The Angel

by Uri Bar-Joseph

  Sadat called Kissinger’s bluff—and the Americans failed to deliver. In the ensuing months, nothing new came from the American side, and Sadat realized that the White House had no intention of getting Egypt back the Sinai in exchange for a peace agreement with Israel. He had reached a dead end.

  On October 24, 1972, Sadat summoned the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces for a special meeting in his residence in Giza. He informed the chiefs of the military that in light of the futility of efforts to convince the Americans to move diplomacy forward, he had decided to launch a war, “using whatever means are at our disposal.” The implications were clear. If until then, the Egyptian war paradigm (and, by extension, the Israeli intelligence kontzeptzia) had held that Egypt could not launch a war without getting “weapons of deterrence,” that barrier had now ceased to exist. Egypt would find the way to go to war without these means. Sadat emphasized how crucial the time factor had now become, ordering his military to prepare for the attack as soon as the beginning of 1973—two months hence.

  Many of the participants in the meeting voiced forceful objections. Some spoke of the home front’s vulnerability to Israeli bombing raids. Others, especially the commanders charged with crossing the Suez Canal, complained about the operational difficulties involved in fending off Israel’s superior armor and the enormous earth embankments Israel had positioned along the canal to prevent an Egyptian crossing. The army’s chief of staff, Saad el-Shazly, and his chief of operations, Mohamed Abdel Ghani el-Gamasy, urged the president to petition other Arab states for help in the war effort. And the minister of war, General Mohammed Ahmed Sadek, said that the goal of the war should be conquering the entire Sinai Peninsula, and that the Egyptian military was very far from being able to do that.

  Sadat was not moved. He repeated that he saw no alternative to war, that an assault must be launched in the coming months, and that the goal would not be the conquest of all of Sinai but rather shattering the status quo and triggering a diplomatic effort that would end in restoring all Egyptian territory. Two days later, he made his resolve as clear as could be: He fired the minister of war, the minister’s deputy, and the commander of the navy, replacing them with men less hesitant about war.

  In the months that followed, Egypt’s military leaders translated Sadat’s directives into operational plans. The objective of the war was to challenge Israel’s belief that occupying the Sinai would, in itself, provide security for the country, by (a) undermining Israel’s economy through a prolonged conflict that would require an extended mobilization of reserves, (b) isolating Israel diplomatically, and (c) changing the balance of power in the region by convincing the Americans to put pressure on Israel to give up the lands it took in 1967, especially the Sinai. Egypt’s new war concept meant new territorial objectives as well. Until the summer of 1971, when Sadat appointed Shazly to take over the military just months after the Corrective Revolution in May of that year, the goal had been to conquer the whole Sinai using a plan known as Granite II; when Shazly took over, more limited plans were developed, known as Operation 41, which sought to conquer land up to the Mitla and Gidi Passes that cut through the mountains of western Sinai—about twenty-five to forty miles east of the Suez Canal. But these plans still needed “weapons of deterrence” to combat Israel’s air power. With Sadat’s new directive to prepare for war by the start of 1973, it was decided to limit the war aims to what seemed reasonable to believe the Egyptian army was capable of achieving even without the long-range missiles and aircraft.

  These new plans were ready by January 1973, as ordered. The new plan, known as Operation High Minarets, aimed both to solve the problem of Egyptian military vulnerability to IAF attacks and to fulfill Sadat’s demand for something that would shake up the region and force progress on the diplomatic front. The focus of the plan was the crossing of the Suez Canal—using the very same plan that Marwan had given Israel back in 1971, with five infantry divisions crossing at five points. But as opposed to earlier plans, which saw the crossing as the first phase meant to enable the armored divisions to launch themselves toward the Mitla and Gidi Passes, with Operation High Minarets the crossing of the canal and capture of its eastern bank would be the final goal of the whole war. In this way, Egyptian troops could avoid having to move eastward beyond the antiaircraft umbrella, which extended no more than six miles east of the canal.

