The history of the modern Middle East is complicated enough to begin with- but when you throw in this rich, detailed examination of one of the most complex and curious wars ever fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the word 'complicated' doesn't even begin to do it justice- and one thing is for certain- Abraham Rabinovich, US Army Veteran and journalist in both the United States and Israel has managed to produce what may well be the definitive account of a very complicated war.
So what happened? Well, in a sense, the Yom Kippur War (or October War, as it's known in the Arab world) was made almost inevitable by Israel's stunning triumph in the Six Day War of 1967. (Quick history lesson: June 1967, Israel launches a pre-emptive surprise attack on pretty much all of its neighbors, destroys the mighty Egyptian Air Force ON THE GROUND and gets The West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights as a result. A total military disaster for Egypt, Syria, Jordan and company. For all the geography involved, kids, check this out here.)
Any-hoo, after 1967 Israel had no reason whatsoever to negotiate with the Arab world. It had won, it had gotten a lot of territory and frankly, the Arabs had nothing to offer Israel that would entice them back to the negotiating table. New Egyptian President Anwar Sadat came up with an answer: deciding that getting all of the Sinai Peninsula back by force was a pipe dream, he figured that if he struck hard and fast enough to push Israel back from the Suez Canal, he could win a limited enclave and keep fighting long enough for the US and USSR to intervene to force a cease fire. Negotiations would follow for the rest of Egypt's land.
And in the end, that's pretty much what happened. Egypt got together with Syria and planned a devastating two front attack that contained a number of truly innovative and brilliant military tactics. To blunt the power of the Israeli Air Force (IAF), Egypt would advance under an umbrella of surface to air missiles, which proved effective. To counter Israel's tactical doctrine of 'armor shock' (massed tank charges and the like) Egyptian infantry was armed with Sagger anti-tank missiles and RPGs which were so effective that many people (prematurely as it turned out) proclaimed 'the death of the tank'. I wish I could say I saw similar levels of innovation on the part of the Syrians, but there wasn't really a lot of indications that there were.
The intelligence failure on the part of the Israelis was both stunning in the fact that every major organ of their military intelligence AMAN stubbornly clung to the strategic notion that their Arab neighbors simply lacked the backbone to launch a strike at Israel. This belief continued to permeate the Israeli government almost right up to the start of the war- providing a stunning example of the dangers of group think, given the number of naysayers in the run up to the war that were ignored. (Interestingly enough, it wasn't technically a surprise attack- Israeli intelligence confirmed that the attack was coming through a source (The Source) in the Egyptian government the night before- but too late to fully mobilize their military forces.)
In the end, Israel was caught with its pants down and quickly became embroiled in a struggle for its own survival. Egypt and Syria threw everything they could into this war (interesting factoids: 10,000 artillery shells fell on Israeli lines on the Egyptian front in the first minute of the opening barrage. On the Syrian front, Syria sent 1,460 tanks at Israel's 177 and 115 artillery batteries against Israel's 11.) Overwhelming odds don't really accurately describe what Israel was facing. The situation on the Egyptian front was bad enough, but Syria came very, very close to breaking through Israeli lines in the Golan and was, in fact, at one point, faced with an open road down into Northern Israel, but didn't (bizarrely enough) take it.
Overall: a surprise attack, an epic struggle for Israel's survival and it all ended with Israeli armies on the roads to Damascus and Cairo respectively- but more importantly still, what happened in 1973 lead to the Camp David Accords of 1979 and eventually the Oslo Accords of 1993. Abraham Rabinovich has managed to produce what should be the definitive account of this most complex of wars for some time to come.
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