CEASEFIRE VIOLATION SEALS A STRATEGIC GAINthirty-seven years later: “we ran into a wall of Russians and Eg yptians. When a
Russian is dug into a foxhole, you can’t get him out unless you kill him. The IAF had
no solution for overcoming the missiles.”^52
Phantom pilot Yiftah Spector, soon to be appointed commander of a new squad-
ron, calculated that at the rate of loss the F-4s sustained—one for every 8.3 sorties
against the missile array—the thirty serviceable craft that Israel had on average at the
height of the war would have been exhausted within weeks (not to mention the
crews).^53 The damage—he argued—might have been mitigated had the IAF fielded
its entire order of battle, including older craft, against the missiles rather than put the
entire burden on the F-4s. By the fortieth anniversary of the War of Attrition, a
pamphlet issued by the semiofficial Air Force Association echoed Spector in assessing
that “Israel lost the war.” It had failed to achieve its main objective, whereas the
Eg yptians and Soviets had gained theirs: ensuring the precondition for an offensive
across the canal.^54
In any case, the air war was only “the last straw” in a confrontation that was unwin-
nable because of Israel’s numerical inferiority and its social-political inability to sus-
tain mounting casualties in the ground war as well. Losses on the Eg yptian front
alone for 1970 up to August were 124 killed (including four civilians) and 329
injured in 4,820 incidents.^55 Admitted Soviet fatalities numbered thirty-five between
March 1969 and August 1970.^56 But even had they been publicized, they would have
had no comparable effect, just as the thousands of Eg yptian casualties put no pause
to their leadership’s resolve.
Shortly after the ceasefire, Ashraf Marwan again met his Israeli handler and satis-
fied the latter’s demand for the Eg yptian cross-canal offensive plan, indicating that it
was still operative. At this stage, it had to be Lashchenko’s blueprint. Bar-Joseph holds
that this, along with a detailed list of the Eg yptian order of battle that Marwan also
provided, cemented his credibility with the Israelis.^57
Even a genuine Israeli agent placed as close to Nasser as Marwan, and as aware of
the president’s failing health as his son-in-law must have been, could not have pre-
dicted the date—28 September 1970—of another heart attack, this time fatal.^58
Lashchenko and Chief of Staff Zakharov were both in the delegation that Kosygin
led to Nasser’s funeral three days later.^59 It also included Col.-Gen. Vasily Okunev,
who had been appointed in “early September” to replace Katyshkin as chief military
adviser in Eg ypt. He was listed with Lashchenko as signing the condolence book, in
an implied message that no change of military plans was envisaged. According to the
American Defense Intelligence Agency, the delegation numbered no fewer than
seventy-two Soviet officers—who remained in Eg ypt with Okunev.^60
Also in the Soviet premier’s entourage was Vladimir Vinogradov, who on the
morning of the delegation’s departure was officially appointed to succeed his sur-
name-sake Sergey as ambassador in Cairo. Skipping the formality of agrément by the
Eg yptian Foreign Ministry, Kosygin introduced Vinogradov to Nasser’s vice-presi-