1973, page 24
Elazar directed the remainder of the discussion toward long-term military planning.
On September 21, Zamir met with the prime minister for a routine update, during which he reported to her about the operational actions of the Mossad. As usual, Yisrael Lior, Meir’s military secretary, was present. At the end of the report, Zamir added,
You know that we have received information about 300-kilometer-range missiles, the Scuds. We have verification…. Yesterday, we also received questions from [here a word appears which has not been released for publication, but from the contents of the document it can be understood that the missing word was Americans] on this subject. It appears that they too know something about this. It’s the Scud, which they consider a medium-range missile. Between 100 and 300 kilometers. It has a chemical and nuclear head.51
This apparently meant that it had the ability to carry a chemical or nuclear warhead, not that the Scuds were actually equipped with such warheads.
After the war, Lior testified before the Agranat Commission, which investigated the failures of the war, that Zamir’s and the prime minister’s attitudes regarding this information was how to report it to the Americans in order to demand similar weaponry—Lance missiles. The investigative commission tried to determine whether Zamir and Meir had also evaluated how this intelligence information affected their assessment of the probability of war. Yigael Yadin, a former chief of staff and a member of the commission, put it this way:
What is the intelligence significance in the fact that the Egyptian have Scuds, in light of our assumption that the Egyptians are always looking for weapons to be used against us? Deep ones. And that’s one of the reasons that prevented them from going into war against us. I am referring to an intelligence “follow-up” to war.52
Despite the fact that he was asked about this time after time, Lior could not testify that Zamir and Meir had viewed the information as a sign of imminent war.
On September 22, as noted, the heads of the different sectors of the Egyptian and Syrian general staff received the order to initiate war on October 6. This of course, required deploying troops on both fronts. The troop movements were camouflaged as training, but were too obvious to be ignored. Israeli aerial photographs taken that morning made it clear that the Syrian army was already stationed in full emergency formation. Israeli military intelligence analysis of the Syrian deployment was as follows: “Despite the defensive character of the present emergency deployment, it should be remembered that, if the Syrians still want to have the last word after the downing of their planes by an Israeli strike, which is in our estimation improbable, the present deployment makes it easier for them.”53
The second discussion in the general staff took place on September 24, two days before Rosh Hashanah. The only one who indicated awareness of the immediate danger of possible hostilities was the head of Northern Command, General Yitzhak Hofi. He did not actually refer to imminent war, but viewed the situation through the prism of his obligation to respond to the military force facing him. Hofi feared a limited strike by the Syrians against a settlement or two in the Golan Heights, and considered Syria more dangerous to Israel than Egypt. Israel had conquered the Golan Heights in 1967 in order to distance Syrian fire from the northern settlements, but the establishment of Golan settlements again brought Israeli settlements close to the front. The threat to the several hundred residents of the sixteen young Golan settlements had become a compelling factor in Israeli military planning.54
Dayan related seriously to the possibility Hofi raised and responded,
The situation is very serious because, in theory, Syria could allow itself to strike against us, even if afterward it lost the war in the long run…. It could take the risk that we will bomb Damascus…. That one morning they could, without us knowing, send in tanks and take two or three settlements, or even more, in the Golan.55
Turning to Chief of Staff Elazar, Dayan said, “If I were in your place I would follow this scenario. I wouldn’t take a Rosh Hashanah vacation—not even a break. Either you and the General Staff prove that Hofi’s and my evaluation is mistaken, or find a practical solution to the possibility that the Syrians might actually do that.”56 In his reply, Elazar ignored the possibility of a Syrian sneak attack Hofi and Dayan had mentioned. He referred only to the possibility of total war: “If the question is one of war, in my opinion, this deployment does not change the air force’s ability to finish Syria off in a day and a half.” Bartov, who has written at length about this discussion, summarized: “Even though, in the second round [of talks], different evaluations were voiced with regard to what was needed in the long run—for the coming years—not even one person related to the coming days or months, and around the table, there was no sense of an approaching war. In all of the appraisals of the situation, there was no hint of fundamental disagreement.”57
Zvi Zamir was also present. The Agranat Commission later determined his position during the discussion as follows:
During the days before the outbreak of war, he supported the military intelligence appraisal. And this is what he said in the general staff discussion on September 24, 1973: “Let’s say that even under existing political circumstances as we may predict them, although with regard to the existing forces the danger of total war with the Arab countries is great, war is not expected in the near future. If we make assumptions about their inclinations, I will have to assume that if we are dealing with an appraisal for the coming year, their inclination is, in fact, not to go to war.”58
There is no doubt that, more than anyone else, Zamir was basing his opinion on the information received from Marwan up to that point.
