Off-the-record Dayan Interview with Israeli Editors Reveals He Was Pessimistic About War’s Outcome

On the third day of the Yom Kippur War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told Israeli newspaper editors at an off-the-record meeting that events in Sinai proved that Israel no longer enjoyed decisive military superiority over the Arabs, lacked the power to throw the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal and might have to give up large parts of the Sinai peninsula, including possibly Sharm el-Sheikh. Dayan made public the transcript of his remarks which was published in Israeli newspapers over the weekend.

While his assessment of the military situation in Sinai on Oct. 9 proved overly pessimistic, his remarks were highlighted by Arab news media today as evidence that the Oct. war altered Israel’s attitude, especially as it concerned military superiority over the Arabs. The event that formed the background of Dayan’s frank appraisal to the editors was the Egyptian success in breaching the Barlev line on the Suez Canal.

“The line of strongholds along the canal does not exist for us anymore,” Dayan said. “We don’t have the strength to throw the Egyptians to the other side.” He said that the line had been evacuated “partly in an orderly fashion and partly not,” and that Israeli forces would have to take up new lines in that third of the Sinai closest to the canal. He said forces were delegated to defend southern Sinai but Sharm el-Sheikh might have to be abandoned. This, he said, would be “a very hard blow” but “we will manage.”

HALO OF SUPERIORITY SHATTERED

Dayan’s words–which the Arab press played up today–included the following: “This (situation) has many implications. Two of them are obvious: It revealed to the entire world that we are not stronger than the Egyptians. The halo of superiority, the political and military principle that Israel is stronger than the Arabs and that if they dare to start a war they would be defeated, has not been proved here, one way or another. We will have to tell the people the truth….”

Dayan said he planned to appear on television that night to give the public the true facts “in a more carefully wooded style” because “we have to live with the true facts of our life with our own people, with the American public, with the world and with the Arabs. We won’t gain anything from trying to cover up the truth.” He did not make the broadcast, however, because he was called to resolve urgent military matters.

His assessment of the situation on the Syrian front was more optimistic and was borne out by subsequent events. “I believe and hope that we can bring Syria to a situation where it will in fact cease firing and will not have effective fire power,” he said. He predicted–correctly, it turned out–that Jordan and Iraq would not open a separate eastern front.