War of Attrition - Egyptian Front

Egyptian Front

Israel's victory in the Six-Day War left the entirety of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula up to the eastern bank of the Suez Canal under Israeli occupation. Egypt was determined to regain Sinai, and also sought to mitigate the severity of its defeat. Sporadic clashes were taking place along the cease-fire line, and Egyptian missile boats sank the Israeli destroyer INS Eilat on October 21 of the same year.

Egypt began shelling Israeli positions along the Bar Lev Line, using heavy artillery, MiG aircraft and various other forms of Soviet assistance with the hope of forcing the Israeli government into concessions. Israel responded with aerial bombardments, airborne raids on Egyptian military positions, and aerial strikes against strategic facilities in Egypt.

The international community and both countries attempted to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. The Jarring Mission of the United Nations was supposed to ensure that the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 242 would be observed, but by late 1970 it was clear that this mission had been a failure. Fearing the escalation of the conflict into an "East vs. West" confrontation during the tensions of the mid-Cold War, the American President, Richard Nixon, sent his Secretary of State, William Rogers, to formulate the Rogers Plan in view of obtaining a ceasefire.

In August 1970, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt agreed to an "in place" ceasefire under the terms proposed by the Rogers Plan. The plan contained restrictions on missile deployment by both sides, and required the cessation of raids as a precondition for peace. The Egyptians and their Soviet allies rekindled the conflict by violating the agreement shortly thereafter, moving their missiles near to the Suez Canal, and constructing the largest anti-aircraft system yet implemented at that point in history.

The Israelis responded with a policy which their Prime Minister, Golda Meir, dubbed “asymmetrical response”, wherein Israeli retaliation was disproportionately large in comparison to any Egyptian attacks.

Following Nasser’s death in September 1970, his successor, Anwar Al-Sadat, ceased current hostilities with Israel, focusing instead on rebuilding the Egyptian army and planning a full-scale attack on the Israeli forces occupying the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. These plans would materialize three years later in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ultimately, Israel would return Sinai to Egypt after the two nations signed a peace treaty.

Various military historians have commented on the war with differing opinions. Chaim Herzog notes that Israel withstood the battle and adapted itself to a "hitherto alien type of warfare." Zeev Schiff notes that though Israel suffered losses, she was still able to preserve her military accomplishments of 1967 and that despite increased Soviet involvement, Israel had stood firm.

Simon Dunstan notes that despite the fact that Israel continued to hold the Bar Lev Line, the war’s conclusion "led to a dangerous complacency within the Israeli High Command about the resolve of the Egyptian armed forces and the strength of the Bar-Lev Line." On the tactical level, Kenneth Pollack notes that Egypt’s commandos performed "adequately" though they rarely ventured into risky operations on a par with the daring of Israel’s commandos. Egypt's artillery corps encountered difficulty in penetrating the Bar-Lev forts and eventually adopted a policy of trying to catch Israeli troops in the exterior parts of the forts.

The Egyptian Air Force and Air Defense Forces performed poorly. Egyptian pilots were rigid, slow to react and unwilling to improvise According to U.S. intelligence estimates, Egypt lost 109 aircraft, most in air-to-air combat for the loss of only 16 Israeli, most to anti-aircraft artillery or SAMs. It took a salvo of between 6 to 10 SA-2 Egyptian anti-aircraft missiles to obtain a better than fifty percent chance of a hit.