9. A Long Term Plan to Lull an Enemy Into Complacency
Long in advance of the planned attack on Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat began to run massive military maneuvers and exercises in the vicinity of the Suez Canal. The aim was to accustom the Israelis to large-scale Egyptian troop movements nearby. That way when the time came for the actual attack, they would be lulled and dismiss its preparations as just another Egyptian military drill. However, unbeknownst to the Egyptians, the Israelis, through a highly placed Mossad agent, were aware by mid-1973 of the general Egyptian plan of attack. What the Israelis did not know, however, was just when the attack would occur.
To know the when was vital for the Israelis, whose small population precluded a large full-time military. Israel could not afford to permanently park hundreds of thousands of soldiers in fortifications opposite the Egyptian positions, just so they would be in place if and when the Egyptians finally attacked. Instead, the Israeli system relied upon fleshing out a small standing military with rapid and massive mobilization of civilian reservists. However, such mobilizations were highly disruptive, as well as quite expensive. The mass of civilians taken from their daily occupations and put into the military could not be kept in uniform indefinitely. The Egyptian strategic deceit plan played upon that vulnerability.