Miscalculations and Legacies: A Look Back at the 1973 War Half a Century On
The October 1973 War is bound to continue to fascinate historians and many others for a long time to come. There are countless dimensions to the last of the Arab-Israeli interstate wars. The obvious military aspects of the war alone are worth thousands of pages. Then there is the superpower dimension, given that the 1973 War was the first conflict of the new period of détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.
There is also a leadership angle, since none of the three leaders of the United States, Egypt, and Israel were around during the 1967 War and each felt they were now being tested. There are also the public domestic dynamics and decision-making struggles each country faced, alongside other countries with various levels of engagement like Syria and Jordan. Moreover, there is the role of regional players before, during, and after the war. Needless to say, historians of the war will remain busy for quite some time.
I will explore two of these many dimensions: first, an example of the miscalculations within the United States, Israel, and Egypt that impacted the war and second, the legacies of the 1973 War that cannot be separated from the miscalculations.
The Miscalculations Dimension While there is no shortage of mistakes connected to the 1973 War, a few warrant special mention.
On the U.S. side, there is wide admission that those in authority deeply underestimated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The United States was unfamiliar with Sadat, yet felt he could not fill the shoes of his charismatic predecessor Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was widely viewed as a placeholder until another Egyptian leader emerged. Henry Kissinger, the famed U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser who would later become Sadat’s interlocutor and friend, would radically shift his assessment of the Egyptian president over time.
After working together between 1973 and 1976, Kissinger would ultimately laud Sadat for his statesmanship. In his book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, Kissinger declares that Sadat represented the strategy of “transcendence,” meaning that his leadership transcended Arab rejectionism of the past by making peace with Israel. Kissinger contends that Sadat, in launching the 1973 attack on Israel before the peace initiative, intended “to transform the situation psychologically in order to make a sustainable peace”.
Yet, this is not how the United States or Kissinger viewed him at the beginning of his presidency. Kissinger recalled being with President Richard Nixon in late September 1970 and hearing about Sadat’s ascension to power. “The shared instinct of most of those present—as well as of available intelligence reports—was that Sadat would not last long as president,” Kissinger wrote in his book. “He seemed to embody continuity with Nasser’s aggressively nationalist ideology, and to boot, looked like a man of little influence or substance. One senior adviser gave him six weeks, the assessment being that his succession was ‘just a convenient way of blocking selection of a stronger rival’.” Kissinger admits that he did not properly appreciate the dramatic step of Sadat expelling Soviet military advisers in 1972 nor adequately value Sadat’s decision to dispatch his national security adviser Hafiz Ismail in February 1973 to the United States. Kissinger candidly admitted, “Sadat was still held in low regard in Washington…My personal assessment had not improved materially from the time of his ascension to the presidency.” On another occasion years later, Kissinger publicly declared, “I must say we did not take Sadat very seriously,” adding this was so because the Egyptian leader “was [always] making terrible threats, which he never implemented.”[1]
The above is puzzling given that Kissinger was determined to expel Soviet influence from the Middle East. How did he miss Sadat’s signal when he expelled the Soviet advisers, or ignore Ismail’s warning that war would occur in absence of diplomatic steps? In his book Master of the Game, Martin Indyk delves deeply into this period and concludes it is “a failure of imagination”. Indyk says about Kissinger: “he geared his own actions to an assessment that Sadat, whom he viewed as a ‘buffoon,’ could not resort to force, and if he did, he would find himself worse off.”
Israel’s leading miscalculation—famously called “the konzeptzia” (the concept)—is that Egypt could not afford to start a war it was certain to lose due to superior Israeli weaponry and Soviet refusal to provide state-of-the-art weaponry during a period of superpower détente. Having previously mobilized its reserves a few times before (which turned out to be false alarms) and after Sadat declared in more than one year that it was the “year of decision,” this time Israel did not act. As Mordechai Gazit, former director-general under Prime Minister Golda Meir put it, “[Defense Minister Moshe] Dayan and [Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff David] ‘Dado’ [Elazar] should have thought it prudent to call up some reserves early in October. But it was their complete trust in the Hasadir [standing army] and not their addiction to the konzeptzia, as it is commonly argued, that prevented them from ordering mobilization.”[2]
Egypt’s biggest miscalculation seems to have occurred during the war itself. While the United States was stunned at the outset of the war by Egypt crossing the Suez Canal, demolishing the Bar-Lev Line fortifications, and using SAM-3 surface-to-air missiles to shoot numerous Israeli warplanes out of the sky, Washington assumed it was only a matter of time until Israel turned the tide of the war.
