The 1973 war between Israel and the joint forces of Egypt and Syria began on October 6, when the Arab coalition jointly launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur.

Although it is accepted that Israel won the war, it was at a huge cost of over 2,400 soldiers killed and over 8,000 injured. Israel also lost over 400 tanks and more than 100 aircraft.

How was it possible looking back to the morning of October 6, that only a few hundred Israeli soldiers were defending the long defensive Bar Lev line along the Suez Canal, why there was no pre-emptive air strike on the Egyptians, there was no early reserve mobilisation and no advance of the Israeli armoured brigades toward their defensive positions on the canal.

Before the war, the intelligence opinion held by Israeli military leaders was that Egypt would ONLY go to war if it could achieve a military victory, but the Israeli superiority in the air and on land was so great that an Arab offensive would fail. This led to the assumption that the Arabs would not start a war for many years and any change this would have had to be based on the view that Egypt had sufficient air capability to neutralise the Israel’s air force.

By making this assumption, Israel continuously failed to continuously examine the factors that led to this conclusion? By ignoring the possibility that this could have been an erroneous conclusion, the military chiefs did not question whether the adoption of this conclusion was sensible.

Based on these mistaken assumptions, Israeli intelligence did not at any stage consider whether there was any other relevant available information that should cause a rethink of these assumptions. This led to complacency and the dismissal of a significant level of evidence to the contrary and which would have enabled Israel to correctly predict the intention of the Egyptians and Syrians to launch a war.

Towards the end of September 1973, King Hussein of Jordan, with his Prime Minister and his head of intelligence, visited a Mossad facility in Israel. This was not the King’s first visit to Israel as he had several secret meetings with Israeli leaders for many years. Hussein had requested this meeting as he had urgent information for the Israelis.

The king met with PM Golda Meir and the head of the Mossad only a short time after a meeting he attended in Cairo with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Syrian president Hafez al-Assad. It has been reported that at the meeting with Meir, the king explicitly warned the Israelis that Egypt and Syria were planning to surprise Israel by attacking its forces along the Suez Canal and on the Golan. Prime Minister Meir, however, did not heed Hussein’s warning thus opening the door to the surprise attack on 6 October.

It has been reported that King Hussein warned PM Meir that the Syrians and Egyptians had decided that the current situation in the Golan Heights and at the Suez Canal was untenable and war was on the cards. He further stated that Syria was ready for war and its army had been deployed in positions set to attack. He also added that he expected Egypt to support Syria in this war.

It is believed that King Hussein hoped that his warning would persuade PM Meir to initiate a peace process rather than maintain the existing situation, with the Egyptians and Syrians whose leaders were under domestic pressure to take steps to recover some credibility and respect following the disaster of the Six Days War.

It is now well documented that in 2018, Israeli declassified documents have revealed that a Mossad agent advised on 5 October 1973 that war will break out on the following day. The head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir advised PM Meir’s military secretary that the Egyptians and Syrians would attack Israel on the next day, Yom, Kippur.

This Mossad source has been identified as Ashraf Marwan, a confidant of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and who was the son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was known to the Israelis as The Angel.

Marwan offered his services to the Mossad in the 1960s. There was a view however within the Israeli intelligence service that he was a double agent, providing information which was insignificant to Israel. However, a couple of days before the war, The Angel advised that there was a 99% chance of a war and perhaps it could be averted if Israel publishes information that shows that these plans have been exposed and Israel is prepared for the war. Unfortunately, The Angel’s advice to publicise Israel’s preparedness was not accepted and the war broke out, catching the Israeli military completely unprepared.

The documents released show that although Israeli military leaders did agree that the Egyptians and Syrians would be able to attack within a very short time, Israeli intelligence continued to believe that any attack was most unlikely and The Angel’s warning was ignored.

Another erroneous assumption made by Israel was a misunderstanding of the purpose of Egyptian annual autumn military exercises that they had been undertaking for years. This repeated pattern was maintained for the purpose of deceiving Israel. These “familiar” exercises by the Egyptian military led Israel to ignore the unusual actions that were at the heart of the 1973 “routine” exercises which were in essence real preparations for the surprise attack on the Israeli forces based on the east bank of the Suez Cana.

In late September, Egyptian troops engaged in these exercises began to move toward the Suez Canal but at the same time, the Egyptians took extraordinary steps to persuade Israel that this was just another routine exercise. Egyptian troops were regularly observed without weapons and some of them were observed on the bank of the canal fishing and relaxing. The atmosphere seemed to be very casual and low-key and thus the Egyptians successfully deceived the Israelis and played to their prejudice that the Egyptians lacked military discipline and competence.

By adopting this approach, the Egyptians tricked the Israelis who failed to comprehend that this was in essence a real preparation for war and led to Israeli complacency which made Israel lose focus and reduce its readiness to the real events taking place across the canal.

It is clear therefore that the Israeli misconception that Egypt would only go to war if it could achieve a military victory significantly ‘persuaded’ Israeli intelligence to ignore and reject all the information that clearly indicated that the Egyptians and Syrians were preparing for war.

Most importantly however, the Israeli failure has taught valuable lessons about intelligence gathering that were seriously flawed and came very close in 1973 to the destruction of the Jewish State. Fifty years have passed, but the memory of the Yom Kippur War is still fresh in the memory of all of those who lived through it.

A few weeks after the war, the Nili sailed into Haifa, painted with camouflage colours. Our almost new Citroen GS and all our possessions were exactly where we last saw them before we left the ship. Can this be the start of another story?

Next time – the consequences and lessons from the Yom Kippur War