This month is the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War—a coordinated, surprise attack by Egypt and Syria on Israel on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The war lasted 18 days, in which Israel was able to push back the Egyptians and Syrians and advance into Egypt, and it ended in a negotiated ceasefire brokered by the Americans. There was a lot of controversy within Israel about their preparedness and how the strike was initially handled, resulting in an investigative commission. In this Q&A, Uri Kaufman, author of the new book, Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East (St. Martin's Press) talks about how the war set the stage for stability in the region and the recent Abraham Accords, as well as what he sees as the biggest missteps in the war and also how the war brought the dependence on oil to the world stage.
Q _ Fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, with the benefit of hindsight, what would you say is its most significant result?
A _ In a single word: peace. No country in the Arab world would have signed a peace treaty with Israel if Egypt had not done so first. And Egypt would not have signed a peace treaty with Israel if it had not lost the Yom Kippur War. The war also changed the entire global strategic and economic equation because of the Arab oil embargo. No one thought much about energy before 1973. No one has been able to ignore it since.
What kinds of newly declassified materials did you utilize? How did it change previous analyses of the war?
The Israelis have released a great deal of previously classified information which allows us to understand how the senior leadership of Israel was fooled and caught in a surprise attack. For example, we now know that the Israelis had listening devices in the most sensitive places in Cairo, but they could only turn them on under extraordinary circumstances because they ran on batteries that drained quickly. The head of Israeli Military Intelligence lied to Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan just before the war, telling them that he had turned them on and heard no indication of an impending attack, even though in reality he ordered that they be left turned off. Equally significant are memoirs and interviews given in the last 10-15 years by individuals who wanted to tell their story before they passed away. Among other things, this has allowed us to understand the debate among Israeli leaders as to whether to use nuclear weapons.
There were disagreements in the Israeli military and civilian leadership about how aggressive to be once they had turned the tide. Do you think they got it right?
They got it exactly right. For example, in the early days of the war, the Israelis had one spare armored division. Instead of holding it back to defend Jerusalem against a potential attack from Jordan, they sent it north. For two nerve-shattering weeks, the capital lay naked to attack. But King Hussein of Jordan never opened a third front, and the armored division sent north defeated the Syrians. Later in the war, the Israelis only had 650 tanks along the Egyptian front. They sent 400 of them across the Suez Canal into Africa. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan warned that if they were cut off and lost, the Israelis would find themselves "fighting on the outskirts of Tel Aviv." But the task force surrounded the Egyptian Third Army and won the war.
In the aftermath of the Agranat Commission—which was empaneled to investigate how Israel's leaders handled the beginning stages of the war—there was a significant changing of the guard among Israel's leaders, among them Army Chief of Staff David Elazar, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister Golda Meir. Was this justified?
It was not justified at all. In any other country, General Elazar and especially Golda, would have been hailed as heroes. History has many examples of nations caught in a surprise attack (think Pearl Harbor). History has practically none in which a badly outnumbered nation turned the tide in less than three weeks.
Some people consider the Yom Kippur War as Israel's Vietnam. Do you agree with the comparison?
I do not. Vietnam was a war of choice, fought for ill-defined goals far from home. My mother told me that when she attended college in 1968, a professor asked her class of 31 students where Vietnam was located. Only she and one other knew the answer. For Israel, the Yom Kippur War was more akin to World War II. It was an existential war that began with a surprise attack.
In writing Eighteen Days, you read memoirs of several key figures, including Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and his wife. What did you learn?
How devastating the Arab-Israeli conflict has been for those poor souls forced to live through it. Anwar Sadat's wife, Jehan, wrote that "in the Canal Zone cities, the scene was one of mahgoura, no life, no people living there anymore. Not a single building was left standing in Isma'iliya on the western side of the Canal...I could not hold back my tears."
What do you think was the greatest misstep—by either side—in the Yom Kippur War? The greatest achievement?
The greatest misstep in my view was not committed by either Egypt or Israel, but by [U.S.] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The Arabs imposed the oil embargo on October 20. Secretary Kissinger agreed to rescue the Egyptians and force Israel to accept a ceasefire two days later, on October 22. He should have conditioned that rescue on OPEC lifting the embargo [which they did not do until March 1974]. The greatest achievement arguably belongs to Dr. Kissinger as well, carefully hammering out agreements after the war through months of painstaking shuttle diplomacy.