Yet, after several days of fighting, this did not materialize. Egyptian National Security Adviser Hafez Ismail made clear to Kissinger in back-channel communications that Egypt had no plans to advance the fighting. Nixon and Kissinger actually considered the idea of the war ending with a limited Egyptian victory enshrined by a UN Security Council resolution put forward by Britain on October 13, a week after the start of the conflict. A ceasefire “in place” would be a critical win for the Egyptians as it would freeze the fighting with Egypt as the victor by having crossed the Suez Canal. Nixon and Kissinger saw in this an advantage for post-war diplomacy by providing Egypt with a psychological victory after the debacle of 1967, even if Israel feared this meant it would begin negotiations from a negative position.
There was only one problem. Sadat didn’t want to stop, under the assurance that more Soviet weaponry was en route. Although Nixon and Kissinger wanted to avoid a major superpower confrontation and preserve the détente that they toiled so hard for a year earlier, they were averse to an Egyptian victory attributed to Soviet weaponry. After all, their goal was to push the Soviets out of the Middle East.
Sadat made it clear that he would not accept the proposed UN Security Council resolution unless Israel yielded all of its gains from the 1967 War, something he must have known was highly unlikely. Sadat’s Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy made clear to him that he thought the president was mistaken by pressing further. Fahmy believed Egypt needed to cash in its chips after the reason for Sadat going to war, essentially breaking the diplomatic logjam, had been achieved. Fahmy later wrote:
“Sadat, however, was overly confident by his army’s victory and [Syrian President Hafez] Assad’s assurances that Syria had no problem, and refused to accept the ceasefire in place. This was a mistake. Although under normal circumstances a prolonged war would have been in Egypt’s interests, the U.S. decision to send arms to Israel changed the situation and made an early ceasefire preferable. Sadat personally informed me that he had conveyed the Egyptian refusal to accept the ceasefire to the British ambassador in Egypt, who was pressing him to accept it. I was very upset by the decision and could not hide my distress.”[3]
Ismail indicated that failure to accept the ceasefire could lead Israel to cross the Suez Canal. He recalled, “my prediction was unfortunately correct. A few days later the American arms shipments had reached the point where the Israelis were able to cross the Suez Canal. This created a situation of near panic within both the military and the political leadership of Egypt.”
Indeed, once Sadat balked and Washington saw it had nothing to gain from pressuring Israel further and withholding arms as it did during the first week of the war, Nixon and Kissinger immediately switched gears. Senior Director for the Middle East at the White House National Security Council under Kissinger William Quandt made clear a turning point had been reached. Having noted that the withholding of weapons during the start of the war was one of the most controversial moves he had witnessed during his government service, he now saw that things were reverting back. He wrote in Decade of Decisions: “Now everything was coming unstuck. Kissinger was angry at Sadat, at the British, and at the Soviets…a new strategy had to be devised and quickly.” Kissinger also saw that a turning point had been reached due to Sadat’s decision not to accept the UN Security Council ceasefire. He wrote in his memoirs, Years of Upheaval:
“The die was now cast: matters had reached a point where maneuvering would be suicidal and hesitation, disastrous. The parties could not yet be brought to end the war—or the Soviets to support this course—by a calculation of their interests. All that was left was to force a change in the perception of their interests. We would pour in supplies. We would risk a confrontation. We would not talk again (with the Soviets) until there was no longer any doubt that no settlement could be imposed…Conciliation is meaningful only if one is thought to have an alternative…But we had no alternative anyway.”
Nixon and Kissinger met to review the course of the most recent developments. There was no going back, and there would be no more bureaucratic excuses. By all accounts, Nixon, who was previously preoccupied by the morass of Watergate, became animated and forceful on this occasion and agreed to take on the responsibility of managing the superpower confrontation that arose as a result of the massive airlift. The United States passed a 2.2-billion-dollar emergency aid package of loans and grants for Israel through Congress. The airlift that followed was considered the biggest U.S. weapons supply since the Berlin blockage of 1948: a thousand tons of weapons and materiel using C-5A and C-141 aircraft as well as C-130’s in a matter of days. Over the following weeks, there were a total of 550 U.S. military flights to Israel. By the end of the first few days, the United States had surpassed the Soviet airlift to Egypt and Syria combined. The bottom line: Sadat should have listened to Ismail Fahmy on the fateful day of October 13, 1973.
