Of course that was quite different from 1967. And the message was that Israel would not fire the first shot, would not strike if the Egyptians did not strike against them. One of the first messages to come into the Operations Center was a message from Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, to our government, before the actual fighting had started, by which time it seemed they no longer had any doubt that this was a serious attack, or that one was on the verge of being started. ![]() The war caught everybody, except the Egyptians and the Syrians, off guard. Well, we were obviously light-years behind the power curve at this point. Just give it a little time, we’re sure this can be worked out. Joe got word in New York and woke Henry Kissinger up, and he got Henry to try to call the Egyptian and Syrian foreign ministers or ambassadors, whoever he could reach in New York, and say: We’re sure there must be some mistake. I was awakened and brought down to the Department of State to the Operations Center to be on the spot. Because of the time difference, since the war started early in the morning in the Middle East, it was of course in the middle of the night in Washington. I was in Washington, so I only heard this afterward. Needless to say, there was a certain amount of scrambling in the halls of the Department of State, in the White House, and up in New York …I think it is important to know that Kissinger was in New York at the time, and Joe Sisco was with him…. The Jordanians had not been part of the plan, though they had picked up intelligence about it as many others had. There was no action on the Jordanian front. Since the Israelis and we both had started from the premise that Egypt didn’t have the military capability to launch a successful attack, we therefore interpreted the intelligence to fit that preconception.īut it was obviously a well-planned and a major coordinated attack by Egyptian forces against the Israelis east of the Canal, and by the Syrians against the Israelis in the Golan Heights. It was interpreted by Israeli intelligence, and by most of ours, as Sadat wanted it interpreted, namely that it was simply preparations for military maneuvers in the eastern part of the country. ![]() They had to do certain things that could not be hidden from photographic and electronic surveillance.īut what they did could be interpreted in different ways. It was a master bit of deception on the part of the Egyptians and the Syrians. And it wasn’t very many weeks after that, within a month, to my recollection, that the crisis suddenly erupted into full-scale hostilities. “We were obviously light-years behind the power curve”ĪTHERTON: In retrospect, it was quite obvious that Sadat had already, in collusion with President Assad in Syria, made the decision that they were going to have to take military action in order to unfreeze the situation on the ground and also diplomatically. Go here to read about negotiating the Camp David Peace Accords and other Moments on the Middle East. The Department did not get much gratitude evacuating Americans out of Egypt during the war. Here is another perspective on the start of the Yom Kippur War. He recounts the negotiations between the U.S., the Soviet Union, the Arab states, and Israel that led to the ceasefire in a 1990 interview with Dayton Mak. was the Deputy Director of Near East Affairs during the Yom Kippur War. A first attempt at a ceasefire fell through, but as the military stalemate wore on, a second agreement, worked out with the USSR in advance, was arrived at on October 25, which officially ended the war, although fighting persisted off and on in the following months.Īlfred Leroy Atherton, Jr. As fighting continued, the United States worked to arrange a ceasefire agreement acceptable to both Israel and the Arab states. The Egyptian and Syrian militaries had performed maneuvers in the months leading up to the initial strike against Israel, but they were not seen as a threat. On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, shocking Israel and the United States. Israel’s resounding victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 left the Arab states humiliated and looking to regain the swathes of territory they had lost.
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