On September 23, after a short meeting with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in Tabuk, on the Saudi-Jordanian border, King Hussein of Jordan requested an urgent meeting with the prime minister in Israel. Two days later, on the afternoon of September 25, the Mossad was still waiting for “an answer from the neighbors” regarding his arrival.59 In the meanwhile, reports were starting to come in about Egyptian troops being deployed to the front. That evening an Israeli helicopter flew the Jordanian king to Tel Aviv, together with his prime minister, Zaid Rifai, and the head of his military intelligence (who was acting as an agent for the Mossad).60 From there, they were taken to Herzliya to meet with Meir and Director-General Gazit. Hussein had not been included in the secret Egyptian-Syrian coordination. His intelligence sources were focused on what was occurring in Syria, particularly its military deployment and how this affected the Jordanian border; he expressed as much in his discussion with the prime minister.61 He felt that Assad and Sadat would not tolerate a situation of no peace and no war, and he agreed with them. He stated that he was not willing to join a military action and that he hoped to direct a process to prevent war.
With respect to military information, Hussein stated that, according to plan, the Syrian army was preparing for an attack under the cover of a training exercise. “Does this have any significance or not? No one knows. But I have my own doubts. In any case, no one can know for sure. We can only relate to facts.” At this point, Golda Meir asked, “Is it possible that the Syrians will start something without the full cooperation of the Egyptians?” Hussein replied, “I don’t believe so. I think they will cooperate.”62
There were many hidden witnesses listening in on this conversation. The meeting was filmed and transmitted by closed circuit to another room where three intelligence officers, among them the head of the Jordanian sector of Israeli military intelligence, who cannot be named here, and Meir’s military secretary Israel Lior. At the same time, Zamir was meeting with the Jordanian head of intelligence. Zamir directed most of the discussion toward the subject of moves against terrorist organizations, then the focus of his attention, not toward warnings of impending war. Some time later, the Jordanian complained that Zamir had not taken his war warning seriously enough but had been occupied with other concerns.
The content of the discussion was also distributed to others. At midnight, immediately following the conclusion of the meeting, Prime Minister Meir telephoned Dayan and updated him.
Among those who had heard the discussion with Hussein, there was general agreement that nothing new had been added to the defense elite’s military information that they had not already received from Israeli military intelligence reports. Zamir also noticed that Hussein had chosen to emphasize that the political stagnation would lead to a military conflict, but had not given a date or remarked on cooperation between the Egyptians and Syrians.63 “I would almost say that I hope that there will be a war; in any case, a war will not take place,” Elazar said, referring to the king’s comments.64 The king’s information was later integrated into the military intelligence reports. No one disagreed, although an intelligence report mentioned it in a later (October 3) consultation meeting between Meir, Dayan, and Elazar that the king had personally doubted Syria’s intentions to initiate hostilities in the short term. (This consultation will be discussed comprehensively in the next chapter.)
However, only Meir and Dayan could weigh the severity of the king’s warning, considering everything else that they knew but had kept from the evaluative bodies and other decision-makers—that is, the political aspects of the situation. The best person to testify to that was Mordechai Gazit, and so he did. Gazit was almost the only party to the secret dealings between Kissinger and Meir and was with her during her meeting with Hussein. Later, he saw fit to emphasize, from what the king had said, that Sadat’s and Assad’s intentions were to break the ice of inaction, and deploying the army was an expression of this intent. He maintained that Hussein had doubted that the troop deployment meant that war was imminent; he had hoped that the political developments would prevent war.65 Another witness who had heard the discussion, the head of the Jordanian branch of Israeli military intelligence, testified that Hussein “had given a warning from which I had understood that an attack would take place very soon if there was no significant political progress.”66
Hussein’s account, which he provided ten days before the outbreak of the war, supported Dayan’s sense of the situation—that an expeditious political move would prevent war. This led him to assume that, despite the threatening troop deployment, Egypt would not go to war before giving Kissinger the opportunity to lead such a move immediately after the Israeli elections. An additional possibility was that, as he had done in the spring, Sadat was again using increased war tension to advance the political track.
On the morning of September 26, the day before Rosh Hashanah, two discussions took place about the situation in reaction to pressure by Hofi, the head of Northern Command. Hofi had been greatly affected by the appraisal of Avi Yaari, the head of the Syrian section of Israeli military intelligence, with regard to the significance of the Syrian troop deployments. The information King Hussein had given Meir a day earlier also hovered in the background. In the first discussion, with the participation of Elazar, his deputy Israel Tal, Zeira, air force commander Benny Peled, and Hofi, it was decided to upgrade Israel’s state of alert during the holiday and add reinforcements of 175mm artillery batteries and two tank companies from the seventh division. “We will have 100 tanks against 800 Syrians. That’s enough,” Elazar declared. After the holiday, the tank crews returned to Beersheba and on Yom Kippur Eve were again flown to the Golan to meet the Syrians face to face.
