The War of the Day of Judgment

On the sands of the Sinai Peninsula and the craggy hills of the Golan Heights, the smoldering carcasses of planes and tanks mingled with the rusting wreckage left over from the Six-Day War of 1967. Blackened bodies of slain troops littered the terrain. From Damascus to Cairo and over the neighboring countries of Lebanon and Jordan, dogfights swirled high in the sky, antiaircraft shells and missiles exploded and wreck age fell. On the ground, armies of Arabs and Israelis last week maneuvered and fought each other with an intensity never before witnessed in the seemingly endless conflict in the Middle East.

In Tel Aviv, his olive-drab shirt sleeves rolled up in Israeli military fashion and his demeanor stern, Lieut. General David Elazar took time out from battle decisions and battlefront inspections to assess the war ravaging the Middle East. Israel's stocky, graying Chief of Staff spoke tersely and to the point. When a newsman asked whether he would agree that the Middle East's fourth conflict in 25 years of Arab-Israeli hostility should be called "the Yom Kippur war," Elazar proposed an alternative. It would be better called "the war of the Day of Judgment."

Elazar was speaking early on in a battle raging over Israel's annexed frontiers, and as he spoke it seemed--from the Israeli side, at least--that yet one more judgment was about to be rendered on the Arabs. From military spokesmen in Tel Aviv came assurances that Israeli troops rolling into battle were being deployed for little more than a mopping-up operation, and for several days world opinion was badly misled. The Suez war of 1956 took only 100 hours. The 1967 war lasted a mere six days. The speed and style of the Israelis--and the ineptness of the Arabs--had accustomed the world to swift battles in the Middle East, if not to peaceful solutions. Another, perhaps even swifter battle seemed reasonable this time. It was not to be.

At the end of six days of fierce fighting, neither side was ready to lay down its arms. The Arabs were battling as hard as the Israelis. The first war, beginning in 1947, continued for 14 months before the state of Israel emerged from the rubble. This one was highly unlikely to last that long, but it already was raging at a bloodier rate.

The fighting started on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the most solemn moment in the Jewish religious year, and it continued beyond Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, when Jews traditionally celebrate Moses' passage through the Sinai desert 3,300 years ago.

In an address to the Israeli nation, Premier Golda Meir showed none of the customary joy that accompanies the Sukkoth festival. "The main thing," she said somberly, "is to conclude the war and conclude it with our victory." General Aharon Yariv, the Six-Day War's intelligence chief, who had been called back to active duty, declared: "It is not going to be a short war. The people of Israel can expect no early and elegant victories. We will have to do a lot of fighting." Or, as Major General Shmuel Gonen, commander of the southern front, said more succinctly: "This is no express war."

Indeed not. At week's end, an estimated 100,000 Syrian troops had fallen back from the Golan Heights but were fighting fiercely, and Egypt had managed to insert up to 100,000 men on the east bank of the Suez Canal. The Arabs were standing and fighting--and already celebrating a victory. The mere fact that they had launched an attack against Israel and then sustained it and inflicted painful damage gave an incalculable lift to the spirit of a people who for decades had been beaten again and again on the battlefield. The whole psychological balance of power in the Middle East and most of what used to be considered political realities had suddenly changed.

Although the two-front war mainly involved Egypt and Syria, the Arab glee quickly grew into a kind of Moslem jihad (holy war). Morocco four months ago had sent a small detachment of troops to the Golan Heights largely as a symbolic gesture; suddenly they found themselves in action, and the Moroccans rejoiced. Kuwait had a similar unit on the Suez Canal, and it, too, entered the battle. Saudi Arabia sent 1,000 troops, and Tunisia dispatched 900 men to war in Algerian transport planes. "Conquer or die!" President Habib Bourguiba told them. Iraq did more: it seconded some of its Russian-equipped air force to Syrian and Egyptian control and began to move 18,000 infantrymen and 100 tanks to the Syrian front.

In the eighth day of combat, a more dangerous ally joined ranks with Egypt and Syria. Jordan, the third "confrontation" country on the border of Israel, sent elements of its crack army to join the Syrian forces in their battle to halt Israeli advances toward Damascus. The small Jordanian army (70,000 troops) is the best in the Arab world, and its officers were eager for action. King Hu sein had been under pressure from other Arab states to join the fighting, though perhaps less so than in 1967. What no doubt finally caused Hussein to make his decision was the success and strength of the Arab attack.

