The October 1973 War: Culmination of the Failure of Political Analysis
By Yigal Kipnis
(Adapted from Galen Jackson, ed., The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023 and published here with permission of the editor and publisher.)
Abstract
During the early part of 1973, leaders in both Israel and the United States failed to appreciate the increasing risks of another round of Arab-Israeli military conflict. President Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger were beginning to explore with the Egyptian leadership the possibilities for a diplomatic initiative, but in the face of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s adamant rejection of the idea of an American initiative in March 1973, Kissinger preferred to delay any such move until later in the year after Israeli elections. Both he and the Israeli leadership were confident that Israeli military superiority would provide deterrence, or, if deterrence were to fail, it would be the Arab parties who would emerge in a weaker position, along with their superpower patron, the Soviet Union. All of these assumptions are seriously questioned in this fully documented article. The key points are as follows:
—The Israeli failure to respond effectively to the joint Egyptian-Syrian attack on October 6, 1973, was a failure of political analysis, not a failure of intelligence. Indeed, Israelis were aware of the possibility of war and had made detailed plans for it. They also received advanced warning that war would begin on October 6, although the precise timing was not clear. The basic issue that prevented a more effective Israeli preparation was Golda Meir’s confidence that even if war did occur, Israel would emerge in an even stronger position, as it had done in 1967. In any event, facing an election later in the year, she was not about to signal any willingness to make concessions on the diplomatic front to either the Egyptians or Syrians.
—Based on a careful review of the archival evidence, this article shows that Kissinger’s talks in February and May 1973 with Sadat’s envoy, Hafiz Ismail, did produce a set of general concepts that could have formed the basis for an American led initiative. Indeed, after the first round of talks Kissinger had presented options to Nixon, and Nixon had authorized a two-track initiative, one in public and the other managed discreetly from the White House. The key ingredients would be to get Israel to accept the principle of recognizing, in conditions of peace, Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai; Egypt would then agree to a transitional period, perhaps of several years, during which specific security arrangements would be put in place; during this transition, Egypt would encourage the other Arab parties to follow the same pattern, but would not make its acceptance a condition of their own commitment to a full peace. In addition, Egypt would leave it to the Jordanians and Palestinians to deal with the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli issues. In short, Egypt in 1973, before the war, was prepared to pursue the path that eventually led to the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty in 1979. But in March 1973, Golda Meir bluntly told the Americans that she would not accept these terms. In her view, Israel would need to annex at least 25-30% of Sinai, and she understood Sadat would not accept this, so there could be no deal at present.
–An internal Israeli debate did take place among the very few members of Meir’s cabinet who were informed about the details of the Egyptian and American positions. The Prime Minister confronted questions from some in her inner circle who were more open to these ideas. Some even concluded that the chance that Sadat would go to war was substantial, but in the end, they agreed not to force the issue until after the elections scheduled for late in the year. As the threat of war became more plausible from mid-September onward, some in the military urged the Prime Minister to prepare for preemptive strikes, as in 1967, if war seemed imminent. But Meir had given her word to Nixon that Israel would not be responsible for starting a new war by preempting, and she insisted that the military prepare to be ready to absorb an initial Arab attack, and then to launch an all-out response. This caused considerable confusion in the moments leading up to the war, and probably accounted for the initial poor Israeli military performance.
–After the war, Kissinger met with Golda Meir and said to her: “I don’t want to accuse anyone, but during 1973, the war could have been prevented.”