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War in the Middle East
On 6 Ocober 1973, large numbers of Egyptian and Syrian military units
crossed the frontiers with Israel that had held since 1970. Around 240
Egyptian warplanes crossed radar installations. At the same time, some
1800 artillery and mortar positions opened up along the whole front and
700 Syrian tanks attacked the Golan Heights where the Israeli land forces
had only been able to deploy some 150 tanks. Although reports had already
been circulating throughout the summer of an Egyptian-Syrian attack,
the Israeli army command appeared to be caught by surprise. It
seems that they were only convinced that the threat was serious a few days
before the actual outbreak of the war. The possibility of a pre-emptive
strike was briefly considered, but there was insufficient time for the necessary
preparations. And furthermore, Israel would then be branded in international
opinion as the aggressor. The decision therefore, as the Dutch
Ambassador G.J. Jongejans reported to The Hague, was to wait whilst at
the same time ‘seeking the full moral and political advantage’ of that restraint.
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The question is whether the aggressors really had set themselves the
aim of ‘wiping Israel from the map’. Possibly their intention was merely
to realise limited military objectives and to cause an international crisis
which would make the Great Powers realise that continued political impasse
was unsustainable. Whatever the case, the Arab advance was an
impressive success, and the Israeli military situation rapidly became serious.
Within a very short time, the Egyptian forces had crossed the Suez
Canal and broken through the Israeli line of defence. The Egyptian Army
was able to re-take most of the Suez East Bank, occupied by Israel ever
since the 1967 war, while at the same time the Syrian army succeeded in
occupying a large part of the strategically important Golan Heights. It
seemed that a real disaster for Israel was taking shape.
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