Hussein could not help being infected by the new sense of pride surging through the Arab world. It was becoming a source of honor for Arabs to take part in the battle. Morale was so high in Amman that even in the refugee camps, where Palestinian Arabs usually exude little more than despair, a new cry was being heard "Tamamani," the Arabic equivalent of"Right on!"

A jihad needs a leader, and the Arabs last week had a most unexpectedly popular one: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. For three years Sadat had been threatening to carry the war to Israel in order to reclaim the territory in Sinai that Egypt lost in the 1967 debacle. But after endless empty threats, almost nobody believed the colorless Sadat, not even Arabs.

Only two weeks before the Egyptians struck across the canal, Sadat was host in Cairo to two leaders of the Palestinian guerrilla movement from Beirut. "Prepare yourselves," he told them. "We are going into war." The visitors duly reported Sadat's warning at an executive meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The leaders chuckled at yet one more vain boast by Sadat, who has come to be known among Arab militants as "Old Goha," the classic fall guy in Egyptian jokes. Scarcely a week later the Egyptians struck, and Sadat was an instant hero throughout the Arab world. In shops and suqs, pictures of him went up next to those of the late Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic leader he succeeded in 1970. Until last week, the comparisons between the two leaders had always been in favor of Nasser.

Nasser's Mistakes. In a sense, the successes of the Arab forces were due to the fact that Sadat as President of Egypt was as different from Nasser in style and attitude as the current fighting was from the battles of 1967. Nasser, a friend recalls, enjoyed having strong men around him. Being strong, he liked to tilt against them. But Sadat "cuts everybody down to size. He has not allowed any military commander to get too strong. He never allows a Prime Minister to emerge as a man of influence."

Sadat has profited from Nasser's mistakes. Where Nasser tended to divide the Arab world and constantly quarreled with fellow leaders, Sadat has worked toward consensus and has ended much of the feuding that formerly went on. He put the latest operation together, first by getting Syrian President Hafez Assad to agree to his invasion plans, and then by restoring King Hus sein to a position of importance in the Arab world (he had been in bad graces since his 1970 crackdown on the Palestinian guerrillas). With unity achieved, Sadat was ready for battle.

The attack on Sinai and the Golan Heights was carried out with a finesse and synchronization that not even most Arabs suspected that the Arabs possessed. For one thing, details of the invasion were the best-kept Arab military secret in 25 years; combat commanders were not informed of the upcoming attack until they had need to know. Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence picked up signs of gathering forces, but could not bring themselves to believe that the Arabs were actually going to attack. It was only ten hours before the assault began that Israel finally concluded that the Arabs meant business. By the time the attack came on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the Israelis were mobilizing, but they were too late to prevent Arab advances. Syrian forces in the Golan Heights and Egyptian troops in the Sinai Peninsula smashed through Israeli lines and established powerful positions within the first minutes of the war.

In those early hours, Israel underestimated the force of the Arab assault, largely because of the pervasive overconfidence it had felt since the Six-Day War. Israel assumed that its highly motivated and well-trained troops could easily beat off a double-edged Arab attack, even a surprise attack. In a show of excessive bravado, Israel announced during the first day of fighting that schools would stay in session. The Allenby Bridge from Jordan was kept open to traffic, and, after briefly shutting down, Lod Airport was opened to international traffic. But as the fighting went on, civilian morale began to sag. "Oh God," said a housewife in Jerusalem last week as she went about preparations for Sukkoth, "we thought that this war would last for only two days."

Nightly Blackout. In contrast to gloom in Israel jubilation swept Arab cities. Everywhere Arab newspapers carried pictures of Israeli prisoners and the wreckage of vaunted Phantom jets. Al-Ahram Editor Hassanein Heikal quoted Soviet Ambassador to Cairo Vladimir Vinogradov as saying: "I have experienced sweet and bitter days, but this is the prime of my career in Egypt."

TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn reported from Cairo that the capital showed "surprisingly few signs of war. A nightly blackout that was about 75% effective on the second or third day of the fighting now has slipped back to about 60% effective, an indication of general relaxation. There had been rumors of shortages at first, but there is no noticeable lack of essentials. The seasonal foods, rice, sugar and sweets are all in adequate supply. More surprising is the Cairenes' friendly attitude toward foreigners, especially Americans. While the U.S. prestige officially has plunged for resupplying Israel, American companies have not felt it necessary to recommend that their U.S. employees leave the country. Whatever happens, President Sadat is riding high. Intellectuals who were once highly critical of him are now singing his praises. Said one intellectual to me: 'Last week I hated Anwar Sadat. Today I love him--and for exactly the same reasons.'"

For Moslems as well as Jews, the war had religious overtones. It came during Ramadan, the holy month of dawn-to-dusk fasting when, it is said, warriors who die in a jihad go immediately to heaven. In Cairo, Moslem scholars formally declared the fight a holy war.

In Sinai, the Egyptians, with 500 tanks, held onto the entire 103-mile length of the east bank of the Suez Canal. They seemed content for the moment to remain under the sheltering umbrella of Soviet-supplied ground-to-air missiles and artillery, taunting the Israelis to try to dislodge them from their defensive position. The mere fact that they had taken the eastern bank and the Israelis had been unable to push them back across the canal was in itself a significant military achievement.

The Egyptian flag was in Sinai again.

At the outset, Egypt's decision to send armor and waves of infantry across the canal to be torn up by Israeli air-power seemed to be terrible tactics. The '67 war, in which Israeli airpower inflicted fateful casualties, was still strong in the minds of Israeli military planners. But the Egyptians created a deadly zone of ground-to-air missiles and artillery to safeguard their bridgeheads. Up and down the canal, Egyptian forces in assault boats suddenly put out a series of bridges, including three at El Qantara in the north-central sector of the canal, three more at Ismailia and another three at Suez on the southern end. Some of the bridges were old-fashioned pontoons lashed together and topped with roadway; others were a modern type put down by Soviet-developed amphibious vehicles that laid ladder-like sections as they chugged across the canal. Soldiers went across in small boats and rafts at points where no bridges existed. The infantry troops were backed up by airplanes, artillery and small waves of paratroopers who were shuttled across the canal in helicopters.

The surge of Egyptians was too much for the canal defenders, a thin band of regular-army forces reduced that weekend by Yom Kippur passes. "My God," said a radioman in one bunker reporting back to Israel's secondary defenses ten miles to the rear, "it's like the Chinese coming across." Another forward observer reported that "hundreds, thousands of Egyptians are swimming toward our fort. We need reinforcements quickly."

Backed up by Soviet T-54 and T-55 tanks rumbling across the pontoon bridges, the Egyptians paused hardly at all, sweeping over Israel's vaunted Bar-Lev defense line anchored just beyond the east bank. They had obviously prepared well and arduously. "We trained for this mission for a long time," one wounded soldier told newsmen as he was carried back across the canal. "Each of us knew by heart what he was supposed to do."

The pontoon bridges were quickly knocked out by low-flying fighters of the Israeli air force, and just as quickly rebuilt. "They go up and they go down," said an Israeli officer charged with keeping them down. "I don't think Montgomery would have done it," said a Western officer who was following the war from the Arab side. "But if it involved some foolhardiness, it also involved a great deal of courage on the part of Sadat." As the attacking Egyptians pushed out onto the desert and Israeli troops fell back, Egypt poured two armored divisions and one mechanized infantry division into Sinai. Among the tanks crossing the canal were T-62s, the hottest item in Moscow's armored supply kit. The Soviets presumably were curious to see how the T-62--previously untested in battle--would do against the Israelis.

The Egyptian thrust was so well planned that even the Israelis were impressed. At the same tune that major units were crossing the waterway under air and missile support, Russian-built TU-16 jets of the Egyptian air force were bombing Israel's principal oil-producing wells-taken over from Egypt in the Six-Day War-at Abu Rudeis, farther down the Sinai Peninsula. Egyptian commando units were meanwhile dispatched to work their way behind Israeli lines and disrupt supply routes. They did it effectively. But as the battle went on, the Israelis returned the trick by sending nighttime commandos across the Gulf of Suez to swing round and hit the Egyptians in the same way.

