An early warning ignored

Yom Kippur will mark the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. While I knew that Israel had been warned via an Egyptian double agent that his country was going to go to war, I did not know that Jordan's King Hussein also met with Golda Meir and warned her that a war was in the works.

But a particularly interesting meeting took place on Sept. 25, 1973 -- about two weeks before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. The venue: an intelligence facility in central Israel.

Because the meeting was hastily arranged and held well inside Israel, it was considered an extraordinary encounter. Hussein was the one who asked for the meeting. He wanted to sound the alarm about the looming danger on Israel's borders. The Syrians and Egyptians were planning an attack on Israel, he warned. Their decision stemmed from the unraveling of the Rogers Plan, a desire to undo Israel's hubris and a need to compensate for their humiliating defeat in the Six-Day War. Hussein said Egypt and Syria wanted to reclaim the territory they had lost six years earlier.

Hussein confided with Meir that two weeks prior to the meeting he had met with Syrian President Hafez Assad and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. They told him that they were running out of patience and that they would like to initiate a flare-up with Israel on two fronts. Assad and Sadat asked Hussein if he would be willing to open a third, eastern front, but he refused.

Hussein told Meir about Syria's preparations and the military maneuvers it was planning. He also shared information on the deployment of its armored units and the locations of its aircraft. He expressed concern how things might unfold and inquired whether Israel was duly prepared.

Meir said she would look into the matter. Hussein also said that he had promised Syria that he would send two armored brigades to the frontline to show Arab solidarity.

The details that emerged from those meetings were shared among American, Israeli and Jordanian policymakers, with both Israel and Jordan updating the Americans about the events leading up to the meetings and their aftermath, as well as on what transpired behind closed doors. The conversation that was held just prior to the war did not frighten Meir, but she couldn't stop thinking about what she had been told.

Too bad she and her defense minister, Moshe Dayan, were more concerned about what the world would think than they were about saving Israeli lives.