“I do not want to blame anyone,” said Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in one of their discussions after the Yom Kippur War (also known as the October War in the West and the Ramadan War in Egypt and the Arabic-speaking world), “but over the course of 1973, the war could have been prevented.”1 Kissinger viewed the war which had broken out in October as the “culmination of the failure of political analysis.”2
Decision-makers in Israel had been mistaken in thinking that their military superiority and deterrence, along with the political support of the United States, would both prevent a political process which they did not want and uphold the favorable (to Israel) status quo. The Israeli prime minister and minister of defense did not comprehend that, in order to ensure Israeli security, military superiority was not enough; a peace agreement was also necessary. At the “culmination of the failure of political analysis” in October 1973, in the days leading up to the war, they erred in their misconception that political considerations would prevent Egyptian president Anwar Sadat from starting a war and that he would wait for a political process to begin a month later, after the Israeli elections. It was convenient for them to base this illusion on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) leadership’s assertion that, if an attack did take place, the standing army could bring it to a halt and that the IDF, without any great effort, could transfer the fighting to the other side of the Suez Canal or deep into Syrian territory.
The American secretary of state perhaps did not want to blame anyone, but he reminded the prime minister of the effort that he had made in coordination with Israel throughout that fateful year to avoid discussion with Sadat about an agreement—or, as Kissinger put it, “to buy time and to postpone the serious stage for another month, another year” and “to calm Sadat down in order to give him a reason to remain passive.”3
After Meir rejected his plan to formulate the principles of a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt before September 1973, Kissinger had submitted to Israeli pressure and used his great diplomatic skill to maintain the political deadlock. The United States, with his maneuvering, deliberately chose not to advance Sadat’s peace initiative. Their moves succeeded—and the war broke out.
Finally, after more than 2,650 Israelis and tens of thousands of Egyptians and Syrians had died,4 the United States again undertook to advance the Egyptian president’s peace initiative from which Prime Minister Meir’s government had fled. Following the war, it required all of Kissinger’s skill, status, good will, and energies to revive the initiative, which was finally implemented in similar form to what Sadat, via his envoy, had proposed to Kissinger before the war. But the prime minister on the Israeli side who ultimately signed the agreement was no longer Golda Meir, but a Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin.
“Is it worth my while to become a central figure in dealing with the Middle East?” Kissinger consulted with the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Yitzhak Rabin, eight months prior to the war, just before Kissinger opened a channel for secret talks with Sadat.5 Rabin, knowing the position of Prime Minister Meir, did not hesitate to answer: Israel had no interest in advancing a political process in 1973. So “he, Kissinger, must not undertake the responsibility for achieving a political solution. Nonetheless, it would be more than essential, perhaps fateful for Israel,” if Kissinger led US policy in the Middle East.6 In that way, he could assist Israel in delaying Sadat’s political initiative and, at the same time, act to strengthen Israel militarily and economically in order to deter Egypt from taking military steps against it.
This intimate conversation between Rabin and Kissinger took place on February 22, 1973, and is not included in the American transcript of their meeting.7 Kissinger had requested that this part of the discussion be considered a talk between friends. Rabin reported on the discussion in writing to the prime minister, as he did with all of the conversations he had by telephone or face to face with senior members of the American administration. His successor, Simcha Dinitz, rigorously continued this practice.
A destroyed Israeli M-60 tank during the Arab-Israeli War, October 1973
The few preliminary research studies investigating the political events of 1973 have tended to cast responsibility for not preventing the war on Kissinger—for missing the opportunity to advance Sadat’s peace initiative.8 This inaccurate conclusion could be drawn from a consideration of a number of the documents. However, a deeper look clarifies that it was not Kissinger who led this strategy of non-cooperation; rather, he was acting to assist the Israeli government, sometimes under protest, in its policy of not promoting political progress. He was not the one who orchestrated Meir’s refusals, but he definitely served Israeli policy interests when they were presented to him as unchangeable realities.
On February 28, 1973, two days after he had received Sadat’s ground-breaking initiative through the secret channel he had opened, Kissinger spoke with Golda Meir at a clandestine meeting.9 The prime minister had not come to talk peace. She demanded that Kissinger keep his promise that, until the end of 1973, the United States would not put pressure on Israel to reach a peace agreement that would force Israel into returning Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty. Kissinger replied: “In the talks with [Sadat’s envoy Hafez] Ismail, I can apply my regular delaying tactics.” On that note, Meir concluded her visit to Washington.