  Operation High Minarets was kept top secret—and not just from the Israelis. It was crucial to keep the Syrians from knowing just how limited Egypt’s actual territorial aims were. For Sadat, the cornerstone of his military strategy was forcing the Israelis to fight on two fronts simultaneously, dividing both their manpower and their attention. For this, however, he would need the Syrians to attack from the north on the Golan Heights. And because the conquest of the Golan could allow the Syrians to cross the Jordan River and invade northern Israel, while the Suez Canal was very far from the Israeli border, Sadat understood that if Syria were to attack, Israel’s principal occupation would be fighting off the onslaught in the north—making it much more likely that Egypt would successfully capture and hold the east bank of the Suez Canal. Yet in order to secure the agreement of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, the Syrians had to believe that Egypt planned on putting everything they had behind a full invasion of the Sinai, not just keeping their troops under the antiaircraft umbrella in the canal zone. If Assad were to find out about Operation High Minarets, the whole plan would be scrapped.

  In order to keep Assad in the dark while securing his cooperation in the planned joint attack, Egypt developed a second military plan, completed in April 1973, known as Granite II Improved. In this version, which was shared with the Syrians and formed the basis of all of their discussions with Egypt about the war, the infantry would cross the canal in the first phase, and then the armored divisions would cross into Sinai and head for the passes.1

  Granite II Improved also included some serious improvements for crossing the canal. To deal with the problem of the embankments, water cannons would blast away enough to make room for amphibious vehicles landing on the eastern bank. To minimize loss of Egyptian forces and maximize the territory secured on the eastern bank, Egypt would encircle and cut off IDF fortifications rather than try to overrun them. And to prevent or delay IDF reservists from reaching the front, commandos would be dropped by helicopters at key locations in Sinai, cutting off approach roads. On the first day of combat, Egypt would send its five infantry divisions to establish five beachheads on the eastern bank. On the second day, they would expand the beachheads, and on the third day they would link them up, creating a strip of conquered territory along the canal and extending up to seven and a half miles deep into Sinai. Once this was complete, two armored divisions, the 4th and the 21st, would cross the canal and launch an eastward attack heading for the Mitla and Gidi Passes.

  That was Granite II Improved, the official plan shared with the Syrians. The plan that Shazly actually intended to implement, however, was Operation High Minarets—identical to Granite II Improved, just without the final step of bringing the armored divisions across the canal or attacking deeper into Sinai. It was so secret that even the division commanders were unaware of it.2

  Meanwhile, Egypt began its exercises to train for the attack. While in the past, exercises focused mostly on training the tank divisions for combat in Sinai, now they focused on the crossing itself—especially preparing the assault boats that would ferry 32,000 soldiers across the canal in the first phase, and building bridges to carry over the heavy equipment in the second. They also practiced bursting through the earth embankments on the Israeli side. As for the tanks, many of them were now attached to infantry divisions to help out in the first phase, rather than practicing their fictitious plan to invade Sinai.

  By the spring of 1973, Egypt was ready. It was the first time since 1967 that the Egyptians had workable, operative plans for attacking Israel without waiting for “weapons of deterrence.” Now they just needed to set a date.


  ASHRAF MARWAN, WHO played so decisive a role in developing Israel’s kontzeptzia regarding the minimal conditions Egypt thought were necessary to launch a war, was also the key source of information about Egypt’s change of heart, which should have convinced the Israelis that the paradigm was no longer relevant. What happened instead was that a number of top figures in Israeli Military Intelligence remained so deeply committed to the kontzeptzia that they just dismissed Marwan’s new reports as false or irrelevant. Their inflexibility continued all the way to the morning of October 6, 1973—and was the single biggest reason that things went so deeply wrong from Israel’s perspective.