Legacies Left Behind The 1973 War was a seminal moment in the Middle East so it is not surprising that its legacies are manifold.
Sadat’s vindication and the limits of force
Sadat famously said that he went to war to shatter Israel’s aura of “invincibility”. Indeed, he achieved this. Israelis look back at 1973 as a warning that there are profound limits to the use of force. Their generals are not praised as gods like they were in 1967; the State Commission led by Israel’s Chief Justice Shimon Agranat to investigate the war sought to hold the Israeli establishment accountable for being surprised and key figures were forced to resign. Mordechai Gazit, top aide to Meir, would write:
“The Yom Kippur War had a traumatic effect on Israelis. Twenty-five years later Israelis still look back on the war in anger and frustration. They consider it a low point in Israel’s history. Most Israelis remain convinced that something very serious must have gone wrong in the period preceding October 1973 and firmly believe that the political and military leadership of the country was accountable for what happened.”
While the Agranat Commission kept its focus on the military leadership, public protests forced the resignation of Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan as well. Meir would be replaced by Yitzhak Rabin, the hero of the 1967 War who was untainted by the strategic surprise of 1973.
It is Sadat and not the larger-than-life Nasser who was able to shatter this aura of invincibility, and it is hard to deny that this emboldened him in subsequent diplomacy, whether the Sinai I and II disengagement agreements or his iconic trip to Jerusalem in 1977.
Strategic surprise and its impact on Israel’s elite
Israel was enthralled by the “konzeptzia”—he doctrine that Egypt would not go to war unless it could conduct enough deep penetration bombing that it could win the war outright. Without overwhelming military superiority, Cairo would not dare launch a war. Major-General Eli Zeira, head of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)’s military intelligence, was the father of the “konzeptzia” and no amount of contrary information could sway him. Egypt’s gathering of forces was interpreted as a military exercise, while the evacuation of Soviet civilian personnel from Damascus on the eve of the 1973 War was also dismissed. The fact that Jordan’s King Hussein warned Meir that a war could break out (from Syria’s end) failed to sway Zeira. The Agranat Commission argued Zeira’s assessment was key in ensuring that Israel did not mobilize its reserves or prepare for a coming war.
Once the war began, Kissinger’s memoirs reflected that he thought it would be a repeat of the 1967 rout. The CIA also thought Israel would win within 48 hours, even in a two-front war. For Israel, the surprise attack led to the eclipse of the IDF as Israel’s secular priesthood as per the 1967 War. The misjudgments of the military in advance of the war, such as the failure of Zeira’s konzeptzia and overconfidence in the regular IDF, which led to the failure to call up reserves and IDF underperformance in the opening days of the war, shook the public’s confidence in the army and assessment of Israel’s strategic position.
It was not just the military whose reputation was tarnished. Since its founding in 1948, Israel had been under de facto one-party rule by the Labor party (formerly Mapai). In the 1977 election, known as HaMahapach (The Upheaval), the Labor Party was defeated for the first time in twenty-nine years and replaced with a right-wing government. Both the rabbinical establishment and West Bank settlements gained a greater hold in a traumatized country, supplanting the secular priests, the military. The vacuum in both the political and military establishments accelerated the rise of Gush Emunim—the national-religious settler movement—in the aftermath of the 1973 War.
Israel prevails and the 1973 War is the last Arab interstate war
While Egypt’s and Syria’s coordinated surprise attack led to significant military achievements, including an Egyptian beachhead on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, the Arabs could not defeat Israel on the battlefield. Israel had its weaponry resupplied by a superior United States, and ended the war outside of Cairo and Damascus, encircling the 20,000-strong Egyptian Third Army. Once Egypt opted to leave the circle of war in favor of the circle of peace, no Arab army could or would fight Israel on its own. (There was a brief clash with the Syrian army and Israel in 1982.) The net effect is that the conventional wars that defined the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1948 to 1973 were deemed futile, and interstate wars effectively ended. Instead, non-state actors like Palestinian militant factions, then later Hezbollah and Hamas, sought to carry on the conflict, setting the stage for the current asymmetric engagements between Israel and militant or terrorist groups.
