Yep, that's the one. So now it's listed on Wiki as an Israeli victory? What happened to "Tactical victory?" I guess it depends on the mood of the person at the time of editing that page? Like I said, a lot of good it did for you since it's very clear what the actual result of the war was.
Victory in Operation Gazelle, tactical victory in the whole war, read and maybe you will understand.
So you need me to hold your hand and walk you through the entire disengagement process? Ok, fine. Here's what happened 3 months after the war! Notice the Egyptians staying put on the east bank? Notice the Israelis with their tails tucked retreating and not only from that supposed "conquered land" on the west bank but leaving all of their 16 posts and the vaunted Bar Lev line along the entire stretch of the Suez Canal?
So that's territory you didn't get in the war, that's territory you got DIPLOMATICALLY, *AFTER* the war.
Which you wouldn't have got if it wasn't for Nixon.
The Bar Lev line costed 300 million dollars, however at that time, Yom Kippur, there were only 250 men in there. You claim victory for the entire war because of what you did to a 250 men defensive line with a 90,000 men army at the start of the war.
Here is what you have managed to do in the war:
Doesn't seem much, hell, in the end you lost more than what you gained, and didn't take back the Sinai militarily like you planned to do, and Syria which made us split our army into two, also lost a nice amount of land which got us closer to their capital.
I told you the disparity in the numbers worked in Egypt's favor because of population and manpower. You don't see me crying about 1967 yet you're complaining that we attacked you on your day off. What we do, is criticize our leadership for leaving us wide open to your aggression, especially Nasser. His huge gamble in 1956 left us wide open but at least he should've seen how it was too easy for the Israelis to cross into Sinai and occupy it and should've been a lot more prepared to defend it. He is 100% at fault for allowing that to happen since he saw Israel do it in 1956, basically practicing for 1967 and should've never been so complacent. Egyptian intelligence was totally aware of what was happening with the purchases of all the Mirage V's and Phantoms and Skyhawks and tanks and armor. It was so clear it was so clear yet he and the Egyptian military failed on a disastrous level. Especially when he ordered the blocking of the Straits of Tiran and sent a battalion of tanks close to the Negev border. To not realize that there could be a huge potential for some attack was a monumental failure by Nasser and co. No one is denying that. But 1973 was payback and didn't even need to be a full-fledged attack for all of Sinai. A limited objective was just enough to get the immediate results, which it obviously did.
Yeah I actually do constantly see you crying. I see you crying about destroying all of your aircraft on the ground, I see you crying about France selling us jets, I see you crying about how 1967 war was illegal.
Didn't even need to be a full fledged attack for all of the Sinai? Is that why we caught your whole 3rd army in a pretty far from the battlefront? We all know your objective was to capture the Sinai and you didn't, hell, you didn't get all of it until 1982.
Russians were operating the SAMs!? lol, come on, maaaan. Now you're really going off the hook. I guess the North Koreans also had a squadron of MiG-21s and were flying on the first day of the war like that silly article said. Please. I know you know better than that. That record is held by Omar Hob-Eldein who was the commander of the Egyptian 418th SAM Battalion. He fired 31 SA-2's and downed 15 Israeli fighters. Not even the Vietnamese came close to that in 10 years of fighting the Americans and their slew of USAF fighters and bombers and USN jets. This is one of many amazing accomplishments of that war by the Egyptian forces that go unnoticed or never mentioned in Wiki pages.
Here are your great SAM's and here are the North Korean pilots:
Now choose, did your own Omar Hob-Eldein shoot down a friendly aircraft or were it the Russians?
Anyways, shooting down aircraft with SAMs isn't an achievement. We destroyed 514 Arab aircraft, about half of them are yours, both Egypt and Syria destroyed 102 Israeli aircraft. Except that we didn't have the privilege of SAMs in the battlefront. We had to do it the old way, with air to air battles. And we won almost all of them.
Small populations can't afford large losses. Large populations can.
You also forget this was Ramadan and what do Muslims do in Ramadan, even in the brutal heat of the desert? Besides, the 3rd army had access to the well at Ain El Zeitoun and were digging their own wells in preparation of a long standoff. There were plenty of night excursions by commandos and militia from Suez City who were bringing water and food by felukas to the 3rd army. It wasn't the dire situation that the Israelis tried to portray it with their Hollywood cameras.
At the same time, the Egyptian forces were gearing up on the west bank. You should thank your Israeli commanders for tucking their tails and withdrawing and saving their lives because they were about to get pummeled. If the loss of lives and the war wasn't bad enough, imagine if Adan's, Magen's and Sharon's divisions were destroyed by Operation Shamel, how much worst would it have been for Israel? Thank your lucky stars and the humbling of arrogance that your generals accepted the loss and withdrew to the Passes because it would've been much worst for Israel had the war continued.
Oh don't blame us for your attack in the Ramadan, also, you can at least eat in the evening of Ramadan, we have to go 24 hours without any food or water, and many of our soldiers were in holidays, you were prepared for the war and we weren't yet we still won.
Ain El Zeitoun? That's a Palestinian village in the North of Israel, how did your soldiers get there? I couldn't find any village named like that in the Sinai. Digging wells? I don't think that's so easy to find water just by digging down. And I don't think such wells can supply 90,000 men anyways. Did they also build farms? Your 3rd army wasn't surrounded for long, how did they manage to dig wells and find water, get commando units big enough to supply a 90,000 men army that was flanked and couldn't go anywhere?
At that point, the Israeli Air Force and Israeli Combat Engineering forces took out pretty much all Egyptian, Eastbound bridges over the Suez canal.
The 3 bridges that WERE standing were set up by Israeli Engineering/Armour Corps, enabling the 500th Armored Corps division and the 35th Airborne Division to move west, into the African side.
And those three were an Israeli stronghold at that point.
In addition, the IDF wasn't relying only on the units that crossed the canal westbound.
IDF southern command sent almost every reserve force to quickly flank the Egyptian army from the north, and strengthen the Western Sinai IDF presence, mainly on the eastern side of the canal, within the Sinai peninsula.
so:
No further Egyptian forces were coming to the aid of the Third Army.
Stranded,
with logistics cut off,
no capability to be reinforced,
the Egyptian Third Division was at the mercy of IDF Southern Command.
If the US and USSR stood out of the end of the war,
Southern Command would most likely initiate a continuous operation against the Third Army, comprised of ground raids, aerial assaults and artillery bombardment until it would be established that a final blow is both optional and prudent.
And then - that blow would have been landed.
This was obvious to the Americans and Russians.
