ABSTRACT
Immediately after the Egyptian defeat in the June 1967 war, the Soviets began to swiftly re-arm the Egyptian army in order to bring it back to the level of weaponry it had possessed on the eve of the war. This chapter traces the Soviet involvement in Egypt and the threat it posed to Israel during the War of Attrition. At the heart of the matter lie the relations between Israel and the United States, against the background of the Soviet threat and Israel’s strategy of deep-penetration bombing of Egypt during the War of Attrition. This is an important point to make at the outset, because the bone of contention between Israel and the United States, as presented in this chapter, was whether the deep-penetration bombing campaign triggered the Soviet penetration of Egypt and even amplified its involvement in the country—as argued by the United States—or whether it was the Soviet penetration that spawned the escalation between Egypt and Israel during the War of Attrition period—as argued by Israel.