Energy used for geopolitical pressure
The war in 1973 brought Arab states to the zenith of their oil-based power, following a half-hearted embargo attempt in 1967. The oil market looked different in 1973, creating a perfect storm. The ingredients were all there: rising consumption, lack of U.S. spare capacity, and nationalization of Arab oil production in several critical countries. Taken together, this gave Arab states the ability to unilaterally set prices and agree to cuts in oil production, using the relatively young OPEC, in a way that was previously impossible.
As far back as 1947, the United States imported about 8 percent of its oil. By 1973, the figure skyrocketed to 36 percent. In 1967, the Arab states lacked the economic leverage to push prices higher and offset production cuts with increased revenue. By 1973, though, both these factors had changed and the oil embargo sharply impacted the world economy, driving a sustained recession that ended only in 1975.
The issue was not just a nearly 60 percent rise in world consumption of oil between 1967 and 1973; a key factor was that the Arab states engaged in a creeping nationalization of their oil production industries. Until 1973, American and British oil companies known as the Seven Sisters earned most of the profits. After the war, the Arab oil states decided to change the rules, insisting that they reap a majority of the profits.
However, it is important to chart the trajectory of the oil embargo. Arab leaders made no bones about their expansive objectives: they wanted to keep the embargo going until Israel withdrew from all territories taken in the 1967 War, including East Jerusalem. The fact is that the oil embargo lasted just five months and was withdrawn by the oil producers on March 18, 1974, after rather relatively limited achievements.
The Arab oil embargo, however, can claim credit for launching U.S. diplomatic involvement in the post-war period. Moreover, the embargo helped launch the first Israel-Egypt disengagement agreement, under which troops on both sides separated themselves by a few miles near the Suez Canal in January 1974. This involved Israel withdrawing from a fraction of the Sinai desert. Subsequent withdrawals would be completely divorced from the embargo. Israel withdrew from another slice of the Sinai a year after the embargo was lifted, but due to a U.S.-Egyptian package of quid pro quos rather than oil-based pressure. Of course, Israel would withdraw from the majority of the Sinai only in the wake of Sadat’s historic trip to Jerusalem in 1977 and the subsequent Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979. (Due to different factors, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza would largely be outside the Israel-Egyptian contractual treaty context.) In short, the oil embargo fell far short of its main objective.
Why did the embargo end? In theory, given its ostensible early success, it could have kept going until Israel was pushed back to the 1967 lines. However, a variety of factors created profound limitations to a strategy linking oil and Israeli concessions.
On a pure economic level, an embargo would not be effective over time, given the fungibility of oil. Arab states cut shipments to the United States, but kept providing oil to others. Third parties then shipped oil to the United States, mitigating the impact of the embargo. Production cuts, while more effective in forcing prices up for Americans, required discipline among OPEC members, all of whom wanted to maximize profits. OPEC members favored higher oil revenues, but were often less sanguine about production cuts. Arab production cuts were only 9 percent of overall international production of 50 million barrels per day, limiting their ability to offset lower exports with higher prices.
Further, the embargo game was a double-edged sword. The world understood that the global economy was vulnerable due to its heavy reliance on oil, but the Arab states understood that they would also be hurt by a global economic downturn. The Saudis were well-aware that undermining the U.S. economy could have destabilizing economic implications for them. Indeed, a global recession would occur in 1974 and part of 1975, knocking more than 3 percent off global GDP. Saudi Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani would say to counterparts, “if you went down, we would go down.” Some wondered if Yamani feared that a four-fold rise in oil prices would lead the United States to vigorously pursue the prospects of alternative energies, which would be the death-knell for the Saudis, whose GDP was at that time over 50 percent oil rents. As such, it was preferable to keep prices somewhat lower in order to avoid pushing the United States to try and become energy-independent.
A second set of limits on the embargo strategy was that the Saudis saw that a weakened United States could imperil a strong U.S.-Saudi relationship. It was not tenable for Washington to be viewed as a supplicant of Riyadh. The United States was the guarantor of Saudi security, and the kingdom relied on the American military for defense and arms acquisitions. So long as there was an embargo, the United States would not sell weapons or enhance other forms of defense cooperation. The more the American public viewed the oil embargo as political blackmail, the more intense the blowback against Arab oil producers. On January 7, 1974, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger publicly mentioned the prospect of reprisals against those who perpetrated the embargo. Washington would only tighten defense cooperation with Riyadh once the embargo ended.
