The
air defense network and
Rogers
Plan
General Mohamed Abd Al-Ghany
Al-Gamasy said in his memoirs: ( As preparing for new air defense weapons
which would come from the Soviet
Union, we were constructing necessary fortifications
under the pressure of enemy raids on day and night.
Egyptian contracting companies, were co-operating
with the military engineering corps under the
command of general military engineer Gamal Mohammed Ali.
Doing the works of constructing engineering and defensive
arrangements for air forces and air defense.
A terrible struggle was between two
will, will of the Israeli aircrafts which did their best to
prevent Egyptians to build necessary fortifications and
sites for anti-aircraft batteries
which would come from Soviet Union, and will of the Egyptians air
defense to
deploy all what they had such as anti-aircraft
guns to keep on the process of constructions.
This process required a huge effort and sacrifice of
the Egyptian military and civilian lives working under these
hard conditions. The Israeli aircrafts were attacking
the constructions causing loss. When the air-raids
were over, the Egyptians
were resuming
their work day and night under the protection of
anti-aircrafts guns and MIG aircrafts.
The amount of construction works for the air
defense
among Cairo and the Canal and the rest of the country
reached 1.6 million cubic-meter of reinforced concrete, 1.4
million cubic-meter of concrete, 12.5 million
cubic-meter of dust and
hundreds of kilometers of asphalt and fixed roads.
Total expenditures in the first days of work reached
one million pound per day, there was a plan to
construct missiles sites within 40 days, and the
workers insisted on finishing that job in 39 days.
Then, U.S.A. had initiated
Rogers
plan, which was declared on June 19, 1970,
suggesting a cease-fire between Egypt and Israel for
90 days, and ambassador
Jarring would resume his work
to put the security council resolution number, 242 into
effect.
Both Egypt and Israel agreed on the
plan, to
begin cease-fire form one o’clock of 8th of
August 1970, According to Cairo time, and for 90
days.
This plan called the two parties
to stop changing their military positions inside a
zone that spread out in the east and west of the
canal to reach 50 k.m., each party, would has no right to
enter or construct any military sites in this zone,
except for works of maintenance and forces
supplement.
Egypt completed the necessary preparations
of
the air defense network, all works were achieved
quickly
and efficiently at the night before 8 August, the time
of beginning a cease-fire, On the next day Israel
opened her eyes to find a complete network of air
defense in the final position without
violating the terms of agreement.
Source:
October War 1973, second
edition 1998. General Mohamed Abd Al-Ghany Al-Gamasy
chief of operations of
Egyptian Army during the
war.
Unlike what is mentioned in
the Israeli records:
"The Americans
became concerned about a strategic conflagration and
negotiated a cease-fire in the form of the Rogers
Plan that went into effect on August 7, 1970. This
plan called for a freeze of Egyptian and Israeli
deployments as of August 7, 1970. The Egyptians
broke that part of the agreement the next day,
moving their Soviet anti-aircraft batteries close to
the banks of the Suez Canal. The Soviets and
Egyptians gambled that Israel would not respond so
soon after the cease-fire went into effect - and
they were right. Israel did nothing. This would have
telling effect three years later, when Egyptian
anti-aircraft batteries along the Suez Canal pounded
the IAF in the first days of the October 1973 War.
At the time, in the summer of 1970, however, when
"Israel complained to Washington that the Egyptians
had breached the agreement, Ray Cline, the head of
the State Department intelligence unit…told the
White house that the Israeli complaint was baseless.
When Israeli Ambassador
Yitzhak Rabin
told his military attache, General Eli Zeira, what
had happened, Zeira immediately asked Tel Aviv to
send him a photographic interpreter and a set of
aerial photographs showing the Egyptian deployment.
These duly arrived in Washington and Zeira was
summoned to the White House, where he laid out the
evidence before President Nixon. Nixon, angry with
Cline, then ordered the Pentagon to remove its veto
on several categories of weapons the Israelis had
asked for during the preceding months." check this
here
