ising 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 aexperiment 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.
