To mark the golden jubilee of the October 1973 victory, I resume today delving into Ibrahim Hegazy’s testimony on the war that concluded in this victory. Mr Hegazy (1954 – 2022), who was sports editor at the Cairo daily al-Ahram, wrote his vivid, true-to-life, extensively detailed first-hand experience of the October 1973 War, including that of the years of preparation that led to it. His story was printed in a series of articles in al-Ahram in 2020 and 2021. I reprint here excerpts of them to offer an on-the-ground report of that epic feat, legendary in planning and in execution, to our younger generations for whom the war is “history” that is celebrated but not sensed. My account comes in five articles throughout the five Sundays of October 2023, the 50th anniversary of the war that took Egyptians from the bitter humiliation of defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War to the regained self-esteem and honour of victory in the October 1973 War. My four previous articles detailed the lead-up to Zero Hour: 2:00pm on Saturday 6 October 1973, the events of the first day of the war starting with Zero Hour, and the ensuing developments until Monday 8 October 1973 which came to be known in Israel as “Sad Monday”.
“The warrior represents the fulcrum of any war, and combat doctrine its crux,” Mr Hegazy writes. “If wars hinged upon equipment, arms, land or sun alone, the Egyptian army would not have dared initiate the October 1973 War, seeing that it was challenged by a most adverse water barrier, the highest sand barrier, and the most powerful defence line in the history of wars.” But because the warrior is the pivotal factor, Mr Hegazy proceeds, the Egyptian army was able to cross the Suez Canal, storm the sand barrier, and seize the strongest defensive line in four days. “This should come as no surprise,” Mr Hegazy writes, “for Egyptian soldiers have the reputation of being ‘among the best on earth’,”. The Israeli army had to look for some way out to save face before its people who had lived for six years basking in the glorious myth of their “invincible army”.
The end of the day 9 October 1973 represented the start of a new strategy by the enemy in Sinai. During the first four days of the war, Egypt was fighting Israel alone; on the fifth day Egypt was confronting Israel and the US. American unlimited military support for Israel came in the form of arms and ammunition to compensate Israeli losses, and US political support to Israel was immeasurable. So much so, Mr Hegazy recounts, that then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that the highest international organisations such as the Security Council and the United Nations were but tools that followed US instructions.
During the days 10 to 13 October, the Egyptian army had to achieve unfulfilled tasks that would complete its original scheme of fully controlling Sinai. This they successfully accomplished even as they deterred and aborted enemy attacks. On the Syrian front, however, the balance shifted; it became obvious that political moves were needed.
President Sadat rejected an offer from Kremlin leaders to have Yugoslavia, being a non-aligned country, present a proposal to the UNSC for a ceasefire. He also rejected another offer from UK Prime Minister of a draft proposal to be submitted to the UNSC for a ceasefire along the then battle lines; in this he had assurances by Mr Kissinger the US would not object to. As matters got worse on the political level, the Israeli War Council was handed a US intelligence report informing that two Egyptian armoured divisions stationed west of the Suez Canal had begun crossing to the east bank. The War Council, Mr Hegazy writes, decided to implement Operation “Abirey-Halev” or “Brave Heart”; it never occurred to them that this plan would lead their army into the “Gap”.
From 14 to 22 October, fierce battles took place during which the results of the US airlift of huge numbers of tanks and anti-tank missile crews and aircraft were palpable.
Even so, Mr Hegazy points out, both Sharon and Mendler wrote in their memoirs that Israel’s losses exceeded 400 tanks in addition to a large number of personnel. This was confirmed by Yitzhak Mordechai, Commander of the 890th Parachute Battalion, and Ehud Barak, Commander of a tank battalion, who both wrote of the hell they endured from the Egyptian soldiers of the 16th Division in the Chinese Farm. Although the enemy’s victories during those nine days of fighting were the largest and fiercest, Mr Hegazy recalls, the enemy’s losses during these days exceeded their losses in the first eight days of the war. The enemy was unable to achieve its goal nor to impose its will; Israel intended to occupy Ismailiya and Suez in order to besiege the second and third armies from the west and then dictate its conditions for a ceasefire.