  Marwan did not participate in the fateful meeting a year before the war, on October 24, 1972, when Sadat announced his new vision. But one of his assistants did and took notes. Just over a week later, Marwan met with Zamir and Dubi in London, and handed them documents that testified clearly to Sadat’s decision to go to war soon. It explicitly described the expulsion of the Soviets in July 1972 as a first step toward maximizing Egypt’s freedom to maneuver. The document did not say outright that Sadat would no longer wait for the weapons he had once believed he needed in order to attack. But whatever it was missing in print was made up for by Marwan’s oral account of the October 24 meeting and its implications. He told the Israelis that Sadat had come to the conclusion that the diplomatic option had reached a dead end, and the only way to start it again was through military action; and that he had fired his minister of war because the latter had refused orders to prepare the attack. Marwan also explained that Sadat had fired other generals who had doubted the Egyptian army’s readiness—all in the effort to ensure broad agreement that would enable the most efficient path to launching an attack. Marwan also provided a timetable: Preparations for the defense of the Egyptian home front were to be completed by the end of November 1972; during December, the army would complete its preparations for a low-level “static” war. The crossing of the canal would not take place before the end of 1972. Finally, he told the Israelis that Syria was in on the plan. Already at this stage, Israeli intelligence had all the information it needed to conclude that the kontzeptzia was a dead letter.

  Three weeks later, Marwan met them again. What became clear this time was just how great the gap was between Sadat’s determination to attack and Egypt’s actual readiness for war. The Soviets continued to refuse to supply the Scuds and long-range fighter-bombers; the Sukhoi Su-17 fighters they gave Egypt couldn’t stand up to Israel’s Phantoms. Yet as Marwan kept pointing out, Sadat was far from dissuaded. The president would order the attack—and the army would not refuse him.

  How did Marwan account for Sadat’s determination to fight a war he was bound to lose? Sadat, he answered, was willing to pay a very heavy price in order to get something moving on the diplomatic front.

  The unavoidable conclusion from all of this is that any claim to the effect that Israeli intelligence had no idea that the kontzeptzia had become outdated, that they had no idea the Egyptians had changed their minds about the conditions needed to launch an attack, and that Marwan had somehow tricked the Israelis into sticking to the old way of thinking in order to maximize the effectiveness of the surprise attack a year later—such a claim is completely unfounded. Neither was Marwan the only source Israel had about Sadat’s change of heart or the decision to prepare for war—far from it.

  Nor was this understanding limited to the Mossad. On November 26, 1972, one month after Sadat fired many of his top military figures who disagreed with his new approach, and just days after the second meeting with Marwan in London, Moshe Dayan reported to the government that “there are reports . . . which we must relate to with utmost seriousness, of an emerging trend in Egypt to restart the hostilities . . . including escalation, if possible by the end of the calendar year.” According to the reports, Dayan said, the Egyptian move would be taken together with Syria, with the aim of “creating an ‘Eastern front’ together with Jordan.”3

  The warnings coming in from Egypt caused the Israeli prime minister to convene her “kitchen cabinet,” the government’s top decision-making body. On December 1, 1972, she met with Dayan, Yigal Allon, and Yisrael Galili, as well as the IDF chief of staff, David Elazar, who had replaced Chaim Bar-Lev; the new chief of Military Intelligence, Eli Zeira; and Zvi Zamir from the Mossad. The sole agenda item was Egypt’s immediate war intentions. On the basis of information MI had received about the October 24 meeting, Zeira declared that “Sadat has given the order to finish preparations by the end of December, [but] he hasn’t given a date of attack.” He estimated that the chance of an attack was therefore “not high,” and the likelihood that Egypt would actually try to cross the Suez Canal “close to zero.” At the core of Zeira’s error stood a misunderstanding of Sadat’s expulsion of the Soviet troops just a few months earlier: Instead of seeing it as a preparation for war, he took it as a dramatic setback to Egypt’s defensive capability, which therefore made Sadat less likely to attack rather than more so.

  The Mossad chief’s assessment was more cautious and took more seriously the latest information from the Angel. “In light of what we know, we need to go on the assumption that there could be an exchange of fire,” Zamir told them. “When I say ‘fire,’ it doesn’t necessarily mean restarting hostilities along the whole canal, but rather harassment here and there.” The IDF chief of staff, for his part, was skeptical about the possibility of war in the near term, but he expressed a healthy caution when he added: “We can’t look at ourselves as free from the need to be prepared . . . we can’t say there is ‘no chance’ of fire and we can sleep easy.”4

