up." The remark hinted that the Soviet Union had been unable to restrain Sadat.

  Egyptian General El-Gamasy later described how the operations staff studied the canal in fine detail. They examined the ebb and flow of the tides, the speed and direction of the currents, the hours of darkness and moonlight, and the weather over the Mediterranean and Red Sea. The Saturday they chose met every requirement. It was a fast day in Israel, and the moon shone from sunset until midnight.

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• 4. Warnings Missed

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  Throughout September 1973, Israel received eleven warnings of war from well-placed sources. Mossad Director-General Zvi Zamir still insisted that war was not an Arab option. He later remarked, "We simply didn't feel them capable of war."

  The earlier months had taught a bad lesson. Between May and August 1973, the Egyptian Army ran exercises near the border. Ashraf Marwan warned that Egypt and Syria would launch a surprise attack in the middle of May, and he was wrong. Israel answered the warnings and the exercises with its Blue-White Alert, at considerable cost. That false alarm made it easier for some Israelis to dismiss the real preparations, and Marwan's warning right before the attack, as another drill.

  In the week before Yom Kippur, Egypt staged a week-long exercise beside the canal. Israeli intelligence saw large troop movements toward the water and filed them as training. Syrian troops also moved toward the border, leave was cancelled and reservists were called up. Analysts found this puzzling but not alarming. They believed Syria would not attack without Egypt, and that Egypt would not attack until the weapons it wanted had arrived. Even so, Israel sent reinforcements to the Golan Heights, and they proved critical in the early days.

  On the 4th of October, the Egyptian command publicly announced that part of the reservists called up in late September would be demobilized. Around 20,000 troops were released, and some of them were given leave to make the Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca. The announcement was meant to lull Israeli suspicions.

  On the night of the 25th of September, King Hussein of Jordan secretly flew to Tel Aviv to warn Meir of an impending Syrian attack. He had refused to join the war, but he had met Sadat and Syria's Assad in Alexandria two weeks earlier. Meir asked whether Syria would go to war without Egypt. Hussein did not think so, and he said Egypt would cooperate. Israeli intelligence judged that he had told them nothing new.

  Lieutenant Colonel Aviezer Ya'ari headed the Syria, Lebanon and Iraq desk of Israeli military intelligence. Several days before the war, he suggested that the exercises might be cover for a combined attack. He was reprimanded. He later told the Agranat Commission that he became more cautious in his estimates afterward.

  On the day before the war, General Ariel Sharon was shown aerial photographs by his divisional intelligence officer, Yehoshua Saguy. The Egyptian forces along the canal far exceeded anything seen in training, and all their crossing equipment had been gathered at the water. Sharon phoned General Shmuel Gonen, who had replaced him at Southern Command, and said he was certain war was imminent.

  Zamir's concern grew on the 4th and the 5th of October. Soviet advisers and their families left Egypt and Syria. Transport aircraft thought to carry military equipment landed in Cairo and Damascus, and photographs showed Egyptian and Syrian tanks, infantry and surface-to-air missiles at unprecedented levels.

  Declassified documents from the Agranat Commission record a striking claim by Brigadier General Yisrael Lior, Meir's military secretary. He said Mossad knew from Marwan a week ahead that an attack would come disguised as a drill, but the information never reached the prime minister's office. On the night of the 5th to the 6th of October, Marwan told Zamir that a joint attack would come at sunset the following day. He was wrong about the hour. That warning, on top of all the others, finally pushed the Israeli High Command to act, and orders for a partial call-up of reserves went out just hours before the attack.

  At 8:05 am on Yom Kippur, six hours before the war began, Meir met Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of General Staff David Elazar. Elazar wanted to mobilize the entire air force and four armored divisions, or 100,000 to 120,000 troops. Dayan preferred the air force and two armored divisions, around 70,000 troops. Meir chose Elazar's plan.

