The Syrian Command was by now showing signs of desperation. A note of hysteria was replacing the tone of confident victory that had characterized the Arab broadcasts for the past five days. The Israeli forces were advancing into Syria against a very depleted Syrian Army. The Israeli Air Force had come into its own. By trial and error, it had discovered the weaknesses in the Syrian surface-to-air missile system and had succeeded in destroying part of it; now its aircraft were ranging far and wide into Syria to bomb strategic targets, such as the country’s oil stores and power stations. At one stage, Syrian aircraft returning from missions could not find an undamaged airfield in which to land. (Some landed on motor routes specifically constructed for the purpose.) Israeli aircraft were continually rendering Syrian airfields unusable, thus hindering the massive Soviet airlift that was daily flying in dozens of heavy transports, while Israeli naval attacks on Syrian ports were endangering the sea supply line from the Soviet Union. The bulk of the Syrian Army was being concentrated along the approaches to Damascus, and the allied Arab forces, comprising units from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and later Jordan, was assigned the task of delaying the Israeli advance. Announcements were made to the effect that, even if Damascus were to fall, Syria would continue to fight.
The Syrian Government issued desperate pleas for help. But, a few days earlier, when the Syrian forces were within a short distance of the Jordan in the southern part of the Golan Heights, having broken the initial Israeli resistance. President Assad had endeavoured to achieve a cease-fire through the offices of the Soviet Union, in order to head off the Israeli counterattack that was ultimately launched, and to remain in control of the Golan Heights. President Sadat, who had succeeded in crossing the Suez Canal and establishing bridgeheads from which his forces planned to break out, would not agree to such a cease-fire. Now, as the Israelis pressed their advantage and pushed into Syria, President Assad was only too aware of the seriousness of the error in failing to press for a cease-fire at the outset. And now, while Syria was bleeding and fighting on the approaches to its capital city, its ally, the Egyptian Army, was sitting placidly on the east bank of the Suez Canal content to consolidate its gains and hesitant to endanger its success by advancing. Assad pleaded with the
Egyptians to apply pressure on the Israeli forces and thus relieve his front. General Ismail Ali, the Egyptian Minister of War, promised action. (And, indeed, he later explained that the armoured battle of 14 October had been motivated by a desire to relieve the pressure on Syria.) The Syrians also turned to their Soviet allies, who stepped up the airlift and increased supplies to their sorely-pressed forces. Aware of the fact that the Syrian front was in danger of collapsing, Moscow issued veiled threats, such as an announcement in the Soviet media that ‘the Soviet Union cannot remain indifferent to the criminal acts of the Israeli Army’. The Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, presented the Soviet threat to the American Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, indicating to him that Soviet airborne forces were now on the alert to move to the defence of Damascus.
As the war in the Middle East developed, additional units of the United States Navy moved to join the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, while Soviet warships moved to protect the ports of Latakia and Tartus in Syria. The Soviet Union began to urge Arab countries to join their fellow Arabs in battle. The Chairman of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, sent a message to Houari Boumedienne, the Algerian ruler, urging him to ‘do his Arab duty’; and Soviet tanks were shipped via Yugoslavia to the Algerian units assigned to the Egyptian front.
Independent of these developments, a decision had been taken in Israel not to become involved in the capture of Damascus. The effect of such a move on the Arab world could be a very serious one, and its military value would at best be dubious. Furthermore, involvement in the conquest of a city of a million hostile inhabitants could be a very costly proposition indeed, while the Israeli Command was only too aware of the danger of being drawn with its limited forces into the wide, open spaces of Syria. When to these considerations were added the Soviet interest in the security of Damascus and the Soviet threats, it was obviously not in Israel’s interest to advance beyond a point from which Damascus could be threatened by Israeli artillery fire. Consequently, only a few pinpoint air attacks against specific military targets in Damascus were approved by the Israeli Government, including a very successful one against the Syrian General Staff building. Indeed, these attacks were approved only after the Syrians had launched surface-to-surface frog missiles at civilian targets in Galilee, including the immigrant town of Migdal Haemek near Nazareth and Kibbutz Geva: little damage was caused, but the significance of such indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets was not lost on the Government. Nevertheless, at no stage was advantage taken of Israel’s capability to shell Damascus. Merely the threat remained.
World History