On the desert, Egyptian and Israeli armored units fought deadly battles, often at point-blank range. On the first day of mobilization, Israeli Journalist David Halevy, a reserve rank lieutenant colonel, hurried from Tel Aviv to his reconnaissance battalion in the Sinai. By the second afternoon of the war, the reserve unit was in place at El Qantara, but it was unable to break through Egyptian lines to reach the bigger force it was assigned to support. Halevy later reported to TIME: "We were fighting in the area opposite Ismailia and the Firdan ridge. The Egyptian artillery was thick. Our tanks picked up casualties and took them along as we advanced because there was no immediate way the men could be evacuated." The Egyptians, he noted, "were fighting well, not running away. Our tactic the first two days was, as usual, to move forward, move forward. But as we advanced, we hit a wall of hundreds of missiles, tanks and heavy guns. There were heavy casualties on both sides--dead and wounded and burned-out tanks. They couldn't evacuate their dead or their machines. Their dead were so thick that our vehicles had to be careful not to run over the corpses."

Difficult Decision. The fourth day of the fighting was the worst, according to Halevy, who was later wounded when a shell fragment struck him in the neck. "We had little air support that day. The Egyptians attacked by the thousands. We let them climb up toward us, and when they were really close we smacked them with everything we had. Next day we captured two Egyptian soldiers. One told us that he had been in the Sinai before the war broke out, preparing an ambush of antitank missiles."

Any war has its moments of light or dark humor, and the latest Mideast battle is no exception. In the sand near the canal, an Israeli tank-unit commander counted his vehicles at dawn and discovered that he had one too many. An Egyptian armored personnel carrier, lost in the desert night, had attached itself to the column. The Israelis destroyed it before the Egyptian crew discovered where they were.

In the Sinai at week's end, the Israelis faced a difficult decision. The Egyptians either were unable to break out of their bridgehead or, more likely, did not plan to. Except for some armored probes of the Israeli line, which resulted in some heavy clashes, the Egyptians were hunkering down in the desert. As long as they had their missile umbrella, the Israeli air force was largely unable to maul them. That meant Israeli ground forces had to move in to drive the Egyptians out.

The Israeli goal was to recapture lost land and destroy the Arab armies. But from a strictly military point of view, launching such an attack in Sinai really made little sense. The attacking force, according to traditional military planning, has to be prepared to accept three times as many casualties as the defenders. For Israel, that was a doleful choice to make--and one that could wait. There were more pressing concerns on the northern front.

The Israelis were content to let the Egyptians sit there while they concentrated their effort more than 300 miles away at the far end of Israel on the rolling Golan plain above the Sea of Galilee. Here, along a 60-mile front, the Syrians had massed nearly 1,000 tanks. And here the Israelis, forced to fight a simultaneous two-front war, decided to make their first major counterattack.

For the initial 40 hours of the battle, small regular-army units faced the Syrian advance, fighting their way out of encirclements and pulling back to safety. By the third day, Israel's 95,000-man standing army had been backed up by 180,000 reservists. They rushed into battle with verve and determination. It was the kind of battle that Israeli forces had trained for: a swift, savage mobile engagement between armored units.

With a massive concentration of tanks, the Israelis lashed into the Syrian forces. The Syrians at first fell back, but then managed to counterattack and drive back into occupied territory. El Quneitra, formerly the Heights' biggest center and since '67 largely a ghost town, changed hands several times. Finally, Israeli armored units, closely supported by Phantoms and Skyhawks whooshing in to splatter napalm on the forward Syrian units, halted the Syrian drive and turned the Arabs back.

