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

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