Dr. Kipnis documents and describes the decision-makers fatal choice to ignore global and regional changes, which led Israel to an unnecessary war and the loss of many lives. This book is an essential lesson about the heavy price of political arrogance and strategic stagnation.
AKIVA ELDAR
Veteran Israeli Journalist
Correspondent, Al-Monitor
Yigal Kipnis knows the Yom Kippur War both as a pilot who flew helicopters in combat and, more importantly, as a scholar who dares once again to go into harms way. He challenges the conventional wisdom of the past forty years, which pinned most of the blame for Israels failure to anticipate the coordinated Egyptian-Syrian invasion on intelligence and military officers. Kipnis makes a convincing case for holding the political echelonPrime Minister Golda Meir, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and a close circle of confidantsaccountable for pushing Anwar Sadat into a desperate but limited military move aimed at unleashing a diplomatic process.
Rather than realizing that by making the Nixon administration wait until after elections in Israel to launch a peace offensive, Golda and Co. should have expected war and been seriously prepared for it, they were vastly over-confident and complacent. They even kept to themselves, rather than share with their uniformed subordinates planning contingencies, secret undertakings between Washington and Jerusalem which tied Israels hands regarding pre-emption.
Kipnis flies nap-of-the-earth over this complex terrain. Its one hell of a ride for whoever is interested in how nations stumble into unnecessary wars, conduct secret diplomacy at the highest levels and watch their civil-military relations rip apart at the seams for an entire generation.
AMIR OREN
Defense Correspondent, Haaretz
A gripping read, taut with the tension inside Israels inner circle of decision- makers in the countdown to war in October 1973. Kipnis provides fascinating new details that have come to light as archives have opened up. Especially intriguing is the enigmatic role of Ashraf Marwan in the unfolding drama.
JANICE GROSS STEIN
Director, Munk School of Global Affairs
University of Toronto
Yigal Kipniss 1973: The Road to War is a revelatory account of the myopic diplomacy that caused an unnecessary war. Based on extensive research in the US and Israeli archives, Kipnis shows how military overconfidence and erroneous political judgments led US and Israeli leaders to dismiss Egypts peace overtures and force Egypts Anwar Sadat to launch a war he had tried to avoid. These same errors also led Israels leaders to disregard the signs of imminent war in October 1973 and allowed Egypt to achieve near-complete strategic surprise. This gripping narrative will fascinate anyone interested in the history of US Middle East policy or in the long and bitter struggle between Arabs and Israelis.
STEPHEN WALT
Robert and Renee Belfer Professor
of International Affairs
Harvard Kennedy School
This pathbreaking work replaces the conventional military paradigm that has dominated analyses of the 1973 Yom Kippur War with a political one which is already significantly altering the narrative of the war and its aftermath. Political blinkerssupplemented by arrogance, suspicion and secretivenessmay have been the key cause of the most traumatic event in Israeli history. The possibility that this war could have been averted if Israels leaders had, forty years ago, agreed to pursue a diplomatic option is especially pertinent today, when mistaken preconceptions threaten to stymie the road to a just and lasting accord between Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab world. Kipniss book is a must-read for anyone concerned with understanding past patterns of Israeli-Arab relations and with preventing their repetition today.
NAOMI CHAZAN
Former Deputy Speaker, Israeli Knesset
1973: The Road to War is a blockbuster for anyone concerned about the tragic slaughter which flowed from surprise attacks by Egypt and Syria on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Refuting long widespread public understanding of the wars origins as a colossal intelligence failure in both Tel Aviv and Washington, Yigal Kipnis produced this meticulously documented account of the pre-war diplomatic minuet between Cairo and Jerusalem, orchestrated and conducted by Henry Kissinger while Nixon retreated slowly toward his Watergate whirlpool.
Kipnis reveals how even the closest conceivable American-Israeli diplomatic collaboration could not dent Golda Meirs conviction that Israel would easily repulse any Egyptian attack, and that was preferable to any political concessions to Sadats importuning or Kissingers forebodings.
This book is important on many levels for historians and for policymakers. It is a demonstration of the limits of American influence on Israels leaders, even when they enjoy maximum intimacy with the White House; a depressing look into the way Golda Meir held vital political/diplomatic information to a tiny circle, leaning entirely on Moshe Dayan and Yisrael Galili and excluding Yigal Allon, other key cabinet members, and her military and intelligence chiefs from her decision-making circle; confirmation that this bloodiest of Israels wars of self-defense was, in the words of Bill Quandts excellent introduction, an avoidable war; and as another example of how many years must elapse before historians can gain access to the secret documents needed to piece together the diplomatic prologue to war.
Kipniss work is truly groundbreaking and an extraordinary achievement that, now finally available in English, merits a wide readership.
HON. SAMUEL W. LEWIS
Former US Ambassador to Israel
Former President, US Institute of Peace
As one who fought in, studied, and published about the October 1973 war, I felt that nothing could surprise me any more about it. Yigal Kipnis has done that, however. While he confirmed some of my earlier assessments, he put others into question. His mining of the newly available documents made the road to October much more understandable. The 1973 war changed the Middle East, and Kipniss book helps us understand that change.
ABDEL MONEM SAID ALY
Chairman and Director
Regional Center for Strategic Studies, Cairo
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