  Elazar also argued for preemptive strikes on Syrian airfields at noon, Syrian missiles at 3:00 pm and Syrian ground forces at 5:00 pm. Meir hesitated for a few moments and then ruled out any strike. Israel might soon need American help, and it could not be blamed for starting the war. "If we strike first, we won't get help from anybody," she said.

  Nixon and Kissinger had repeatedly warned her not to be the one to start a Middle East war, and Kissinger sent another dispatch on the 6th of October discouraging a preemptive strike. At 10:15 am, Meir told American ambassador Kenneth Keating that Israel would not strike first, and she asked Washington to work to prevent war. Kissinger urged the Soviets to restrain their allies and told Egypt that Israel would not preempt. These late efforts were futile. In his view, a first Israeli strike would have earned Israel not "so much as a nail" of American support. Israel depended entirely on the United States for resupply, and it was sensitive to anything that might endanger that relationship.

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• 5. The Crossing

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  The Israeli sand walls along the canal stood 18 metres, or 59 feet, high, sloped at 60 degrees and reinforced with concrete at the waterline. Egyptian engineers first tried explosive charges and bulldozers. Then a junior officer proposed high-pressure water cannons. The idea was tested and worked, and several cannons were imported from Britain and East Germany. They washed the walls away using water from the canal itself.

  At 2:00 pm on the 6th of October, Operation Badr opened with a huge airstrike. More than 200 Egyptian aircraft hit three airbases, Hawk missile batteries, three command centers, artillery positions and several radar installations. The airfields at Refidim and Bir Tamada were temporarily put out of service. A barrage from more than 2,000 artillery pieces then pounded the Bar Lev Line and rear command posts for 53 minutes.

  Egypt acknowledged losing five aircraft in the strike. Kenneth Pollack wrote that 18 were shot down, and that those losses led to cancellation of a second planned wave. In one clash, a pair of Israeli F-4E Phantoms met 28 Egyptian MiGs over Sharm el-Sheikh. Within half an hour they had shot down seven or eight, without loss. One of the pilots killed was Captain Atef Sadat, the president's half-brother.

  Fourteen Egyptian Tupolev Tu-16 bombers fired Kelt missiles at Israeli targets in the Sinai, and two more fired at a radar station in central Israel. A patrolling Mirage shot down one missile, and the other fell into the sea. The shots were a warning that Egypt could hit back if Israel bombed deep inside Egyptian territory.

  Under the artillery cover, 32,000 Egyptian infantry began crossing the canal between 14:05 and 17:30. They went in twelve waves at five separate crossing areas, in what became known as The Crossing. Egypt had committed five divisions totaling 100,000 soldiers, 1,350 tanks and 2,000 guns and heavy mortars. Facing them were 450 men of the Jerusalem Brigade, spread across 16 forts along the canal. Only 290 Israeli tanks were in all of Sinai, and just one of their three armored brigades stood near the canal.

  The Egyptians expected a fast Israeli armored counterattack and prepared for it. Each infantry division carried RPG-7 rockets and RPG-43 grenades, and each had an antitank missile battalion with Sagger guided missiles. They built ramps up to 21 metres high at the crossing points to cover the assault and blunt the first tank charges. The Saggers proved devastating to Israel's early armored counterattacks, which were often piecemeal and poorly supported.

  The Israeli Air Force tried to stop the bridges from going up, but it took losses from Egyptian SAM batteries. The raids did little good, because the sectional bridges could be repaired quickly. The Israeli reserve brigade garrisoning the forts was overwhelmed despite fierce resistance. According to Saad El Shazly, fifteen strongpoints fell within six hours. Pollack disputed this and noted that most forts fell only to repeated assaults or sieges lasting days. The northernmost fort, code-named Fort Budapest, held out through the entire war.

  The first Egyptian tanks rolled across at 20:30. By the next morning, some 850 tanks had crossed. Most Israeli defenders of the Bar Lev Line became casualties, and some 200 were taken prisoner.

