348 • 18 WAR AND THE QUEST FOR PEACEabout Jewish settlements and development towns in the Sinai, especially
near the Gaza Strip. Sadat graphically expressed his reaction: "Every word
spoken about Yamit [Israel's port near Rafah] is a knife pointed at me per¬
sonally and at my self-respect."War Preparations
Sadat began, therefore, to confer publicly and privately with other Arab
heads of state about an attack on Israel. For personal and political reasons,
he could no longer work with Qadhafi, who made frequent and often
unannounced visits to Cairo to harangue the Egyptian people about the
Arabs' duty to combat Zionism, the proper role of Muslim women, and
the iniquity of Cairo's nightclubs. Egypt's projected union with Libya, due
to take effect on 1 September 1973, was put off and finally forgotten.
Instead Sadat looked to Saudi Arabia, Egypt's main financial backer, and
to the other confrontation states, Syria and Jordan. These two countries
had been rivals ever since King Abdallah's "Greater Syria" scheme. However,
Hafiz al-Asad, who took over Syria late in 1970, was more committed than
his precursors to revive his country's economy and less inclined to subvert
Jordan's politics. Husayn wanted to end his kingdom's isolation in the Arab
world. In early September, therefore, Sadat brought together the two lead¬
ers for a minisummit, at which they agreed to revive their united front
against Israel. The next day Israel announced that it had shot down thirteen
Syrian jets and lost one in a dogfight over the Mediterranean (Syria admit¬
ted to a score of eight to five). Israel may have tried to discredit the new sol¬
idarity vaunted by the Arab confrontation states. But high-level Egyptian
and Syrian officers started quietly planning a coordinated surprise attack
on the Israeli-occupied territories in the Golan Heights and the east bank
of the Suez Canal.
Many Zionists have claimed that Syria and Egypt planned to invade and
defeat Israel, presumably to liberate Palestine, but this was not Sadat's
stated goal. The Arab leaders planned to catch Israel off guard. They
thought that the Americans, paralyzed by the Vietnam debacle and the
Watergate scandal, would not intervene. They agreed that Jordan, lacking
missile defenses against Israeli aircraft, should stay out of the early phases
of the war. Did Syria and Egypt deliberately choose Yom Kippur (the Jew¬
ish Day of Atonement) as the date of their attack? Experts disagree. The
original plan was to launch it just after sundown, on a day when the moon
was nearly full. The Soviets had just launched a spy satellite over the Mid¬
dle East to guide the Arabs' maneuvers.