The war led Israel to recognize that, despite impressive operational and tactical achievements on the battlefield, there was no guarantee that they would always dominate the Arab states militarily, as they had consistently through the earlier 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War.
Egypt continued its drift away from the Soviet Union and eventually left the Soviet sphere of influence entirely. ==Background== The war was part of the Arab–Israeli conflict, an ongoing dispute that has included many battles and wars since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel had captured Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, roughly half of Syria's Golan Heights, and the territories of the West Bank which had been held by Jordan since 1948. On June 19, 1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, the Israeli government voted to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a permanent peace settlement and a demilitarization of the returned territories.
Jordanian King Hussein feared another major loss of territory, as had occurred in the Six-Day War, in which Jordan lost all of the West Bank, territory it had conquered and annexed in 1948–49, which had doubled its population.
The UN Disengagement and Observer Force (UNDOF) was established as a peacekeeping force in the Golan. The peace discussion at the end of the war was the first time that Arab and Israeli officials met for direct public discussions since the aftermath of the 1948 war. ===Response in Israel=== Though the war reinforced Israel's military deterrence, it had a stunning effect on the population in Israel.
These were most of the countries of the Arab League, Non-Aligned Movement, and Organization of African Unity. The US considered Israel an ally in the Cold War and had been supplying the Israeli military since the 1960s.
The war took place mostly in Sinai and the Golan—occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War—with some fighting in African Egypt and northern Israel.
During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel had captured Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, roughly half of Syria's Golan Heights, and the territories of the West Bank which had been held by Jordan since 1948. On June 19, 1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, the Israeli government voted to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a permanent peace settlement and a demilitarization of the returned territories.
Notwithstanding Abba Eban's (Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1967) insistence that this was indeed the case, there seems to be no solid evidence to corroborate his claim.
The Americans, who were briefed of the Cabinet's decision by Eban, were not asked to convey it to Cairo and Damascus as official peace proposals, nor were they given indications that Israel expected a reply. The Arab position, as it emerged in September 1967 at the Khartoum Arab Summit, was to reject any peaceful settlement with the state of Israel.
This was the first time an Arab government had gone public declaring its readiness to sign a peace agreement with Israel. In addition, the Egyptian response included a statement that the lasting peace could not be achieved without "withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from all the territories occupied since 5 June 1967." Golda Meir reacted to the overture by forming a committee to examine the proposal and vet possible concessions.
The United States was infuriated by the cool Israeli response to Egypt's proposal, and Joseph Sisco informed Yitzhak Rabin that "Israel would be regarded responsible for rejecting the best opportunity to reach peace since the establishment of the state." Israel responded to Jarring's plan also on February 26 by outlining its readiness to make some form of withdrawal, while declaring it had no intention of returning to the pre-June 5, 1967 lines.
Explicating the response, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban told the Knesset that the pre-June 5, 1967 lines "cannot assure Israel against aggression", i.e., were not defensible.
Political generals, who had in large part been responsible for the rout in 1967, were replaced with competent ones. The role of the superpowers, too, was a major factor in the outcome of the two wars.
The Americans would then have the upper hand in the region, which Moscow could not permit. Nasser's policy following the 1967 defeat conflicted with that of the Soviet Union.
In a June 1973 meeting with American President Richard Nixon, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had proposed Israel pull back to its 1967 border.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's publicly stated position was "to recover all Arab territory occupied by Israel following the 1967 war and to achieve a just, peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict".
IAF losses per combat sortie were less than in the Six-Day War of 1967. Arab casualties were known to be much higher than Israel's, though precise figures are difficult to ascertain as Egypt and Syria never disclosed official figures.
He said Egypt and Syria's initial victories in the conflict eased Arab bitterness over Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War and ultimately put the two nations on a path of peaceful coexistence. In Egypt, many places were named after the date of October 6 and Ramadan 10th, which is the equivalent day in the Islamic calendar.
A ceasefire was signed in August 1970. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt died in September 1970.
Sadat had signaled in an interview with The New York Times in December 1970 that, in return for a total withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, he was ready "to recognize the rights of Israel as an independent state as defined by the Security Council of the United Nations." Gunnar Jarring coincidentally proposed a similar initiative four days later, on February 8, 1971.
