THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973ment of 116—but having witnessed the incident, he denied that it had penetrated
Eg yptian waters. The latter version was supposedly gleaned from foreign sources but
was so fanciful that it was never officially announced. Kryshtob’s account indicates
that previously (as in the Eilat sinking ), Eg yptian naval craft only operated under
Soviet guidance, with the adviser in effect overseeing the nominal skipper. Whether
he was indeed uninvolved in the Orit sinking is called into question by a statement
from the usually cautious military historian Zhirokhov, hinting broadly that Eg yptian
naval commandos who “sank an Israeli patrol boat the same night” in Eilat port
“might quite reasonably have been Soviet spetznaz [special ops].”^32 Port Said, not to
mention Alexandria, was still relatively protected by the Soviet presence, and Israel
retaliated for the Orit with an air raid on the Red Sea base of Ras Banas that sank an
Eg yptian destroyer and Komar boat.
D. Direct hits on the Soviets in Port Said
On 30 May 1970, the Eg yptians staged an enhanced replay of the Ras el-Ish raid.
Fawzy later claimed that this time the canal crossing was at battalion level—which
meant certain involvement, at least in the planning, by the Soviet advisers. Israel
claimed it had defeated the incursion but admitted an extraordinarily heavy loss of
fifteen soldiers. Fawzy stressed that building up the entire army for a cross-canal
offensive was continuing, and this objective was already within reach. Israeli com-
mentators could only quibble with the numbers.^33
The magnitude of this blow was reflected in the IAF response: an unprecedentedly
intensive bombing campaign on the Port Said area, in which—reporters were told—
more bombs were dropped on Eg ypt than in the entire Six-Day War. Soviet ships had
been spotted before in the harbor “and occasionally fired on Israeli planes”; this time,
one of the pilots reported sighting three.^34 Although the Israelis claimed they had
steered clear of them, on 7 June Eban confirmed to the Knesset that a warning from
Moscow had been relayed via the Finnish embassy after shrapnel hit a Soviet ship—a
fact that was deliberately omitted in IDF communiqués. Dayan later confirmed that
some Soviet naval crewmen were killed.^35 The Israeli bombardment cut off road trans-
port and water supply to the city—whose remaining population of 20,000 was mostly
employed in services for the Soviet base—and auxiliary ships of the Eskadra took
over supplying the inhabitants’ necessities.^36 Nonetheless, an Israeli air raid across the
canal several days later reported that the Eg yptians had not fled as on earlier occa-
sions, but were holding their positions.
E. Kissinger presents Soviet withdrawal as a policy goal
Returning from Moscow almost two months after the 9 April meeting in which
Kissinger had suggested a summit, Dobrynin met first with Rogers and Sisco. Despite