A third set of limits on the embargo strategy was that the United States held diplomatic cards in the Mideast, not just military ones. Ultimately, other Arab states wanted Kissinger to pursue not only a first disengagement with Egypt, but also a disengagement agreement with Syria. In principle, Kissinger was keen to do this anyway, because he did not want Sadat exposed as the only Arab leader to sign a post-war ceasefire with Israel. Engaging a more radical Syria would provide Sadat with political cover as he moved closer to Washington. However, Syria’s insistence that the embargo remain until such a comparable disengagement accord be reached was matched by a U.S. refusal to engage in diplomacy until the embargo was lifted. A sort of compromise was reached, whereby Kissinger began an early round of disengagement talks with Damascus before the lifting of the embargo on March 18, but in fact, his Syria shuttling only began on April 29.
Another limitation on the embargo strategy was that it lost the support of Egypt—the biggest Arab country and leader of the war effort—once the first disengagement agreement was signed in January 1974. Ironically, it was Sadat who proposed the oil embargo before the war. Yet, there was logic to his reassessment of the advisability of the oil embargo. Sadat became more receptive to U.S. appeals as his relationship with Kissinger and Nixon developed, and he wanted to enter the American geopolitical orbit. Nixon insisted that Sadat intercede with Saudi Arabia to lift the oil embargo. Kissinger convened the ceremonial opening to the Geneva Conference in December 1973 as a cover for U.S.-Egyptian diplomacy, as per Sadat’s wishes. Nixon wrote Sadat:
“Our nations stand at the threshold of a great turning point in history…[but] in order to make it possible for me to move decisively, it is necessary that the discrimination against the United States which the oil embargo represents be brought to an end…..It cannot wait for the outcome of the current talks on disengagement”.[4]
Soviet influence falling and Washington rising as the indispensable peace broker
Sadat was not merely responding to U.S. pressure. He moved toward the United States in no small measure because the Soviets had no relationship with Israel and therefore no leverage to induce Israeli concessions: Moscow could help bring war, but had no utility in bringing peace. Ironically, Israel’s military victory, which stemmed in no small part from U.S. resupply, did not hurt America’s standing with Egypt. On the contrary, America was now all the more valuable because it was close to Israel. Only the United States and its relationship with Israel could help him regain the Sinai, and thus a weak America did not serve Egyptian purposes. At different times, Sadat would say that the United States held “99 percent of the cards” to regaining Egyptian land. Egypt did not want the United States to weaken and lose its leverage with Israel.
Kissinger capitalized on this immediately and used the post-war period to launch successful diplomacy, positioning the United States as the only peace broker and allowing it to mediate between the parties in a way that had been impossible in all previous rounds of Arab-Israeli conflict. U.S.-brokered disengagement agreements with Egypt led simultaneously to a partial return of Sinai and much closer ties with the United States. This paved the way for Sadat’s historic trip to Jerusalem in 1977, which enabled him to recover the rest of the Sinai Peninsula.
In terms of superpower relations, it is clear that U.S. policy during the 1973 War was driven by how Washington anticipated Soviet moves. The United States initially wanted to help Egypt achieve a quick limited victory. But once Sadat, buoyed by early battlefield successes and receiving major Soviet assistance, rejected a UN ceasefire which would have frozen the battle line, the Americans shifted course and began a massive airlift of weapons and supplies to Israel. It became apparent over the course of the war and its aftermath that Kissinger did not want to sacrifice détente, but rather sought to eliminate Soviet influence in the Middle East. Kissinger would later recall, “we sent a message to Sadat on the first day of the war saying you are now making war with Soviet arms. But keep in mind that you have to make peace with American diplomacy.”
Therefore, the Geneva international peace conference after the 1973 War had an opening ceremony involving both superpowers, but the aim remained the establishment of an uncontested pax Americana. Kissinger wanted to bring Egypt into the American orbit without sacrificing détente. This was a very delicate but successful endeavor. In the aftermath of the war, the U.S.-Egyptian relationship shifted from adversarial to a pillar of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Post-war diplomacy led to the Washington-Cairo relationship growing in many directions, given the importance of Egypt as the most populous Arab state, the strategic value of the Suez Canal, and its status as the leader of the Arab World, which it remained for decades to come. Security ties deepened as Egypt entered the American orbit, receiving billions of dollars in aid over several decades and becoming a major buyer of American weaponry.