  In fact, the only person at the meeting who took Marwan’s warnings very seriously was Moshe Dayan. “We need to assume that Egypt will launch an attack at the canal in early 1973,” he declared, adding that “Egypt and Syria are in collusion.” Dayan then insisted that Israel send Egypt a message via the Americans, or possibly the Soviets, warning against even a limited Egyptian assault—and affirming that Israel “has no inclination to enter another war of attrition, and if they start a fight, we will hit back hard.” Given the possibility that Jordan would join the fight, Dayan also suggested that a similar message be sent to King Hussein.5

  Despite Zeira’s assessment that the chances of an Egyptian attack on the canal were “close to zero,” Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan decided to alert the Americans. That same day, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s envoy in Washington, sent a message to Kissinger reporting that they had received word that Egypt was planning an offensive by the end of December; a similar message went to the CIA from the Mossad. It was unclear, the communiqués added, whether the Egyptians were planning a full-scale war to take back the Sinai, or something more limited such as shelling the canal area or commando raids without trying to take the eastern bank.6 The Americans answered that they, too, had received information confirming that Egypt had indeed changed its mind about launching a war. The CIA, however, shared Zeira’s assessment that Sadat was fully aware of his military inferiority and that therefore the likelihood of a new war was not high.

  The outlook shared by Dayan, Elazar, and Zamir at the meeting had its merits. On the one hand, it took into account the new warnings about a change of heart in Egypt. On the other hand, it took seriously the fact that Egypt’s military disadvantage had not changed, that Sadat knew it, and that many top-ranking Egyptian officials opposed it for that very reason. War, in other words, was taken to be unlikely but possible, and Israel had to prepare accordingly. Dayan, who took the most aggressive stance at the meeting, reiterated a few days later that although an Egyptian attack was not likely in the coming weeks, “it could certainly happen before the spring.”7

  The gap between the positions of the MI chief, who believed the likelihood of an Egyptian crossing of the canal was “close to zero,” and the IDF chief of staff, who believed that the likelihood was low but not low enough to ignore, reflected a difference in their basic approaches. When Zeira took up his post, he was alread
y committed to the kontzeptzia. Elazar’s view was more nuanced. He had seen the original materials, supplied by Marwan, on which the kontzeptzia had been based. But from the day he replaced Bar-Lev as chief of staff on January 1, 1972, he viewed war as quite possible in the coming two years. So he was much more open than Zeira to changing his assessment based on new information that came in.

  This difference of opinion had dramatic results. In the summer of 1972, before Sadat had decided on war, MI estimated that the Egyptians would not come to the conclusion that they had the necessary armaments to go to war before April 1973. At the same time, MI allowed for the possibility that, because of the pressure to show progress on the diplomatic front, Sadat would find it necessary to take military steps without first acquiring the equipment. Ironically, only after information started flowing from reliable sources suggesting that the time pressures were indeed becoming more critical for Sadat, MI’s assessment of the possibility of war in the short term started going down rather than up. On January 20, 1973, some six weeks after the meeting of Golda Meir’s kitchen cabinet, MI-Research issued its semiannual intelligence assessment, in which it declared that the possibility of war was “farther away than at any time in the past.”8 This was based mostly on the belief that the dismissal of the Soviet air defense division in July 1972 had significantly weakened Egypt—even though Marwan had said otherwise. Indeed, it is hard to ignore the fact that everything Marwan had given Israel with regard to Sadat’s decision for war in October 1972 appears to have left no impression whatsoever on Military Intelligence’s assessment.

  Elazar, on the other hand, was much more impressed by the Angel’s latest warnings. He had taken up his post about a year and a half after the end of the War of Attrition and against a backdrop of relative calm on all fronts. As a result, he was under intense pressure to cut the IDF budget. The government was trying to push through a new social agenda, diverting resources to absorbing tens of thousands of new immigrants who had begun arriving from the Soviet Union, and addressing the social inequities that had sparked demonstrations by the Sephardic “Black Panthers,” named after the American movement. Quiet borders and a general sense that there was no war in the offing, combined with the belief that Israel’s superior military could swiftly repel any attack—all these made it possible, Israel’s leaders believed, to shift the Treasury’s priorities. Cuts had already begun in 1970 and were threatening to deepen.