THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973toward prior coordination of the response to the Israeli move. On 29 June, it was
officially announced that the Soviet consulate was among the few remaining foreign
missions in Port Said (as well as Suez City) that were ordered by Eg yptian authorities
to close “until traces of Israeli aggression are erased.”^49
The flare-up began the very day that Zakharov left Cairo, after concluding his
inspection of Eg yptian forces on the canal front. His final meeting with Nasser to
present a detailed report began with a half hour of commiseration and mutual advice
on their other common problem, diabetes.^50 Zakharov’s departure provided some
deniability for Soviet connivance in the following day’s action.^51 But having pleaded
for and obtained his agreement in principle to enhance the presence and role of
Soviet advisers, the Eg yptians would hardly have flouted it so quickly by launching
an uncoordinated operation. Indeed, Lashchenko, who accompanied the marshal
back to Moscow, returned immediately after the Ras el-Ish engagement.^52
Egypt’s crack commando forces had not been stationed in Sinai in the run-up to
the war, so they hardly would have already garrisoned a pre-existing defensive posi-
tion east of the Canal.^53 According to the Israeli account, on 1 July the Eg yptians
ferried not only some 100 commandos but several armored vehicles across the canal,
an unprecedented feat for them; in the summer of 1968, Eg yptian officers still had
trouble floating tanks across a water obstacle even under staff-exercise conditions.^54
Encouraging and training the Eg yptians to mount raids across the canal became a
regular feature of the Soviet advisers’ program. On 17 July, Pozhidaev told his
Swedish counterpart in Cairo that “if Israeli forces try to cross the canal, the USSR
will intervene directly”; but the Soviets frequently threatened moves that they had
already made.^55 The Eg yptian narrative does not credit the Soviets with any role, but
as the advisers soon found out, such thanklessness would be par for the course.
Rabin admits that his troops, hemmed in on the causeway, soon found themselves
in “a severe situation.” On 8 July, they lost five killed and thirteen injured under a
sudden and concentrated barrage from the west bank (Egorin states that Soviet ser-
vicemen played a direct role in “artillery duels on the canal front” in the immediate
postwar period, but does not give a precise date).^56 Rabin sidestepped Dayan (who
was characteristically incommunicado when a difficult decision had to be made) to
order air strikes across the canal. Cairo confirmed that the Israeli planes knocked out
several batteries of Eg yptian artillery that had been shelling the Israeli sitting ducks.
As the EAF chief later recalled, the Soviet airlift of fighter jets now enabled the local
ground forces commander, Gen. Ahmed Ismail Ali, to call in an air counterstrike that
ranged deep into Sinai.^57 Even though one Eg yptian MiG-21 was shot down and
Israel denied any losses, the boost to Eg yptian morale was considerable.
For Soviet consumption, the Eg yptians described the situation less optimisti-
cally—as Brezhnev told Socialist Bloc leaders in Budapest on 11 July :
On the evening of July 8 we suddenly received from Nasser a disquieting letter ...: “This
morning at 10:30 Israeli forces began an offensive in direction of ... Port Fuad. ... It is clear