As Quandt put it:
“American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict was fundamentally affected by the events of the October 1973 war…The simple lesson from this crisis was that the status quo in the Middle East was volatile and dangerous, and it could disintegrate, with serious consequences for American global and regional interests. Consequently the status quo had to be stabilized through a combination of diplomacy and arms shipments. A political process must begin that would offer the Arabs an alternative to war, but it must be carried on at a pace the Israelis could accept.”
Stability in the Middle East could not be guaranteed by military predominance. Kissinger would visit the Middle East eleven times over the course of one-and-a-half years.
Birth of Gradualism
The 1973 War led to another innovation: gradualism. Its operational manifestation was shuttle diplomacy by Kissinger. Yet the main novelty was not how many flights it took for Kissinger to reach the 1974 and 1975 Sinai disengagement agreements. Rather, it was an understanding that the Arab-Israeli conflict could not be solved all at once. It was too complex. It needed to be disaggregated. Yet, it is a mistake to view Kissinger as the sole architect of the disengagement agreements and gradualist strategy. Sadat in his own way also favored this approach.
When President Jimmy Carter wanted to pursue a comprehensive agreement by reconvening the Geneva conference, Sadat saw this as perhaps well-intentioned, but something that would ultimately tie Egypt’s hands. The nature of the peace conference would be that “nothing would be agreed upon until everything was agreed,” thereby providing a veto to Syria. Nicholas Veliotes, a senior State Department official responsible for Arab-Israel affairs and future ambassador to Egypt, would later say, “Sadat possessed the fundamental and unalterable preference to keep control of all negotiating decisions in Cairo’s hands, and not let them fall into the Syrian preference for a unified delegation.”[5]
The Last War People remember the 1973 War a full fifty years later because it was so consequential. It was pivotal in shifting the trajectory of the Middle East, rendering the interstate Arab-Israeli wars that characterized the regional landscape since 1948 unthinkable. In no small measure, this was due to Sadat’s transformative leadership, Kissinger’s diplomatic agility, and Rabin’s analytical capability. The three men understood the landscape they inherited and the terrain they—in fits and starts—sought to shape in the aftermath of the war. It would be a world where both Egypt and Israel moved deeper under the U.S. wing and deepened their links to its security order, and it would be a world in which war was no longer possible. The two Sinai disengagement agreements of 1974 and 1975, reached by all three leaders, were the predicate for Sadat’s electrifying trip to Jerusalem in 1977, and the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty of 1979.
In Sadat’s historic Knesset speech, the Egyptian President declared:
“Any life lost in war is a human life, irrespective of its being that of an Israeli or an Arab. A wife who becomes a widow is a human being entitled to a happy family life, whether she be an Arab or an Israeli. Innocent children who are deprived of the care and compassion of their parents are ours, be they living on Arab or Israeli land. They command our top responsibility to afford them a comfortable life today and tomorrow.”[6]
The Middle East would know a myriad of challenges after the 1973 War, but there would be no going back to the frequent interstate wars that so dominated the past. As such, Sadat declared his belief to his parliament that the 1973 War should be “the last war”. Five decades later, this hard-won peace has held.
[1] Kissinger, Remarks at a Washington Institute for Near East Policy dinner in New York coinciding with the 35th anniversary of the 1973 war, October 6, 2008.
[2] Gazit, Mordechai, in Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present, Brandeis University Press, 2008, p. 271.
[3] Fahmy, Ismail, Negotiating for Peace in the Middle East, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1983, pp.
The fourth consecutive Arab-Israeli conflict in 1973, called the Day of Atonement War or the October War, shook the Middle East in the second half of the last century.
It was an exceedingly unusual war in many ways. First, the key role in the Arab coalition was played by Egypt. Second, unprecedented success was achieved by the Arabs—although temporarily and on a limited scale—which had a noticeable impact on the situation in the Middle East conflict zone. Third, Arab attacks against Israeli troops were mounted for the first time with no involvement of external actors. Lastly, the conflict came to a halt unexpectedly, leaving observers with the impression of a well-orchestrated performance.
This conflict was also discordant with the “zero-sum game” paradigm that had underlain all previous Arab-Israeli wars. This time, the conflict occurred against the backdrop of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s U-turn toward the United States shortly before the war and followed a decision made by Soviet leaders to withdraw their military specialists from Egypt. Another unusual aspect of this conflict was that Moscow formally learned about the war only after it began. Even more puzzling was that Moscow nevertheless continued to provide military assistance to the Egyptians.
