Valley of Tears - Background

Background

On Rosh Hashana eve, the Israeli 7th Brigade was ordered to move one battalion to the Golan Heights to strengthen the Barak Armored Brigade, under the command of Yitzhak Ben Shoham. The brigade commander Avigdor Ben-Gal concluded that something would happen on Yom Kippur. He ordered his artillery troops to survey the area and prepare targets and firing tables. He held a meeting with his battalion commanders to go over the main points of the operational plans that were previously implemented in the Israeli Northern Command. Without notifying his superiors, he took them on a tour of the front line. By 12:00 on Yom Kippur, 6 October, the brigade was concentrated in the Nafakh area.

Israeli Intelligence estimated that Syria had more than 900 tanks and 140 batteries of artillery immediately behind the Syrian line. The Syrian 7th Division was one of the units ready to attack. The actual number of Syrian tanks was about 1,260. Each Syrian infantry division had one infantry brigade, one mechanized infantry brigade, and one armored brigade. The infantry and mechanized infantry brigades each had three infantry battalions, a battalion of forty tanks, an AA artillery battalion and a field artillery battalion. The armored brigade had three battalions of forty tanks each. The division also had a regiment of division field artillery, a divisional AA field artillery regiment, a reconnaissance regiment with a company attached to each brigade and a chemical company with a section attached to each brigade. The total force of the division was about 10,000 men, 200 tanks, 72 artillery pieces and 72 antiaircraft guns and SAMs. The 7th Division, under the command of Brigadier-General Omar Abrash, had about 80% of its tanks and APCs. There were also independent armored brigades with about 2,000 men and 120 tanks each. One of the independent brigades attached to Abrash's division was a Moroccan brigade. In the rear were the 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, with 250 tanks each. The Syrian attack force was backed by at least 1,000 artillery pieces.

The Syrian plan was for the 7th Division to break through near Ahmadiyeh in the north while the 5th Division did the same near Rafid in the south. This would lead to the double envelopment of most of the Israeli forces in the Golan. Each division was to advance in two echelons, the 7th Division to strike westward through El Rom and Wassett while the 5th Division advanced to the Arik Bridge north of the Kinneret. If the 5th Division broke through, or if both the 5th and 7th did, the 1st Division would drive between the 5th and 9th for Nafakh to attack the Israeli forces caught between the pincers of the 5th and 7th. The Israeli forces in the Golan were 170 tanks and 60 artillery pieces divided between the 7th and the Barak brigades.