Word: syrian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sadat has profited from Nasser's mistakes. Where Nasser tended to divide the Arab world and constantly quarreled with fellow leaders, Sadat has worked toward consensus and has ended much of the feuding that formerly went on. He put the latest operation together, first by getting Syrian President Hafez Assad to agree to his invasion plans, and then by restoring King Hus sein to a position of importance in the Arab world (he had been in bad graces since his 1970 crackdown on the Palestinian guerrillas). With unity achieved, Sadat was ready for battle...
...Arabs were actually going to attack. It was only ten hours before the assault began that Israel finally concluded that the Arabs meant business. By the time the attack came on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the Israelis were mobilizing, but they were too late to prevent Arab advances. Syrian forces in the Golan Heights and Egyptian troops in the Sinai Peninsula smashed through Israeli lines and established powerful positions within the first minutes...
...initial 40 hours of the battle, small regular-army units faced the Syrian advance, fighting their way out of encirclements and pulling back to safety. By the third day, Israel's 95,000-man standing army had been backed up by 180,000 reservists. They rushed into battle with verve and determination. It was the kind of battle that Israeli forces had trained for: a swift, savage mobile engagement between armored units...
With a massive concentration of tanks, the Israelis lashed into the Syrian forces. The Syrians at first fell back, but then managed to counterattack and drive back into occupied territory. El Quneitra, formerly the Heights' biggest center and since '67 largely a ghost town, changed hands several times. Finally, Israeli armored units, closely supported by Phantoms and Skyhawks whooshing in to splatter napalm on the forward Syrian units, halted the Syrian drive and turned the Arabs back...
...statement expresses "regret that some of our governments have been complacent or worse in the face of Arab aggression and that most have remained passive while the Soviet Union has taken immediate action to replace Egyptian and Syrian losses of equipment and munitions...