http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/show_katava.asp?id=20569
Was There a Warning?
By Ze'ev Schiff
Friday, June 12, 1998
Mordechai Gazit, adviser to Prime Minister Golda Meir and
director-general of her office, has long claimed that there are two
allegations that should not be made against Meir. One is the claim that if
she had been more flexible with regard to Egyptian proposals before the
Yom Kippur War, the war itself might have been prevented. The second
allegation involves the warning which Golda Meir did or did not receive
from King Hussein of Jordan shortly before the war. Clearly, Gazit is not
only defending the late prime minister, but himself, too, as her adviser on
international affairs.
With regard to the first allegation, Gazit appears to be right. No
compromise could have been reached on the basis of what Sadat was
then willing to offer in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from the Suez
Canal. Neither side was ready at the time for the significant developments
that would occur later, years after the war.
This is not, however, the case with regard to King Hussein's warning of
the coming war. Hussein, according to certain reports, met with Meir on
September 25, 1973. Gazit repeatedly claims (including in a recent article
in Ha'aretz) that no such warning was conveyed. This time, however, he
phrases it differently: "No warning of a coordinated joint Egyptian-Syrian
attack was conveyed to Golda." His words suggest that something did
take place. Gazit further claims that "the warning Golda received was
limited, because it dealt exclusively with the Syrian front." According to
Gazit, the message could have been considered a warning only if the
prime minister had been cautioned that Syria and Egypt intended to strike
together.
This kind of warning is a luxury rarely found in intelligence work.
Hussein's warning, incidentally, was accompanied by advice: only a
political move could prevent the war that Syria and Egypt were planning.
That is how Mordechai Gazit understood the situation at the time.
However, the fact that others had a different understanding of the events
makes it hard to accept his interpretation. Although "there was no
warning," as Gazit claims, Golda Meir was quick to phone Defense
Minister Moshe Dayan and brief him. Dayan apparently asked her to wait
while he checked whether any new reports could corroborate what
Hussein had said. Golda waited for about a quarter for an hour while
Dayan apparently checked with Director of Military Intelligence Eli Zeira
or with Chief of Staff David Elazar. His subsequent words to Meir must
have allayed the prime minister's concerns, for she decided to leave the
following day for a gathering of the Socialist International in Europe,
which had been scheduled long in advance.
Dayan himself took two precautions. He called for a meeting of the
General Staff and paid a visit to the Golan Heights. However, the more
important response in this context was that of an intelligence officer who
had been party to the situation as early as the night of Golda's meeting
with Hussein. The officer had heard the same words as Mordechai Gazit,
but reached a different conclusion. The message, he believed, was an
unequivocal warning that war was imminent. The man was Lt. Col. Zusia
Kniazer, head of the Jordanian desk at Military Intelligence. Kniazer, a
veteran intelligence expert, took an unusual step .. one which, in fact,
constituted a breach of orders, since he had been instructed to treat the
meeting with Hussein and its contents as highly classified material. Late
at night, he called the head of the Syrian section, Lt. Col. Avi Ya'ari, and
advised him to put the Northern Command on alert. Ya'ari indeed called
the head of intelligence at the Northern Command, who alerted Northern
Command Head Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Hofi.
When news of this reached Brig. Gen. Aryeh Shalev, head of research at
the Intelligence Branch, he summoned Kniazer and Ya'ari and
reprimanded them, the former for disobeying orders and divulging
information about Hussein's meeting with Golda, the latter for alerting the
Northern Command without consulting with his supervisors.
War did not break out the next day, but only a few days later. And so, the
question remains: Was there a warning? Mordechai Gazit does not think
so. But if that was the case, why did the Jordan and Syria section heads
understand differently? Was this because they were more highly attuned
and had a better understanding of intelligence? Ya'ari was praised for his
actions in the report issued by the Agranat Commission, which
investigated the circumstances of Israel's lack of military preparedness
for the 1973 war. For some reason, however, Kniazer was not summoned
to testify before the commission.
(c) copyright 1998 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/show_katava.asp?id=19436
Yom Kippur, May 1998
By Uzi Benziman
Sunday, May 17, 1998
A BBC production on the history of Israel will soon be screened here -
the British answer, as it were, to the Israeli series "Tekuma"
(Resurrection). In the chapter on the 1973 Yom Kippur War, King
Hussein relates that he flew into Israel by helicopter on the eve of the war
and disclosed to Prime Minister Golda Meir that Egypt and Syria intended
to attack. The story is not new; what is astounding is the king's
willingness to tell it on camera.No less astounding was the reaction of the
prime minister 25 years ago. She passed on the warning to the army. The
director of military intelligence and the chief of staff reassured her,
explaining that Hussein was an instrument in Sadat's hands to
disseminate a bluff about Egypt's deployment on a war footing.
"After the Egyptian ruler failed in his attempt to induce Israel to
compromise on a small withdrawal from the banks of the Suez Canal, he
is trying to frighten us with a full-scale war, but we won't fall for that
trick", that was the reassuring response the prime minister received, a
response that perfectly matched her diplomatic conception.
It was the mistaken conception that led to the Yom Kippur War, not the
tactical ploy by which the Egyptian Army prepared for war but put out the
false information that it was only getting ready for large-scale
maneuvers. In October 1973 Israel's political and military leadership was
overconfident of its strength, self-righteous in its attitudes and convinced
of its ability to read the enemy's intentions correctly.
In May 1998 Israel is being led by a man whose political maturity is akin
to that of a growing boy and whose conceptual approach to responsibility
and integrity is that of a compulsive gambler. Those personal traits are
tailor-made for a diplomatic conception as disastrous as the one that
guided Golda Meir and the General Staff a quarter of a century ago.
The conception says the following: Yasser Arafat does not have a real
military option; he is bluffing when he warns that he will not be able to cap
indefinitely the volcano of the frustrated Palestinian masses; and the Arab
rulers in the neighboring states, especially Egypt and Jordan, are only
pretending when they warn about the consequences of a deadlock in the
diplomatic process, in fact, they do not want the Palestinian Authority to
get stronger and develop into an independent state.
Netanyahu is a bluffer of a kind previously unknown in the annals of
Israeli leadership, and as such he projects his own behavior on the actions
of others. He is incapable of trusting his interlocutors because he himself
constantly behaves deceitfully.
His world-view derives overridingly from his moral code and from the
progress of his life on the basis of that code. A person who has become
accustomed to deceiving wives, friends, aides, politicians and
international diplomats certainly has no intention, and is incapable, of
trusting a bitter adversary like Arafat.
In the absence of basic trust between the Israeli and Palestinian
leaderships over readiness to resolve the conflict once and for all (trust
that had developed between Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat
and his aides), there is no prospect of advancing the Oslo process.
The bloody unrest over the past few days in the territories is a concrete
manifestation of Netanyahu's mistaken conception and of his inability to
believe in Arafat's warnings. The territories burned because masses of
impassioned Palestinians went beyond the bounds of protest that the PA
had marked out for them. The dead did not volunteer to be killed only to
prove to Netanyahu that Arafat is fomenting the unrest and controlling it
at his will. They were killed because of their authentic frustration and
because they have a just complaint against Israel.
Because of his shortsightedness and his childish cockiness Netanyahu
does not understand that he is creating conditions in which Palestinian
violence speaks to the heart of the international community and may be
accepted as legitimate by part of the Israeli public as well. Nor does he
grasp that his approach is leading toward a dangerous situation in which
some reservists might refuse to heed his call to arms to defend a policy
they can no longer stomach.
(c) copyright 1998 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