Fifty years later, not all of the trials and tribulations inherent to the historic developments of that time are fully known or have been adequately interpreted. There remain many unanswered questions. As the authors of this essay, we decided to search for answers by focusing on memoirs and interviews of Russian diplomats, politicians, and journalists who were directly engaged in the events which unfolded. We place special emphasis on on an interview conducted by one of the essay authors Vitaly V. Naumkin with Ambassador Emeritus Andrey Glebovich Baklanov.
Vitaly was a student at Cairo University during the June 1967 War and worked as an interpreter for top Soviet delegations visiting Egypt and other Arab states. He later served in the Soviet Army for some time as a military interpreter and teacher at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. The two of us have remained friends for over half a century, which explains the very candid and heart-to-heart nature of these conversations.
Baklanov holds the rank of Ambassador Extraordinaire and Plenipotentiary and is one of the most prominent Russian diplomats. He has spent many years in Arab countries, including as head of the Russian diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia. He is adviser to the Federation Council Deputy Chairman, candidate of Historical Sciences, and professor at the Faculty of World Economy and World Politics with the Higher School of Economics, a National Research University in Russia. He is an active participant in many international conferences and symposia; he and Naumkin are both associate fellows of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. Throughout 1969–1972, he worked as a staff member of the USSR Embassy in Egypt, initially as an interpreter and later as an attaché.
When first asked whether the Soviets expected that a new war would break out in the Middle East, Baklanov said that Moscow accurately predicted the timeframe within which the war could occur. Indeed, back in 1971, 1972, and the “decisive year” 1973, Sadat spoke about the inevitability of a new military confrontation between Egypt and Israel. Sadat’s comments were reminiscent of his late predecessor Gamal Abdel Nasser’s statements that if negotiations failed, then the territories Israel seized by force would have to be returned by force. This approach was most energetically promoted by Sadat after May 1971, when he arrested left-of-center elements in the country’s government and became the full-fledged president with all the powers that this post entailed.
Additionally, Sadat resolved to immortalize himself as the Arab leader who would return Sinai to Egypt after being lost by Nasser in 1967. Thus, Baklanov became witness to a tacit reputational competition between the late Nasser and the new president. Baklanov also pointed to operational data and intelligence sources which Moscow had access to through its long-established network of contacts, all of which were retained even after the withdrawal of Soviet military personnel from Egypt in July-August 1972.
Although there was an element of suspense around the definitive commencement of military action, it is most likely that Moscow, as well as Washington and a few other capitals, were well-informed of the date. Baklanov is quite sure that this war, quoting another Soviet Arabist, was a sort of “masrahiya” (performance), and that a number of privileged persons in the top political echelons of power in the United States, Egypt, and Israel were perfectly knowledgeable about it, as they had been evidently engaged in its preparation.
Why did Sadat Need a War? Baklanov believed that in order to get peace talks started, Sadat needed to approach the Israelis from a much stronger position than the one held by the country after suffering a crushing defeat in the 1967 War. Sadat wanted to look everyone in the eyes, if not as a hero, then something very close to it. He urgently needed at least a limited or partial success, even at the risk of losing the favor of the USSR and certain Arab neighbors.
Meanwhile, Soviets had been losing influence. Their military departure from Egypt had not been ideal, even though commanding officers of the Soviet Armed Forces had insisted on the unavoidable reduction of their military presence well before 1972. However, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU CC) did not approve of this opinion, and, in April 1971, ruled that the Soviet Armed Forces should stay there for the time being, Baklanov explained.
“Basically, we were ready to leave. The war became an objective reality for us, but Moscow could not define a format for its interaction with the Egyptians until the very last moment. The ambiguity of our status lay in the fact that, formally, the Kremlin adhered to the policy of supporting Egypt as a state, but our relationship with Sadat had been growing more and more strained, especially since he had shoved out our military specialists before the war.”
It was clear that Sadat was steering a radical reversal of Egypt’s foreign policy strategies prior to the commencement of the war. He was preparing a document that would be subsequently referred to as the “October Paper.”
“Over that period of time, we had already formed a fairly adequate idea of the entire scenario that Sadat had in mind. We realized that it was a matter of drifting away from us and switching allegiance to the Americans. Most likely, with U.S. assistance after achieving limited military success, he would reach a compromise that would help to achieve his primary objective—to return, without any preconditions, all Egyptian territories seized by Israel in 1967.
