‘The Soviets were just an excuse’: why Israel did not destroy the Egyptian Third Army

Abstract

On 23 October 1973, the third week of the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli army cut off all supply routes to the 20,000 strong Egyptian Third Army on the east bank of the Suez Canal. Five days later, however, Israel partly lifted the siege and allowed the first convoy of non-military supplies to reach the Third Army. This decision was explained in Israel as deriving from American pressure, the source of which, according to the Americans, was the threat of Soviet intervention. This paper argues that a Soviet threat was not the main reason for the United States' pressure, but that it derived from an array of American interests in the region. The Israeli leadership, in turn, used American pressure to publicly justify its decision to spare the Third Army, though it had its own reasons for doing so.