Kissinger had many good reasons not to give in to Israeli demands to relate to Egypt with contempt. It was in his interest to promote the political initiative. After all, a secret political process led by the United States would serve his ultimate aim of continuing to weaken Soviet influence in the world in general and in the Middle East in particular. Promoting such an initiative would also prevent an armed conflict in the Middle East that would damage the thaw in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union for which Kissinger had strived. On a personal level, as well, conducting such an initiative would have enabled him to supplant the State Department (before his appointment to stand at its head) in managing US policy in the Middle East. So, in contrast to the arguments blaming him, it is difficult to believe that Kissinger would have rejected and delayed Sadat’s initiative if the Israeli government had responded to it at all positively. Indeed, immediately after his discussions with Sadat’s envoy and with Meir, he updated President Nixon about his intention to achieve what he called “heads of agreement” for peace between Israel and Egypt and to formally announce an agreement before the Israeli elections. If Israel agreed, he said, “we are in business.” “We’ve got to tell ’em we’re not squeezing them,” directed President Nixon, “and then squeeze ’em.”10
But Meir, via Rabin—and later Dinitz, under her direction—pointedly clarified to Kissinger Israel’s interest in maintaining the political deadlock. Kissinger had coordinated the steps to keep his promise to them. The Israeli representatives in Washington kept watch over his moves, lest he attempt to deviate from this policy, and did not hesitate to comment to him if it seemed to them that he had.
Kissinger, for his part, presented the general outline for a political process based on Sadat’s initiative to President Nixon and, later, to Israel as well. He tried several times during the following months to change the Israelis’ attitude toward his tentative plan and to convince Israel to accept it. But he met with refusal. Thus Ambassador Dinitz could report to Meir later: “Shaul [Kissinger’s alias in the secret correspondence] is sure that [the Egyptians] will request [an additional] meeting and he will agree, but in the meanwhile another few weeks will go by and the [US-USSR] summit will be approaching, and so we may possibly get through summer without undue pressure.”11
Later, on April 11, after a meeting with Kissinger, Dinitz reported to Meir: “All [Kissinger] asks for is for us to give him ammunition to continue to play for time as he has done up to now.”12 The tight Israeli supervision over the American national security advisor was consistent and continuous. On July 4, 1973, after a discussion with Kissinger, Dinitz reported to the prime minister: “All that [Kissinger] intends to do in his reply [to Egypt] is to propose another meeting. That cannot take place before September. This will again make things easier for him in his contacts with the Russians as he will be able to play one against the other and he can gain time.”13
At the beginning of September, immediately after Kissinger was named secretary of state, he began to prepare Israel for his intentions to promote the political initiative and end the deadlock. In reaction, on September 25 (two weeks before the war broke out), Meir instructed Dinitz to tell Kissinger: “We are not of the opinion that the present situation is the ideal. But a period of election is not a convenient time for serious discussion. After the election and the composition of the new government, we will consult together [on] what can be done.”14 Kissinger’s reply, transmitted by Dinitz on September 30, a week before the Yom Kippur War broke out, was as follows: “Here Naftali [Kissinger’s alias] mentioned that when he had formulated the common strategy with us two years ago, he had adhered to it completely and neither of us had lost as a result, but that horse was dead. It is important right now to formulate a new common strategy.”15
Sadat did not know the details of the coordination between Kissinger and Meir, but he knew the results well—a continuing delay in discussion of his initiative. In June 1973, after the summit between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and US president Richard Nixon in San Clemente, California, had not led to political developments, he began to moderate his threats of war and to intensify his preparations for it, as the only alternative left for him to set the political process in motion. On October 6, six days after Meir received the message that “the horse was dead,” Presidents Sadat and Assad gave orders to Egyptian and Syrian forces to start the war.
Anwar Sadat, October 1973
On November 7, immediately following the end of the war, Kissinger arrived in Egypt and met with Sadat for the first time. (Until then all contact with him had taken place via his envoy, Hafez Ismail.) The two met privately for four hours, an exceptional amount of time for political meetings. Later Kissinger characterized the meeting as historic and stated that Sadat understood the situation better than he did and was superior to him at delineating his objectives.
