STRUGGLE FOR THE GOLAN

The IDF thought it held the perfect buffer against the Syrians, but on 6 October its men were outgunned and outnumbered in a brutal tank battle

Rising more than 3,280ft (1,000m) above sea level, the wind-swept plateau controlled by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967 offered an uninterrupted view of the farmlands below. The Golan Heights also gave its occupier a valuable advantage: push a little farther northeast and the road to Damascus, the Syrian capital, beckoned. It was for this reason that Hafez al-Assad, a former air force officer who'd seized the Syrian presidency in a violent coup d'etat in November 1970, embraced the Soviet Union in a long-standing alliance. With Soviet assistance the battered Syrian military was rebuilt and re-organised. After a year of consultations with Cairo the war plans were settled, and Mossad's moles tried in vain to warn Israel's leadership of the impending attack. A useful bit of context regarding the Cairo-Damascus alliance was their short-lived experiment with the United Arab Republic (UAR). Even if the UAR did not work in bringing together the two countries there was still a consensus in 1973 that a pan-Arab federation was feasible, perhaps after Israel was defeated in a war of revenge. On the agreed date, 6 October, the Syrians shattered the Israeli Purple Line that served as an unofficial border with an intense artillery barrage.