  Egypt also tried to land commandos by helicopter to slow Israeli reserves. The attempt went badly, and Israel shot down up to 20 helicopters. Chaim Herzog put the loss at 14. Of the 1,700 commandos inserted behind Israeli lines during the war, 740 were killed and 330 captured. Even so, Pollack argued that the commandos fought exceptionally hard and caused enough panic that Israeli commanders took precautions that hindered their efforts against the crossing.

  In the Romani ambush, an Egyptian commando company struck reserves of the 162nd Division, and around 10 Israeli soldiers and 70 commandos were killed. In the town of El-Qantarah el-Sharqiyya, the Egyptian 18th Division cleared the buildings one by one, sometimes in hand-to-hand fighting. The town was fully in Egyptian hands by the morning of the 8th of October.

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• 6. Tanks and Missiles

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  Shmuel Gonen had commanded Israel's Southern Command for just three months when the war began. On the 7th of October, Elazar visited him, and they planned a cautious counterattack by Avraham Adan's 162nd Armored Division for the next day. After Elazar left, Gonen changed the plan on the basis of unduly optimistic field reports.

  Adan's division had three brigades totaling 183 tanks, with a supporting mechanized infantry brigade adding 44 more. The attack aimed at Bar Lev strongpoints opposite the city of Ismailia, against entrenched Egyptian infantry. An opening thrust of some 25 tanks broke through and came within 800 metres of the canal. Then it came under withering fire and lost 18 tanks within minutes, with most commanders killed or wounded.

  A second attack by elements of two brigades suffered from poor communication and coordination. The Egyptians let the Israelis advance, closed around them in a prepared kill zone and opened fire. Most of the Israeli force was wiped out in 13 minutes. Over 50 Israeli tanks were destroyed and eight were captured intact. Towards nightfall, Sharon's 143rd Armored Division beat back an Egyptian counterattack and destroyed 50 Egyptian tanks. Sharon had been reinstated as a division commander when the war began.

  The air war told a similar story. On the 7th of October, the Israeli Air Force carried out Operation Tagar against Egyptian airbases and missile defenses. Seven airbases were damaged, at the cost of two A-4 Skyhawks and their pilots. The next day, hundreds of sorties met the Egyptian SAM shield, and losses ran at three aircraft for every 200 sorties. That rate was unsustainable. Israeli pilots rapidly devised new tactics against the Egyptian air defenses.

  The SAM batteries on the west bank also tied down the Egyptians. Their units generally would not advance beyond a shallow strip, for fear of losing that protection. In the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft had pummeled defenseless Arab armies. This time, Soviet-supplied missiles covered the ceasefire lines.

  The superpowers were drawn in. Between the 9th and the 12th of October, Washington called for a cease-fire in place, but Nixon and Kissinger held back a full-scale arms resupply to Israel. Short of supplies, Israel reluctantly accepted a cease-fire in place on the 12th of October. Sadat refused. The Soviets then began an airlift of arms to Syria and Egypt. The United States wanted to show that Soviet arms could not dictate the outcome, and so it supplied Israel. Washington was ready to wait until Israeli success on the battlefield persuaded the Arabs and the Soviets to stop.

  On the 14th of October, the Egyptians struck east in the Battle of the Sinai. General Shazly strongly opposed an advance that would leave armor without air cover. President Sadat and General Ismail overruled him. They hoped to seize the Mitla and Gidi Passes and the Israeli nerve center at Refidim, and thereby force Israel to move divisions from Syria to the Sinai. Between 800 and 1,000 Egyptian tanks attacked in six thrusts, without SAM cover. Five infantry divisions stayed behind to hold the bridgeheads. They faced 700 to 750 Israeli tanks.

  The Egyptian armor launched head-on attacks into waiting Israeli defenses. At least 250 Egyptian tanks and some 200 armored vehicles were destroyed, and Egyptian casualties exceeded 1,000. Fewer than 40 Israeli tanks were hit, and all but six were repaired and returned to service. Israeli casualties numbered 665. Pollack credited an early Israeli commando raid on an Egyptian signals-intercept site at Jebel Ataqah with disrupting Egyptian command and control during the battle.

