Brilliant Moves in a Final Battle

Cease-fire violations along the jagged truce lines that separate the Israeli and Arab armies may continue for some time. But at week's end it was virtually certain that the fourth Middle East war since the founding of Israel in 1948 had come to an end, though at a terrible price. In 18 days of ferocious fighting, all the participants suffered heavy losses in both men and materiel; according to the U.S. Defense Department, as many as 7,700 Egyptians, 7,700 Syrians and 4,500 Israelis were killed or wounded, the largest number of casualties for all three nations in any war since 1948.

From a purely military viewpoint it was already clear that the Israelis had come breathtakingly close to a victory that would have matched their swift triumph in the Six-Day War. Despite the important advantages possessed this time by the refurbished Arab armies--the element of surprise, the early losses they inflicted, their easy penetration of the Bar-Lev Line along the east bank of the Suez Canal and Israeli bastions in the Golan Heights--the Israelis managed in scarcely more than two weeks to reverse the tide of battle and push the battlefronts into Syria and Egypt. At week's end the Israelis claimed that they had captured most of the city of Suez; their armies had fought to within 30 miles of Damascus and about 45 miles of Cairo.

Avoiding Disaster. Although the details were still obscured by censorship, the bridgehead made by an Israeli armored force across the southern sector of the canal may rank as the most brilliant military feat in the country's short but tempestuous history. In the end, Egypt may well have agreed to a ceasefire because it realized that to continue fighting would lead to another disaster.

Enlarging their bridgehead on the west bank of the Suez Canal (TIME, Oct. 29), Israeli forces last week proceeded to neutralize, both militarily and politically, the dug-in Egyptian forces on the east bank. With at least 20,000 men and 500 tanks at their disposal on the southern portion of the west bank, the Israelis cut the vital highway between Suez and Cairo, encircled and later captured most of the city of Suez and pushed on to the port of Adabiya. In the process, they trapped the Egyptian Third Army, which was still in position on the east bank of the canal.

The Egyptian public hardly realized what had happened. At the week's beginning, a mood of euphoria still persisted in Cairo. Many Egyptians initially resented the declaration of a ceasefire because they believed that it was cheating Egypt out of a clear-cut victory. In any case, full-scale fighting broke out again almost immediately. In the 24 hours that followed the ceasefire, the Israelis drastically improved their position on the west bank. They destroyed large numbers of missile and artillery sites and, most important, they isolated the Third Army, cutting it off from food for its 20,000 men and fuel for its 400 tanks. Time after time, the Egyptians fought ferociously to free themselves but failed.

Before dawn Wednesday, the chief of staff of the ineffective U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, Major General Ensio P.H. Siilasvuo, discussed with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan the problem of getting observers to the battle lines along the Egyptian front. Dayan then asked Siilasvuo, a Finn, to propose to the Egyptians a new cease-fire that would go into effect at 7 a.m. that morning. The Egyptians agreed.

Stinging Gesture. By this time, the Egyptian government fully realized to what extent it had blundered in underestimating the seriousness of the Israeli bridgehead on the west bank. But it was too late to change the course of battle; the Egyptian Third Army was, as Moshe Dayan put it, "technically blocked." In a particularly stinging gesture to the Egyptians, the Israelis announced that they would supply blood plasma to the Third Army, since the Egyptian government was incapable of doing so. The Israelis added that the encircled Arabs were in no immediate danger of dying from thirst or hunger.

Enraged by the sudden change in the direction of the war, the Egyptians blamed both the Israelis for cease-fire violations and the U.S. for continuing its shipments of supplies to Israel. Charged Ashraf Ghorbal, President Anwar Sadat's press adviser: "Israel is cheating on the ceasefire, and the U.S. is helping it to cheat." In midweek Sadat appealed to the Soviet Union and the U.S. to send troops to the Middle East to police the truce; he also demanded a return to the cease-fire lines that existed before the Israeli encirclement had occurred. Both requests were motivated, in large part, by his desperate desire to protect the Third Army. The Egyptians' plight was presumably the reason that the Soviet Union got tough with the U.S. last week, when it attempted to pressure Washington into forcing the Israelis to observe the ceasefire.

Blurred Lines. By week's end the first of 1,500 U.N. forces were arriving in Egypt to supervise the cease-fire--a particularly difficult job in the southern sector of the west bank, where the battle lines were blurred and forces were intermingled. Even as the observers began to tackle the problem of how to proceed with their mission, another fierce battle erupted along the canal as the Third Army tried once more to fight its way out of the trap.

But already, hundreds of thirsty and hungry Egyptian soldiers were walking out of the harsh, blazing desert with their hands up and handkerchiefs waving. From their east-bank positions, the nearest fresh water was 100 miles away; the water conduit from the west was held by the Israelis, who seemed determined to supply them with water only in exchange for surrender. At best, the ones who held out could probably expect to go through what Gamal Abdel Nasser, as a young major, was forced to do in 1949: to await an armistice, after which, by joint agreement, they can walk through Israeli lines to safety.

On the Syrian front, savage fighting persisted until the hour of the ceasefire. When it finally ended, the Israelis were in control of the strategic Mount Hermon, but their drive toward Damascus had been blunted in the final hours of combat by an Arab counterattack that pushed them back about seven miles. Compared with the continuing bloodshed on the Egyptian front, the ceasefire along the Golan Heights was holding reasonably well.

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