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From The Yom Kippur War, by Simon Dunstan:

An opposed crossing of a major waterway remains one of the most difficult military options of all. In October 1973, the sand ramparts of the Bar-Lev Line comprised over 1.5 billion cubic metres of sand and rubble. They were quite impervious to conventional explosives and engineer earth-moving equipment would have taken days to create any passages through them. Several foreign observers believed the ramparts could only be breached by tactical nuclear weapons, but a group of Egyptian engineers thought differently.
Having worked on the construction of the Aswan High Dam, they had found that high pressure water hoses could move large quantities of soil and sand. Large numbers of generator-driven high-pressure pumps were acquired for the 'Cairo Fire Department' from Britain and West Germany. The first trials of the this method were conducted in September 1969 and proved a capacity to shift 500 cubic metres per hour. Once the technique was perfected, it was found a gap could be created in three to four hours.
It was this method that was used to break through the giant sand berms on 6 October, creating the gaps through which the Egyptian troops poured. The bottom of the gap was then levelled by bulldozers and lined with steel matting to allow the passage of tanks and other vehicles.
As the engineers breached the ramparts, Egyptian artillery bombarded the Israeli strongpoints along the Bar-Lev Line to prevent the defenders from observing or interfering with the crossing. At the same time Mi-8 helicopters transported Egyptian Al Saaqa Commandos behind Israeli lines to disrupt the movement of reinforcements to the Canal.

So...the POD here is simple: at some point in the early 70s West Germany and Britain, for whatever reason, decide to not sell these high pressure water pumping systems to Egypt, thus depriving them of their ace in the hole for puncturing the Bar-Lev Line, and breaking into the Sinai in the Yom Kippur War.

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