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• 7. Across the Canal

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  On the 9th of October, a reconnaissance force attached to Colonel Amnon Reshef's brigade found a gap between the Egyptian Second and Third Armies. General Gamasy later said an American SR-71 spy plane had spotted it. Sharon argued for an immediate crossing at Deversoir, at the northern edge of the Great Bitter Lake. After the failed Egyptian thrust of the 14th of October, the Israelis made their move through that gap.

  On the night of the 15th of October, 750 of Colonel Danny Matt's paratroopers crossed the canal in rubber dinghies. Tanks followed on motorized rafts, along with more infantry. They met no resistance at first. They fanned out in raiding parties against supply convoys, logistics centers and SAM sites, and the SAMs came first. Colonel Haim Erez led 20 tanks and seven armored personnel carriers some 12 kilometres into Egypt that same night, surprising the Egyptians. On the 16th of October, a raid destroyed three Egyptian missile bases and several tanks, with no Israeli losses.

  Attacks on SAM sites punched a hole in the Egyptian air defenses and freed the Israeli Air Force to hit ground targets harder. General Ismail pulled back much of the air defense equipment, which gave the Israelis even more freedom. Israeli jets also destroyed underground communication cables at Banha in the Nile Delta, so the Egyptians had to send selective messages by radio, where they could be intercepted. Otherwise Israel spared economic and strategic infrastructure, because Egypt had threatened to answer with Scud missiles against Israeli cities.

  Sharon wanted to break out of the bridgehead on the west bank. Generals Bar-Lev and Elazar ordered him instead to secure the east bank and clear the roads to the canal, along with a position called the Chinese Farm. They feared that forces on the west bank could be cut off. Sharon objected and was overruled. On the 16th of October, he sent Reshef's brigade against the Chinese Farm. After three days of bitter close-quarters fighting, the Israelis dislodged a numerically superior Egyptian force. They lost about 300 dead, 1,000 wounded and 56 tanks. The Egyptians lost 118 tanks destroyed and 15 captured.

  Egyptian commanders failed to grasp what had happened. Field commanders blurred their reports, and the high command assumed the crossing was a diversion before an Israeli offensive against the Second Army's flank. On the 16th of October, Shazly ordered the 21st Armored Division south and the T-62-equipped 25th Independent Armored Brigade north in a pincer. The two forces did not scout the area and did not coordinate. Adan's division met each separately. It destroyed 50 to 60 tanks of the 21st, then ambushed the 25th and destroyed 86 of its 96 tanks and all its armored personnel carriers. Adan lost three tanks.

  Egyptian artillery hit the Israeli bridge on the morning of the 17th of October, and Egyptian aircraft attacked it repeatedly. The Egyptians lost 16 planes and seven helicopters, and the Israelis lost six planes. The bridge was repaired overnight, but only a trickle of Israeli forces could cross. Engineers worked under heavy fire to build the bridges, and over 100 of them were killed.

  On the morning of the 18th of October, the Soviets showed Sadat satellite imagery of Israeli forces on the west bank. Alarmed, Sadat sent Shazly to the front, because he no longer trusted his field commanders to report accurately. Shazly confirmed that at least one Israeli division was across and widening its bridgehead. He urged withdrawing most Egyptian armor from the east bank. Sadat rejected the idea outright and threatened him with a court martial.

  Israeli forces pushed toward Ismailia, and by the 19th of October they were within 8 to 10 kilometres of the city. Sharon hoped to cut the supply lines of the Second Army. At the logistics base of Orcha, Israeli infantry cleared the trenches in hand-to-hand fighting. More than 300 Egyptians were killed and 50 taken prisoner, while Israel lost 16 dead. The drive stalled south of Ismailia on the 22nd of October, however. Egyptian paratroopers held Jebel Mariam, and Sa'iqa commandos repelled attacks at Nefisha, and a paratroop company attacking Abu 'Atwa without scouting was ambushed and annihilated. Israeli forces never got behind the city.

