On the Anniversary of the Tenth of Ramadan - Sixth of October

On this day in October 1973, Israel was dealt a crushing blow, as evidenced by non-Arab figures.... And numbers are the best witness: Israel lost 110 aircraft, 400 tanks, around 3,000 dead, and 1,000 prisoners, including 43 pilots from its elite fighter pilots, in just the first five days of the war... according to Pentagon estimates, not Arab estimates. The Israeli air force was no longer effective... which is the core of Israeli power... and the Israeli armored forces were neutralized. Brigade after brigade of Israeli forces surrendered. Israel lost the entire Bar Lev Line within hours: it was occupied and its defenders captured by Egyptian forces... The Bar Lev Line extended along the Egyptian-Israeli front... and was the most significant military fortification of modern times... the main line of defense for Israel and one of the strongest defensive lines in history. Israel's confidence in the immunity of its fortifications was such that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan stated that the Bar Lev Line could only be breached with joint Russian-American military engineering cooperation. Most importantly, the Arabs possessed the will (and Ramadan is the month of will)... they seized the initiative, confronted the Israeli army, and defeated it... proving the capability of the Arab fighter. Here, I return to reviewing the non-Arab figures: Israel lost 160 aircraft in just the first ten days of the war, which is a third of its air force, 900 tanks, which is half of its armored forces, around 6,000 dead, and 20,000 wounded... in addition to thousands of prisoners. Israeli leaders were surprised by what happened; they did not expect either the nature of the attack or the heavy losses they incurred, nor did they anticipate a continuous assault along a front extending about 170 kilometers... from the beginning of the Egyptian front to its end. The Egyptian air force destroyed the Israeli command center in Sinai... from the first strike... and in just the first 48 hours, only 90 out of 350 Israeli tanks in Sinai remained, according to the report of Israeli Chief of Staff General David Elazar, and by the end of the war, Israel had lost half of its armored forces and its elite trained crews. In just 48 hours, Israel also lost its elite pilots: 40 were killed, in addition to the prisoners. Most of them had flight records of no less than 3,000 hours. Meanwhile, three-quarters of the Israeli aircraft that approached the missile wall were shot down. Above all, Israel was surprised by the quality of the Arab fighter, his morale, and his capabilities... while Pentagon estimates suggested that the Egyptian army would be defeated in just 12 hours!! Israeli leaders were confused and unable to rectify the situation, acting with extreme nervousness, and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was torn between dismissing the commander of the Sinai front, General Jonin, after he suffered a complete breakdown, and keeping him... as his dismissal would be an admission of failure against the Egyptian army. Dayan ultimately decided that instead of dismissing the Sinai front commander, he would support him with three generals: General Kalman, General Adan, and General Sharon. This led to a conflict among the four generals and significant confusion in leadership! The struggle among the generals became public while the battle was at its peak... as happened between General Sharon and General Jonin, and General Chaim Bar-Lev was sent to coordinate among them, but the conflict did not end. However, the deeper aspect that cannot be denied in the immense strategic impact of the October War was the Saudi role: when Saudi Arabia announced the oil embargo, it changed the global balance of power... and forced Western powers to reconsider their biased foreign policy towards the Middle East. The enormous economic and diplomatic pressures created by the oil weapon led to disengagement agreements, and subsequently to the complete Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, and we continue to live today under the influence of Saudi Arabia's announcement of the oil embargo during the Ramadan/October War. Just as the Arab world faced a severe crisis in the 1970s due to Israeli ambitions, it faces today a crisis no less severe due to contemporary Israeli ambitions, as Israel senses the possibility of America withdrawing from the region, as well as the decline in American public support for it, and that it may not be able to push America towards other wars. Therefore, it hastened to push for this war with Iran in a major step towards building its empire: "from the Nile to the Euphrates," so that Israel can dominate the region, which will pose an extremely dangerous situation for all countries in the region. This war has shown that consensus and joint action are no longer an option, but have become an absolute necessity to protect Gulf security and broader Arab security, and consensus can protect the region from turning into a battleground for destructive regional conflict... and an Israeli-controlled breach. It can also protect the region from a deal that ends the war at the expense of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries; thus, Gulf and Arab cooperation is no longer an option, but has become a necessity. Just as the Arabs were able to cooperate to emerge from that crisis in 1973, they must cooperate today to protect the region.