Months later, when he had closely experienced Sadat’s method of political decision-making, Kissinger described his impressions of Sadat to Ismail Fahmi and Ashraf Marwan: “He is really very farsighted, he is one of the great political leaders I have met.”16 Kissinger defined the Israeli political elite at the time, in contrast, as having a low ability to analyze complex situations and to conduct a long-term policy and compared their decision-making to that of the Syrians, in that “they are preoccupied with the domestic situation.”17
The policy of repudiation Meir and her “kitchen cabinet” conducted in 1973 and their recoil from promoting discussion of any initiative were based on the public atmosphere in Israel and the Israeli elections which were to take place in late October. Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan’s well-known statement that he “prefer[red] to stay in Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than to give them Sharm el-Sheikh with peace and return to the former lines”18 was based on (or formed the basis of) the position of the Israeli public. The findings of a public opinion poll taken at the beginning of the year found that 96 percent of the population was unwilling to give up this strategic and exotic location in southern Sinai, even for full peace.19
A number of years later, most of the Israeli population joined the remaining 4 percent to express widespread support for the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which of course included withdrawal from Sharm el-Sheikh along with the rest of Sinai. Dayan himself, who had been minister of defense and a dominant figure in Meir’s government, was then serving as foreign minister in Begin’s first government and became a coordinating figure in formulating and promoting the treaty. He had been an active partner in Israel’s rejectionist policies, but had changed his mind after the war and was heading the peace process on the Israeli side—which in time directly led to a conspiracy theory, according to which Dayan had wanted the war to take a heavy toll in Israel in order to prepare the public for the necessary withdrawal. The emergence of this theory demonstrated how difficult it was for public opinion to accept the political earthquake and the military collapse—and the change of direction which came in its wake.20
There was no conspiracy. Dayan did not want Israeli victims; Golda Meir certainly did not either. But Israel was forced to pay a price for the “common strategy” to which Meir had succeeded in recruiting Kissinger and its objective of refusing the Egyptians’ peace feelers, at least until after the Israeli elections. The Americans, in return for foot-dragging, required Israel not to open a preemptive attack or escalate the tension by mobilizing large sectors of the reserves, if Egypt were to create such tension. In retrospect, many wondered at and lamented Meir’s and Dayan’s inaction in not launching a preemptive strike and in not calling up the reserves in the days prior to the war. This inertia was an expression of Israel’s clandestine obligation as per the understandings of December 1971 between Israel and the United States.21
The secret progression of events in the political track between Sadat, his envoy, and Kissinger and between Kissinger and Meir and her close associates, which has until now not been fully investigated, sheds completely new light on the Yom Kippur War and its causes, on Israeli steps before the war, and on the surprise and shock on the Israeli side following the war’s outbreak. The facts which will be revealed here demonstrate that it was the collapse of Dayan’s and Meir’s “political conception,” as it came to be called, not an intelligence failure, that dictated Israeli moves in the days preceding the war and led to failure by preventing Israel from making appropriate preparations for an attack against it.
The deficient “intelligence conception” that led the heads of the Army Intelligence Branch to estimate a “low probability” of war carries its own shame, but had almost no effect on decision-making. The question is not what the intelligence system knew or estimated on the eve of the war but what the political echelon had decided on the basis of events in the secret track—and what was hidden even from the army chief of staff and the head of army intelligence.
The war that finally did break out cost Israel more than 2,650 deaths, hundreds of prisoners of war and missing in action, many thousands of wounded, and great personal suffering for hundreds of thousands of families and friends. Its financial cost was tremendous, but more importantly, on a national level Israel lost its deterrent power. The leadership on all levels lost the trust and the credit to lead.
This book ends with the siren wails that punctuated the Israeli cabinet meeting on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, 1973. This work does not deal with the war but, rather, with its roots. For the first time, the reader is presented with the stories of the complex events of 1973 that led to the Yom Kippur War. An appendix discusses the controversial case of Ashraf Marwan, a Mossad agent who was active in the Egyptian elite.