About forty-five minutes later, at 09:00, the second discussion began; this time Dayan also participated. The participants again assumed that they were not facing a flare-up with Egypt. Thus Elazar stated, “I would not make any warlike preparations in order to prevent hostilities in the Golan Heights.” Dayan did not disagree with him, but chose own his way to deal with the tension. He traveled to the Golan on Rosh Hashanah Eve, and the Golan residents met with him at 15:00 in Kibbutz Ein Zivan. Dayan invited the media, including an American television crew. His objective was to publicly intimidate the Syrians in the presence of the Golan residents with a step that would create an impact. He thought that it would be enough to proclaim that Israel knew about the Syrian troop deployment and was ready to respond in order to deter Syria from attacking. Elazar had opposed this move, saying, “Dayan invited the television people and I said that it would spoil the holiday. We could have raised the level of alertness without ruining the holiday.”67 Dayan later chose to avoid this type of behavior on the day before the start of the war, when he needed to deter Egypt.
Why Did They Advance the Zero Hour?
The long weekend of Rosh Hashanah passed calmly for the Israeli public and for the army. However, Elazar and his family found their holiday at faraway Sharm el-Sheikh interrupted by an event that took place far from the Middle East: terrorists hijacked a train carrying immigrants from the Soviet Union from Czechoslovakia to a transit center at Schoenau Castle in Austria. After negotiating with Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky, the terrorists released the hostages; in return, Kreisky decided to close the immigrant transit center. On the next day, September 30, life returned to normal and Meir left for Strasbourg to participate in a session of the European Council.
In the meanwhile, Egypt continued preparations under the cover of a military exercise, announcing a mobilization exercise on September 27—the first day of Rosh Hashanah and nine days before “D-Day” for Egypt and Syria. This was the twenty-third mobilization exercise in nine months. This time, the recruits were informed that they would be released on October 7. On September 30, there was an additional mobilization and on October 4, the release of the first group was announced. However, in reality, only 20,000 conscripts were released.68
In contrast, September 28, the third anniversary of Nasser’s death, was marked with restraint and with a minimum of warlike proclamations in Egypt. Sadat’s speech might have calmed Israeli decision-makers and citizens. The September 30 Ma’ariv headline read: “In a Speech Mostly Devoted to Internal Issues, Sadat Left an Opening for Contacts with the United States and Even a Visit From Kissinger.” The article continued: “He hinted that his country was interested in a continuation of its dialogue with Washington and does not rule out a new initiative from the American secretary of state.” The speech went on in a tone that would not arouse concern: “I was surprised when I heard that Kissinger wanted to understand Egyptian views…. I want to tell you that he knows our positions very well.” Sadat referred to war at the end of the speech: “You have noted, of course, that I have not spoken about the war up to now. We have been satiated with words. I want to say only one thing: I will not promise anything and I will not go into detail.”69
Meir and Dayan speaking with soldiers on the Golan Heights, November 21, 1973
Immediately afterward, on October 1, the “exercise” began and was to continue for about a week. A real exercise did not take place. It was just a cover-up for war preparations, including deploying artillery along the canal and moving and assembling bridging equipment at the crossing points. The fighting-force commanders still did not know that they would receive orders to cross the canal. Before the beginning of the exercise, a few senior officers were included in the secret, including the commanders of the second and third armies. Israeli intelligence sources reported on the exercise and simultaneously transmitted information about the mobilization and the movement of forces to the canal. From observation points and from the canal front, information also kept flowing in regarding the war preparations. Zeira and the intelligence evaluators understood these to be part of the exercise: “The advance of forces and additional preparations being carried out or will be carried out in the coming days, such as completing fortifications, mobilizing civilian fishing craft, and investigating the operational fitness of the units, could theoretically be seen as signs of alert, but are actually only connected to the exercise.”70 This information gap created growing tension in the reporting and evaluating chain of Israeli intelligence but did not raise doubts among policymakers.71 They remained imprisoned in their confidence that Sadat would not go to war before allowing Kissinger to fully exhaust the political track after the Israeli elections.
On the other hand, Soviet representatives in Egypt were aware of both the Egyptian and the Syrian military preparations; it was impossible to hide from them that an unusual event was about to take place. On September 22, Vladimir Vinogradov, the Soviet ambassador to Egypt, met with Sadat. According to Marwan, Sadat told Vinogradov on September 29 that Egypt would soon break the ceasefire.72 On October 2, Vinogradov reported to the Soviet Union that the Egyptians were expecting an Israeli attack. This cover story remained intact even the next day; only on October 4, the day the information was passed on to the Egyptian army brigade commanders, did the Soviets learn that a war would break out two days later. They quickly prepared to airlift their people out of Egypt and Syria.73
In Syria, there were difficulties in maintaining the schedule. On Wednesday, October 3, Egyptian defense minister Ahmad Ismael flew to Damascus for a few hours in order to reject Syria’s demand to postpone the attack for forty-eight hours.74 At this opportunity, the Egyptians suggested to Syria that they advance the zero hour to 14:00. They presented the advance as advantageous to Syria—a compromise between better initial conditions for Egypt and for Syria. Attacking toward nightfall would be more favorable to Egypt with regard to the angle of the sun, since Egyptian troops would be attacking eastward, but this did not suit the Syrians, who would attack westward. The low, setting sun would make things more difficult for the Israeli ground and air defense, which would be facing westward on the canal front, but would make the fighting more difficult for the Syrian planes and ground forces, also facing westward.75
