PPT Slide
Did Israel win? Did the Egyptian SSC work?
Egypt knew that she could not defeat Israel militarily, so Egypt set out to lose the war in such a fashion as to inflict maximum casualties on Israel and then win the peace. Egypt did just that. Egypt halted because Egypt did not want to over-run its air defense umbrella. As a result of Egypt's "defeat", the Israeli government fell, Egypt got the entire Sinai peninsula back and Egypt was able to maneuver the U.S. into the Camp David talks whereby the U.S. ended up guaranteeing Egypt's borders with Israel and pledging massive aid to Egypt. Egypt's casualties would have been less if Egypt had stuck to her original plan, but Egypt succumbed to Syria's pleas to launch a limited spoiler attack to take the pressure off in Syria's losing fight with Israel. The spoiler attack was launched outside of their air defense umbrella and was repulsed. The ‘73 war is a perfect example of the dictum that war is "a continuation of politics by other means".