Читать книгу Witness to War and Peace - Ahmed Aboul Gheit - Страница 19

8 The War’s Final Week

We were sitting together, Ahmed Maher al-Sayed and I, at 0200 hours on October 21, during the night shift on the first floor of Abd al-Moneim Palace, then in use as Advisor Hafiz Ismail’s headquarters. We conversed in low tones in deference to our proximity to the sleeping quarters that housed both Hafiz Ismail and Mr. Abd al-Fattah Abdullah, minister of state for cabinet affairs, who was tasked with attending and recording all of President Sadat’s meetings and telephone calls during the day shift, and for long hours during the night.

Some may imagine, when I speak of Abd al-Moneim Palace, that it was a huge palace with dozens of rooms and ballrooms. It was a misnomer, though, as the place was only a relatively small villa. The level where we two Ahmeds sat—Ahmed Maher and Ahmed Aboul Gheit—consisted only of a dining room, or ‘a hall’ as they called it, that opened onto three small rooms used as the offices of the national security advisor, and two bedrooms as noted above. At the very end of the dining room was a small desk bearing a number of telephones and other communications equipment connected to Abdin Palace, the main headquarters of the Presidency. A pretty folding screen concealed whoever sat at the desk from the eyes of those in the rest of the dining room.

We were speaking, Maher and I, of the developments and dangers in store, which had started to weigh heavily on this bloody conflict, and the conflagration of war east and west of the Suez Canal. I personally had started to realize, at least forty-eight hours before, the unwelcome direction in which the war was heading. My diary, in which I wrote whenever I had the chance, said, at 0100 hours on Friday, October 19:

We have lost the initiative, and will pay the price. However, Hafiz Ismail seems calm and confident.

This lasted until 0500 hours on October 18.

It is clear that the enemy is in possession of massive forces capable of dealing with us on the western side of the Great Bitter Lakes. It is also clear that we are not being decisive enough in dealing with them.

We must strike at the Israeli bridgehead that threatens to unbalance our forces on the eastern and western sides of the front, then move to strike at the penetration between the Second and Third Armies.

We must seize the initiative by means of effective action, or the situation will deteriorate, compelling us to withdraw the army from Sinai, or leave the men in danger there.

I should note here that, while writing this, I was closely following what was happening, scrutinizing everything I read and saw, mostly military and political reports. However, my conclusions were clouded by the mystery of war, where nothing is certain. Even though these reports and briefings, meant for the eyes of the national security advisor, were as up-to-the-minute as possible, oftentimes they were preempted by events, making them reports on what had already happened—sometimes as long as several hours before—rather than advance information.

The second point I beg the reader to excuse is the way I fluctuated, sometimes wildly, from deep pessimism to cautious optimism in my diary, which was my state as I followed the events unfolding before my eyes, even though we were mostly kept abreast of all developments and their implications for the war.

The third and final point I urge the reader not to ignore is that, however hard the battle, however dark the days, Egypt successfully achieved its goal with this war: it forced the Israeli army into a protracted conflict in which Israel lost a great deal of its military capacity and was stripped of its status as the actor in charge, which it had enjoyed since 1967. The end of the conflict also saw Egypt in possession of massive military capacities on both the east and west banks of the Suez Canal. The Egyptian air force was active and effective during and after the war. Finally, Egyptian naval forces closed Bab al-Mandeb and prevented Israel from using the port of Eilat, freezing and neutralizing the Israeli presence in Sharm al-Sheikh. Morale was high in the Egyptian armed forces after the war with Israel, emboldening them to repeat military action if Israel refused to respond to the logic of withdrawal and settlement.