The Gap, which Israel and the US had so touted as a plan to turn the tide of the battle in favour of Israel, turned into a nightmare, Mr Hegazy writes; in fact, he explains, it put Israel’s forces in the hands of Egypt’s army. On 14 October, the Egyptian command gave orders to its troops to withdraw to their positions of earlier in the day, to the bridge heads, in preparation to repel an expected enemy offensive.
The enemy was happy with the Gap, and believed it could also seize Suez. On 23 and 24 October, Israel bombarded the city with continuous air strikes and artillery shelling, aiming to eliminate any resistance there. Two Israeli armoured brigades then moved, joined by paratrooper brigades, into Suez to occupy it and achieve the main goal of cutting off the water pipeline to the Third Army in Sinai so it would be forced to surrender. The enemy believed that Suez was deserted and that its occupation was a matter of time, Mr Hegazy writes. But this conviction was a trap set up by the Egyptians to lure the Israelis into the silent city, as if there were no one there. Once the enemy tanks entered deeper into the trap, all hell broke loose as Egyptians opened fire. Israelis fled in every direction, taking refuge in Suez’s abandoned houses, [Suez and the other Canal towns had been evacuated following the Six-Day War in 1967, given that they were not safe during the war of attrition that followed in 1967 – 1973] Mr Hegazy recounts that they remained there, leaving only under protection of the International Red Cross following a UNSC ceasefire resolution.
According to Mr Hegazy, the enemy utterly failed to translate the Gap into a military reality on the ground west of the canal to match the Egyptian military presence east of the canal. The enemy found that its Gap was in fact its grave, because its forces were surrounded from all sides and its aircraft and tanks were ineffective due to the nature of the mountainous terrain on one hand and the engaged forces of the two warring parties on the other.
The Israeli forces stationed in the Gap became an easy target for elimination by the Egyptian Operation “Shamil”—literally Comprehensive, which began in the second week of November 1973 and lasted 80 days in a second war of attrition, Mr Hegazy writes. Before the month of December began, the Egyptian paratrooper brigade assigned gave the “All’s well, sir!” signalling that “the scene has been cleared of the enemy’s minefields and is now open to us.. No one will walk alive out of the Gap.”
On the early hours of 22 October, the Security Council issued a three-article resolution to cease fire and call on the warring parties to end all military activity immediately within no more than 12 hours on the moment the resolution was issued. Egypt and Israel agreed, and Syria followed suit. The surprise for the US during its assessment of the situation on that date, and based on the analysis of the images of its spy planes, Mr Hegazy writes, was the Egyptian success in tightening the siege around the 60-kilometre-long Gap with armoured forces, infantry, special forces, and artillery, so that it could eliminate the Israeli forces west of the canal. What further upset the US, Mr Hegazy informs, was that the Egyptian forces besieging the Gap were not joined by a single fighter from the Egyptian forces stationed in eastern in Sinai, the five huge Egyptian units remained in their positions.
On 27 October, Egypt and Israel agreed to begin talks as per the ceasefire resolutions, namely Resolution 338 issued on 22 October, Resolution 339 issued on 23 October, and Resolution 340 issued on 25 October. While the Kilometre 101 talks continued under the supervision of the UN International Emergency Forces, Mr Hegazy recalls, the genius of the Egyptian leadership was evident in the continued massive military pressure on the enemy trapped in the Gap. Mr Kissinger understood this message well; he realised that the game of negotiations to buy time would no longer work, and action must be taken before the Egyptians executed their “Shamil” operation to eliminate the Gap.
When the US realised that Israeli forces were under the thumb of the Egyptian army, Mr Hegazy writes, it put an end to futile negotiations. Mr Kissinger flew to Egypt to meet President Sadat on 11 and 12 January 1974 in Aswan. This was followed by shuttle trips by Mr Kissinger between Aswan and Tel Aviv on 14, 15 and 17 January. On the evening of 17 January 1974, Mr Hegazy recalls, Egypt and Israel reached an agreement to disengage their forces under supervision of the UN. “This was followed by a new round of negotiations in which we participated while confident that, for once, Israel would listen carefully, because it had no other choice,” Mr Hegazy recalls.
Golden jubilee of October War.. Ibrahim Hegazy: Witness to a near-miraculous feat (2 of 5)
Watani International
27 October 2023