Nothing like a quick breach of a retaining wall that was more to intimidate than to be any effective barrier, since it was compromised by Egyptian forces in a few hours. You can get an idea of the magnitude of that thing and what one of the many breaches by the Egyptian forces looked like in this photo.
There was obviously the psychological impact of that thing, right? It wasn't just a military barrier, it served 2 other purposes in that it was to intimidate and discourage as some daunting task that couldn't be breached, but to also pretend and show the world that we were the aggressors and that we needed to be kept out of our own land and that they were just trying to protect themselves. Their cunning ways and tactics were bought by the masses, not by Egyptians. This was evident by the support they got. The condemnation was nothing but political.
And of course, the psychological effect can be played by the other side as well.
And the Zionists still deny that battle till today, because none of the Jewish/Israeli authors chose to mention it in any of the books they wrote because after 1967, how could Egyptian pilots -- mostly in MiG-21's -- take out 17 of their F-4 Phantoms and Skyhawks to 3 Egyptian losses in less than an hour of dogfighting? On top of after losing over 100+/- Israeli aircraft to Egyptian SA-2's earlier in the war. It was easy to take the Israeli claims as truthful because of course, no one trusted the Egyptian claims.
Had there never been a war and the impact of the war that caused a major push back and partial withdrawal by the Israelis and gains by Egyptians, Sinai would've remained Israeli (just like the Golan) and it would've been called something like Levi Shikhut or some Yiddish name because it's undeniable that they wanted to keep that awesome, Egyptian land forever and turn it into part of Israel, using the excuse that we're the aggressors and they're just protecting their existence. Why else would they have established settlements LOL!? Although it would've been hard for them to keep it forever, had they been able to keep it long enough and settle in it with enough people, and without any military resistance, eventually they'd be diplomatically forced to concede but with a long enough elapsed time, AND especially with settlements, they would've asked exactly what Golda Meir was hinting at offering prior to the war and that is a return of a portion of it and not all, which of course, would've never been acceptable to us. Sadat realizing that, went to war as soon as he could. Then by offering peace, they didn't have that leverage to keep any land since they'd risk another war that could quite possibly have an even greater impact than the October war. Who would want that?