  South of there, Adan and Magen pushed on against stubborn Egyptian resistance. Adan's troops destroyed two forward SAM batteries from a distance of 4 kilometres, which allowed close air support. They fought through the greenbelt to the Geneifa Hills, where many SAM sites stood, and captured Fayid Airport. Israeli crews prepared it as a supply base and a place to fly out wounded soldiers.

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• 8. Ceasefire and Consequences

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  On the 22nd of October, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 338 by 14-0. The United States and the Soviet Union had largely negotiated it. It called for all military activity to stop 12 hours later, at 6:52 pm Israeli time. The deadline fell after dark, so satellites could not determine where the front lines were when the shooting was meant to stop. Kissinger told Meir he would not object to offensive action during the night before the ceasefire began.

  Several minutes before the deadline, three Scud missiles were fired at Israeli targets, either by Egyptian forces or by Soviet personnel in Egypt. It was the first combat use of Scuds. One targeted the port of Arish and two targeted the Israeli bridgehead. One hit a supply convoy and killed seven soldiers.

  Adan's drive south had left Israeli and Egyptian units scattered across the field, with no clear lines. Firefights broke out as they regrouped. That night, Elazar reported that the Egyptians were attacking and that nine Israeli tanks had been destroyed. Dayan agreed to let Israel respond. It is unclear which side fired first, but Israeli field commanders used the skirmishes to justify resuming the advance. William B. Quandt noted that, whoever fired first, it was the Israeli Army advancing past the 22nd of October lines.

  On the 23rd of October, Adan resumed his attack. Israeli troops captured the last road south of the port of Suez and encircled the Egyptian Third Army east of the canal. Attempts to take Suez itself failed. Armor and paratroopers entered the city and were met by Egyptian soldiers and hastily raised local militia. The armored column was ambushed, and many paratroopers were trapped inside a building. Israel lost 80 dead and 120 wounded, for no tactical gain. Probes on the 25th and the 28th of October were also repulsed.

  Kissinger saw an opportunity in the trapped army. Egypt now depended on the United States to keep Israel from destroying it, and that dependence could later let Washington mediate and wean Egypt from Soviet influence. The United States pressed Israel hard and even threatened to back a UN resolution demanding withdrawal to the 22nd of October positions unless non-military supplies reached the army. Kissinger told Israeli ambassador Simcha Dinitz that destruction of the Third Army "is an option that does not exist."

  Israel had its own reasons for restraint. The encircled army was a bargaining chip for lifting Egypt's blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits and for the return of Israeli prisoners. Its forces were exhausted. Humiliating Egypt might make Sadat less willing to stop fighting, and Israel feared Soviet military intervention if the army were destroyed.

  Historians disagree on how close the Third Army was to collapse. Trevor Dupuy wrote that the Israelis, Soviets and Americans all overestimated its vulnerability. David Buckwalter doubted that Israel could have defended its west-bank forces against a determined Egyptian assault. Patrick Seale and Chaim Herzog saw an army on the brink. Shazly himself called its plight desperate and its encirclement a "catastrophe that was too big to hide."

  When the fighting ended, Israeli forces stood 101 kilometres from Cairo and held 1,600 square kilometres west of the canal. Egypt held about 1,200 square kilometres of the Sinai on the east bank. One source estimated that 30,000 to 45,000 of the Egyptian troops there were encircled. The second ceasefire, on the 25th of October, officially ended the war. Even so, firing along the front never fully stopped until the 18th of January 1974.

  The consequences ran far beyond the battlefield. The Arab world, humiliated in 1967, felt psychologically vindicated by its early and late successes. Israel, despite its battlefield gains, recognized that its military dominance could not be assumed. These shifts fed into the peace process that produced the 1978 Camp David Accords, under which Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty followed, the first time an Arab country recognized Israel. Egypt, meanwhile, drifted from the Soviet Union and eventually left the Eastern Bloc.

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