The book was conceived when, in the framework of my MA and PhD research dealing with the historical geography and political history of the Golan Heights, I became privy to documents of the period, especially material in the US archives. Those documents referring to 1973 were both fascinating and insomnia-producing. I made several trips to Washington. During the day I photographed as many documents as I could, and at night I saved them on my computer. I barely managed to have a look at them, but what I hastily read was enough to agitate me. Some of what I read was already known, but most had yet to be made public. The documents available in the Israeli archives at present have completed the picture. On the face of it, it appears that the Israeli elected leaders of the period, although well-meaning, failed to understand realities and acted with arrogance, with overconfidence, and with political blindness. They wanted the maximum for us but caused us to lose much more.
The documentation indicates that in contrast to the common assumption, it was not an intelligence failure which caused a renewal of war. Intelligence is not responsible for the fact that the State of Israel, whose army was well equipped and well trained, stationed on the banks of the Suez Canal and on a strategic line in the Golan Heights with the political and military support of the United States, was hurled into the grim predicament of the Yom Kippur War with no ability to control events. A committee of inquiry with Israeli Chief Supreme Court Chief Justice Shimon Agranat at its head examined the military’s responsibility for the severe results of the war, but not having access to the political material, the committee was limited in its ability even to investigate intelligence and military events, at least those aspects which required an integrated view of both the military and the political. This was all the more true as the committee was unable to examine or to draw conclusions about the conduct of the political system and could not adequately judge regarding the division of responsibility between military and political bodies.
Preliminary historical accounts in Israel, which were by nature partial and biased, assigned responsibility for the failure to foresee the outbreak of war to the intelligence services and the military. Personal blame for the highly charged events of the Yom Kippur War was a heavy burden for any person to bear; this burden overwhelmed and defeated David (Dado) Elazar, who had served as the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff during the war. The others upon whom the Agranat Commission cast responsibility have continued to deal with this burden, each in his own way. It was convenient for many, especially the political leaders, to limit the personal conclusions to military personalities. However, Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, who resigned from the government after being elected directly after the war, knew more of their own failures than the public knew then—and more than the public knows today.
Historical research and writing are only possible decades after the events under study. Until then our memories and understandings about what occurred are based only on partial information that, in many cases, is missing, or that focuses on a narrow view of the events and adopts only one narrative of them. In addition, this information is frequently biased and mistaken. That is the main reason why almost forty years after 1973, the Israeli public still does not know much about the real circumstances that led to the war.
The dramatic events of that year naturally led to unceasing examination, but the research, writing, and discussion have focused on their military and intelligence aspects, on the failure of the intelligence evaluations, on the battles with the Egyptians and Syrians, and on the “war of the generals.” If these writings touched on political aspects, this was only marginal to the intelligence and the military realms and did not teach the reader about the political events of the period.
However, the central dimension of 1973 was the conduct of the political level: both the political developments that took place and those that were prevented from taking place before the war. As the months went by without anything happening, Sadat deliberated between two alternatives, one diplomatic and the other military. Both were meant to set a political process in motion. In June, following Israel’s and Kissinger’s coordinated policy to perpetuate the political deadlock by merely avoiding a response to his initiative, Sadat apparently felt he was left solely with the second alternative—war.
The political echelon in Israel who had pushed Sadat into this corner had not prepared to deal with its risks and did not caution the operational and intelligence echelons. They had even tied the hands of the IDF in return for American cooperation in futile diplomacy whose only objective was to thwart a political process.
The great amount of documentation which has recently been publicly released in the United States and Israel and the integration between the two have led to a turning point in historical investigation of the period. We are on the threshold of historical research and writing that will examine the political aspects of 1973. The time has come to investigate the conduct of the political system in 1973 during the period preceding the Yom Kippur War. Updated research resources are now for the most part available, and the importance of the need to research this period extends beyond merely getting to know the past.
Despite the fact that the book discusses the events of 1973, the attention of many readers will be directed toward the present. History, as is well known, does not repeat itself, but it is important to be familiar with it, as such knowledge assists us in better evaluating current events. The actions of the prime minister and the minister of defense that led to the Yom Kippur War evoke thoughts about the role of a national leader, about the relations between decision-makers and evaluation bodies, about the price of silencing a mobilized or a paralyzed media, about the price of the “national euphoria” that characterized Israeli society in the “euphoric period” between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, and, particularly, about the price of a conviction that time is working in Israel’s favor.