Moreover, during the Black September crisis of 1970, a near civil war had broken out between the PLO and the Jordanian government.
A peace initiative led by both Sadat and UN intermediary Gunnar Jarring was tabled in 1971.
Sadat set forth to the Egyptian Parliament his intention of arranging an interim agreement as a step towards a settlement on February 4, 1971, which extended the terms of the ceasefire and envisaged a reopening of the Suez Canal in exchange for a partial Israeli pullback.
Sadat had signaled in an interview with The New York Times in December 1970 that, in return for a total withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, he was ready "to recognize the rights of Israel as an independent state as defined by the Security Council of the United Nations." Gunnar Jarring coincidentally proposed a similar initiative four days later, on February 8, 1971.
Planning had begun in 1971 and was conducted in absolute secrecy—even the upper-echelon commanders were not told of the war plans until less than a week prior to the attack, and the soldiers were not told until a few hours beforehand.
From the end of 1972, Egypt began a concentrated effort to build up its forces, receiving MiG-21 jet fighters, SA-2, SA-3, SA-6 and SA-7 antiaircraft missiles, T-55 and T-62 tanks, RPG-7 antitank weapons, and the AT-3 Sagger anti-tank guided missile from the Soviet Union and improving its military tactics, based on Soviet battlefield doctrines.
In July 1972, Sadat expelled almost all of the 20,000 Soviet military advisers in the country and reoriented the country's foreign policy to be more favourable to the United States.
The Israeli leadership already believed that if an attack took place, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) could repel it. Almost a full year before the war, in a meeting on October 24, 1972 with his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Sadat declared his intention to go to war with Israel even without proper Soviet support.
The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War also known as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel.
By the fall of 1973, he claimed the backing of more than a hundred states.
In a June 1973 meeting with American President Richard Nixon, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had proposed Israel pull back to its 1967 border.
Brezhnev said that if Israel did not, "we will have difficulty keeping the military situation from flaring up"—an indication that the Soviet Union had been unable to restrain Sadat's plans. In an interview published in Newsweek (April 9, 1973), Sadat again threatened war with Israel.
Several times during 1973, Arab forces conducted large-scale exercises that put the Israeli military on the highest level of alert, only to be recalled a few days later.
Sadat had so long engaged in brinkmanship that his frequent war threats were being ignored by the world. In April and May 1973, Israeli intelligence began picking up clear signals of Egypt's intentions for war, recognizing that it had the necessary divisions and bridging equipment to cross the Suez Canal and a missile umbrella to protect any crossing operation from air attack.
However, Aman Chief Eli Zeira was still confident that the probability of war was low. Between May and August 1973, the Egyptian Army conducted military exercises near the border, and Ashraf Marwan inaccurately warned that Egypt and Syria would launch a surprise attack in the middle of May.
We studied the technical characteristics of the Suez Canal, the ebb and the flow of the tides, the speed of the currents and their direction, hours of darkness and of moonlight, weather conditions, and related conditions in the Mediterranean and Red sea." He explained further by saying: "Saturday 6 October 1973 (10 Ramadan 1393) was the day chosen for the September–October option.
On October 6, 1973, the war opening date, Kissinger told Israel not to go for a preemptive strike, and Meir confirmed to him that Israel would not. Other developed nations, being more dependent on OPEC oil, took more seriously the threat of an Arab oil embargo and trade boycott, and had stopped supplying Israel with munitions.
According to David Elazar, Chief of Israeli headquarters staff, on December 3, 1973: "As for the third army, in spite of our encircling them they resisted and advanced to occupy in fact a wider area of land at the east.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan stated that "The cease-fire existed on paper, but the continued firing along the front was not the only characteristic of the situation between October 24, 1973 and January 18, 1974.
In a December 1973 address to the National Assembly, Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass stated that he had awarded one soldier the Medal of the Republic for killing 28 Israeli prisoners with an axe, decapitating three of them and eating the flesh of one of his victims.
