1973 Arab Israeli War.

Syrian special forces units were clearly competitive with equivelant Israeli units.  Unfortunatly, Syrian line units were not equal to Israeli line units. This is demonstrated by the Syrian failure to breakthrough on the Golan heights despite a huge numerical advantage, strategic surprise and facing Israeli reserve units.

 

Had the war been a special forces based war such as Burma, 1944-45 or the British in Malaysia during the 1950s, the Syrians may have won.  But, mass manuver warfare is not based solely on special forces and line Syrian units had to be able to compete with line Israeli units.

 

 

Nuclear option was discarded by Israel because of the very serious consequences it would have the world driven into.

 

1)Cryptic, Damascus is within range of Israeli arty even from the Golan Heights, the Israelis were no where near the city or had any reasonable hopes of taking it.

 

2) The Syrian tank units, were fighting uphill in a narrow gap, they were funneled through passes, they Israelis could pick them off one by one, and they did, even then they came damn near close to breaking the Israeli line. Terrain is far far far more important than numbers.

 

3)On the Sinai Cryptic is mixing up two seperate events, the initial cavalry charge by Ghosens Brigade which was mauled, and a later tank battle involving three of the four divisions in action, both of which were lost by the Israelis. Indeed they had little success until the Egyptian moved forward away from their air umbrella.

 

4) As for the counter-crossing the israelis had crossed in the gao between the armies. However Adens assualt on a town (more accuratly a crossroads near the town) was repulsed by Egyptian reserves who also engaed Sharon and pushed him back, while simultaneously Third Army began to attack Sharon on his rear, they did AFAIK destroy a few bridges, Israeli Airforce attempts to support the troops in the Sinai were met with heavy losses, the heaviest of th war IIRC.

 

About the Syrian front, Syria did break through Israeli lines, liberate Mount Hermon and from the souther end even reach the sea of Gallile. It was in the center where most of Syria's forces were concentrated and where Israelis checked them but Syria did gain land and held it to the end of the war. The problem with Syria was that it didn't expect neither the gains it made nor the fast Israeli mobalisation that happened. Only 60k were ever deployed (increased to some 85-90k by the end of the war) out of nearly 150k total. Syrian airforce was only committed for the first three days  (its pilots shot a total of 10-15 planes alone) then withdrawn into the interior. The goal in Syria was as in Egypt to gain a limited amount of land and force Israel to negotiate. They expected this to happen after Qunaitirah was liberated but it didn't. They lost valuble time waiting for the Israeli to negotiate and when orders for an all out attack came they found themselves fighting forces in much larger number. Israel was already 30 miles away from the Syria capital when the war started. They advances to about 19 miles away and then repulsed to the 25 miles line (which is the current de facto border) before the war ended (thank to the Iraqis). Syrian losses were about the same in number as the Israeli losses (about 1000 dead) which shows how good the syrian military was. After the war, the regime became more and more sectarian and the entire air force, special forces and most of the officer core were purged because they were not of the right ethinicity (many were Kurd) or religion (all of the purged officers were sunni).

 

AL-Jassas

Yes, that is true.  It was retaliation for an attack (also illegal) by the Egyptian Third Army after the cease fire.