The Israeli breakthrough on the Golan forced battlefield decisions on both sides. For the Syrians, the choice was between falling back to defend Damascus or standing fast on the El Quneitra-Damascus road in an effort to halt the Israelis. For the Israelis, the decision was how far they should try to move along the road to Damascus. By week's end at least one Israeli force had penetrated more than ten miles beyond the cease-fire line set in 1967; but other Israeli troops were still meeting stiff resistance at the cease-fire lines. The Syrians were standing and fighting, aided by troops from both Iraq and Jordan. On the front, at least, the sentiment among Israeli soldiers was to smash the Arabs and go all the way to Damascus. Israeli tankers chalked ON TO DAMASCUS on the metal fronts of their Sherman and Centurion tanks. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, watching the battle from a redoubt on the Heights, made an angry vow: "We're going to show the Syrians that the road runs from Tel Aviv to Damascus as well as from Damascus to Tel Aviv." Dayan's order to his forces was to destroy as much of the Syrian army as possible along the way. In a cruel but effective bit of psychological warfare, Israeli Arab-language radio broadcasts taunted Damascenes, telling them to close the shutters on their houses and hang out white flags.

Even before the armored columns ambitiously headed toward Damascus, the Israelis had brought the war to the Syrian capital. On the fourth day of fighting, Israeli Phantoms suddenly ap peared over the capital and bombed it. Their targets were the Defense Ministry and the Damascus radio station, both of which they hit. But homes and buildings near the ministry in the fashionable residential quarter of the city occupied by many foreign missions and embassies were also damaged, including a hospital and the Soviet cultural mission. A Norwegian United Nations truce observer, his wife and eight-year-old daughter were killed.

More Raids. In the course of the week, other Israeli air raids were carried out on the smaller Syrian cities of Homs, Latakia and Tartus. Additional foreign casualties were inflicted at Latakia when bomb fragments hit the 1,480-ton Greek freighter Tsimentavron, which was anchored in the harbor, and two seamen were killed. At Tartus, the Soviet freighter Ilya Mechnikov, which was reportedly unloading equipment for Syria's new Euphates Dam, was badly damaged by an Israeli missile, and a Japanese vessel was also reported sunk. The Russians immediately accused Israel of "barbarous" attacks on non-military targets, and demanded "the strict observance by Israel of the norms of international law." Air strikes were also flown against Egypt. Cairo claimed that 500 civilians were killed in air and artillery attacks on Port Said. Along the coast, meanwhile, missile boats of the Israeli and Syrian navies fought several battles around Latakia and Tartus. The Israelis claimed that their Gabriel missiles had sunk eleven Syrian vessels in the course of four engagements. The Syrians said that they had destroyed eleven Israeli boats.

The aerial bombings introduced a new and alarming note into the battle. Blackouts were imposed on cities on both sides. In Jerusalem, lights that had illuminated the Wailing Wall since it was taken from Jordan six years ago went out, along with the golden spotlights that were erected by Israel to shine on the walls of the Old City. At the Wailing Wall, the Torah was removed to safety. But the Arabs did not retaliate against Israeli cities during the first week of combat.

In the days ahead, Israel faced fateful decisions and fierce fighting. Despite the heavy casualties to be expected from an attempt to crush the Arab units on the northern front and rout the Egyptians from the Sinai, and with no clear military necessity to do so, Israel may feel it can do no less. As long as the Egyptians remained on the east bank of the canal, Israel faced the threat of fighting long into the future. It also had to worry whether the Arabs would misinterpret an Israeli decision not to drive the Egyptians from the Sinai. The Arabs could conclude that Israel was too weak for the task, encouraging Arab hawks to try to capture more ground.

Whichever way the Israelis resolve their dilemma, it will not be a satisfying solution. Israel has consistently said it would not settle for anything less than restoration of the cease-fire lines that were in force before the recent fighting started. But in a weekend press conference, Golda Meir seemed to leave open the door to negotiations. "When we hear a suggestion for a cease-fire," she said, "the government will seriously deal with it." Without a ceasefire, Israel must align its strategy to produce a short war --certainly shorter than six weeks. Israel is simply not geared for a long war. It does not have the manpower or the resources. Israelis are already the most heavily taxed people in the world, and Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir has estimated that the current fighting will cost them perhaps another $250 million a day. Surtaxes must therefore go up. An Arab observer expressed last week to TIME Correspondent Karsten Prager in Beirut what was undoubtedly on many minds, Israeli as well as Arab: "What if Israel wins the battle and bleeds herself dry in the process--won't she eventually lose the war?"

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