The Egyptian government began to evacuate foreign tourists, and on October 11, 1973, the Egyptian ship Syria left Alexandria to Piraeus with a load of tourists wishing to exit Egypt.
This time the ceasefire held, and the fourth Arab–Israeli war was over. ===Disengagement agreement=== Disengagement talks took place on October 28, 1973, at "Kilometre 101" between Israeli Major General Aharon Yariv and Egyptian Major General Abdel Ghani el-Gamasy.
United Nations checkpoints were brought in to replace Israeli ones, nonmilitary supplies were allowed to pass, and prisoners-of-war were to be exchanged. A summit conference in Geneva followed in December 1973.
In the December 1973 legislative election, Meir's Alignment party lost five Knesset seats. On April 11, 1974, Golda Meir resigned.
One analyst noted that the presence of so many high-level officials was unusual and attributed it to Syrian efforts to quell any suggestion of execution. ===Response in the Soviet Union=== According to Chernyaev, on November 4, 1973, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev said: ===Oil embargo=== In response to U.S.
In response, Saudi Arabia declared an embargo against the United States, later joined by other oil exporters and extended against the Netherlands and other states, causing the 1973 energy crisis. ==Long-term effects== ===Egyptian–Israeli disengagement agreement=== Another Egyptian–Israeli disengagement agreement, the Sinai Interim Agreement, was signed in Geneva on September 4, 1975, and was commonly known as Sinai II.
The Two O'Clock War: The 1973 Yom Kippur Conflict and the Airlift that Saved Israel (2002), Bronson, R.
"Turning 'defeat' into 'victory': the power of discourse on the 1973 war in Egypt." Middle Eastern Studies 52.6 (2016): 897–916.
Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War: Diplomacy, Battle and Lessons (Sussex Academic Press, 2016). ==External links== CIA Symposium on the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, held on January 30, 2013 President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, collection of primary documents at the CIA website Hourly U.S.
Posted on the official YouTube channel of the Fisher Institute for the Strategic Study of Air and Space 1973 in Egypt Conflicts in 1973 Cold War conflicts Articles containing video clips 1973 in Israel 1973 in Syria DEFCON 3 conflicts October 1973 events in Asia
The front was quieter in the Second Army's sector in the northern canal area, where both sides generally respected the ceasefire. Though most heavy fighting ended on October 28, the fighting never stopped until January 18, 1974.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan stated that "The cease-fire existed on paper, but the continued firing along the front was not the only characteristic of the situation between October 24, 1973 and January 18, 1974.
In the spring of 1974, the Syrians attempted to retake the summit of Mount Hermon.
The situation continued until a May 1974 disengagement agreement. ====Jordanian participation==== The U.S.
When his body was returned in 1974, it exhibited signs of torture. ===Egyptian atrocities=== Israeli historian Aryeh Yitzhaki estimated that the Egyptians killed about 200 Israeli soldiers who had surrendered.
In July 1974, Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres informed the Knesset that high-ranking Soviet officers had been killed on the Syrian front during the war.
Nevertheless, the conference was forced to adjourn on January 9, 1974, as Syria refused attendance. After the failed conference Henry Kissinger started conducting shuttle diplomacy, meeting with Israel and the Arab states directly.
The first concrete result of this was the initial military disengagement agreement, signed by Israel and Egypt on January 18, 1974.
Shuttle diplomacy by Henry Kissinger eventually produced a disengagement agreement on May 31, 1974, based on exchange of prisoners-of-war, Israeli withdrawal to the Purple Line and the establishment of a UN buffer zone.
Shimon Agranat, President of the Israeli Supreme Court, was asked to lead an inquiry, the Agranat Commission, into the events leading up to the war and the setbacks of the first few days. The Agranat Commission published its preliminary findings on April 2, 1974.
In the December 1973 legislative election, Meir's Alignment party lost five Knesset seats. On April 11, 1974, Golda Meir resigned.
On July 7, 1974, Halawi's remains were removed from a Syrian military hospital and he was interred in Damascus at the "Cemetery of the Martyrs of the October War" in the presence of many Syrian dignitaries.
He was forced to leave the army after the publication of the Commission's final report, on January 30, 1975, which found that "he failed to fulfill his duties adequately, and bears much of the responsibility for the dangerous situation in which our troops were caught." Rather than quieting public discontent, the report—which "had stressed that it was judging the ministers' responsibility for security failings, not their parliamentary responsibility, which fell outside its mandate"—inflamed it.
In response, Saudi Arabia declared an embargo against the United States, later joined by other oil exporters and extended against the Netherlands and other states, causing the 1973 energy crisis. ==Long-term effects== ===Egyptian–Israeli disengagement agreement=== Another Egyptian–Israeli disengagement agreement, the Sinai Interim Agreement, was signed in Geneva on September 4, 1975, and was commonly known as Sinai II.
Therefore, a negotiated settlement made sense to both sides. Rabin's government was hamstrung by a pair of scandals, and he was forced to step down in 1977.
In a 1977 interview with CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite, Sadat admitted under pointed questioning that he was open to a more constructive dialog for peace, including a state visit.
On November 9, 1977, Sadat stunned the world when he told parliament that he would be willing to visit Israel and address the Knesset.
Egypt's tensions with its Arab neighbors culminated in 1977 in the short-lived Libyan–Egyptian War. Sadat was assassinated two years later on October 6, 1981, while attending a military parade marking the eighth anniversary of the start of the war, by Islamist army members who were outraged at his negotiations with Israel. ===Commemorations=== October 6 is a national holiday in Egypt called Armed Forces Day.
The 1978 Camp David Accords that followed led to the return of the Sinai to Egypt and normalized relations—the first peaceful recognition of Israel by an Arab country.
After the agreement, Israel still held more than two-thirds of Sinai, which would prove to be a valuable bargaining chip in the coming negotiations. ===Egyptian–Israeli Camp David Accords=== The Yom Kippur War upset the status quo in the Middle East, and the war served as a direct antecedent of the 1978 Camp David Accords.
The talks took place from September 5–17, 1978.
Ultimately, the talks succeeded, and Israel and Egypt signed the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty in 1979.
Egypt's tensions with its Arab neighbors culminated in 1977 in the short-lived Libyan–Egyptian War. Sadat was assassinated two years later on October 6, 1981, while attending a military parade marking the eighth anniversary of the start of the war, by Islamist army members who were outraged at his negotiations with Israel. ===Commemorations=== October 6 is a national holiday in Egypt called Armed Forces Day.
Israel subsequently withdrew its troops and settlers from the Sinai, in exchange for normal relations with Egypt and a lasting peace, with last Israeli troops exiting on April 26, 1982.
Egypt was suspended from the Arab League until 1989.
Examples of these commemorations are 6th October Bridge in Cairo and the cities of 6th of October and 10th of Ramadan. In addition, the Museum of the October 6 War was built in 1989 in the Heliopolis district of Cairo.
"Nickel Grass." Air Force Magazine 81 (Dec 1998): pp. 55–59.
A new government was seated in June and Yitzhak Rabin, who had spent most of the war as an advisor to Elazar in an unofficial capacity, became Prime Minister. In 1999, the issue was revisited by the Israeli political leadership to prevent similar shortcomings from being repeated.
Marking the 35th anniversary in 2008, Hosni Mubarak said that the conflict "breathed new life" into Egypt.
government archive officials in 2013. ===U.S.
Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War: Diplomacy, Battle and Lessons (Sussex Academic Press, 2016). ==External links== CIA Symposium on the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, held on January 30, 2013 President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, collection of primary documents at the CIA website Hourly U.S.
Israeli TV documentaries broadcast in October 2013, featuring original video footage filmed during the war, interviews with combatants during the war and decades later, etc.
Documentary film released in October 2013, featuring interviews with air force pilots.
According to documents declassified in 2016, the move to DEFCON 3 was motivated by CIA reports indicating that the Soviet Union had sent a ship to Egypt carrying nuclear weapons along with two other amphibious vessels.
Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War: Diplomacy, Battle and Lessons (Sussex Academic Press, 2016). ==External links== CIA Symposium on the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, held on January 30, 2013 President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, collection of primary documents at the CIA website Hourly U.S.
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