Meanwhile, there was no mention whatsoever of the losses that would be sustained by other affected nations. We realized that this new line of policy meant an end to a lengthy period of a friendly, or almost friendly, relationship between the Soviet Union and Egypt, and Egypt’s transition to a different, probably pro-American orbit.”
The question was whether this transition to a pro-American orbit would be perceived as a hostile act in Moscow and to what extent the Kremlin was prepared to switch the Soviet-American relationship to a confrontational mode. We wanted to know whether the USSR had any illusions of sharing any common interests with the Americans at that time and whether it might be possible to reach an agreement with them.
The former ambassador clearly recalled that there was no such thing as general consensus among Soviet leaders or within the organizations that were entrusted with overseeing Egypt. On the one hand, many believed that—in the grand scheme of things, considering how the USSR had traditionally supported Egypt—the situation would settle one way or another. Perhaps the Egyptian line of policy would change, they conceded, but it would only involve a mere change in its foreign policy priorities. This belief was very strong.
On the other hand, there was a vision that the entire foreign policy mechanism had already been wound up for Egypt to accommodate unilateral collaboration with the United States and that this signaled the commencement of a completely new phase.
Egypt’s Pivot Begins Baklanov spoke about his relations with someone he considered to be one of the most valuable assets: Egyptian Minister for Planning Ismail Sabri Abdallah.
“How did it happen that I, a young embassy attaché, had gained access to trust-based contacts with the Minister for Planning of a large state? In this respect, I should be thankful to Pogos Semenovich Akopov, the then Counsellor for Economic Relations and my immediate boss, who organized all these multi-layer contacts. Akopov wanted someone less visible than himself—the third person in the embassy hierarchy after the Ambassador and Minister-Counsellor—to maintain a communication channel with Minister Ismail Sabri, who was also the Director of the Egyptian Institute of National Planning. As a man of foresight, Akopov found Sabri—a former Egyptian Marxist, who treated the Soviet representatives in a truly remarkable way, both amicably and trustingly—to provide information to the Soviet mission.
Acting in advance, tentatively in November 1970, he acquainted me with the Egyptian more closely. Akopov arrived at the Institute of National Planning and said, ‘This is my attaché, my assistant, and also a postgraduate student of the Institute of International Affairs, he is writing a thesis on the Egyptian economy.’
Ismail Sabri handed me two huge volumes comprising 1,100 pages, which I read within two weeks. When I arrived to see him for the second time, I was citing those volumes, and he was astonished: ‘You are one of the very few people who have actually read these two volumes.’
This was the start of our trust-based relationship.”
Baklanov was able to gather significant insights from Abdallah about Egypt’s trajectory.
“He was saying that he and other key economic ministers had been instructed by President Sadat to draft a new concept that would rely on investment schemes from Arab oil-producing nations as well as Western states.
I asked a clarifying question: ‘Oil-producing nations in the first place?’
He replied: ‘Verbally, yes. This is a very shrewd concept, it seeks to distract attention, we want to get investment resources from everywhere and, certainly, these nations will be involved, but only together with Western states.’
As a matter of fact, the essence was reorientation toward the West. Abdallah de facto outlined the idea of a radical financial and economic reorganization of the country, targeting a totally different vector of development.
I reported this information to Akopov and the Ambassador, after which it was transmitted to Moscow. There was similar data confirming this conclusion apart from what I had reported. We tried to get Moscow to finally understand what was going on in Cairo. Information testifying to the same effect as that communicated by Ismail Sabri had been received along various lines—there were quite a lot of other sources that were known to me. That is why, overall, we tended to uphold the view that Egypt would most likely be moving away from the USSR systematically and transitioning to absolutely other rails.”
Reporting this information, which may run contrary to the ideals held in Moscow, was an act of courage, the former ambassador said. As is the case with all diplomats, relaying information that has a negative effect on the line of policy pursued by your state, or any data with a critical connotation for your superiors, is a sensitive, dangerous, and unpleasant task.
As an experienced ambassador to Egypt from 1970 to 1974, Vladimir Mikhailovich Vinogradov criticized the draft reports prepared by his subordinate embassy diplomats as lacking an extremely important element—something that would make the superiors “happy.”
Baklanov told us about a meeting that took place at the Soviet embassy in Cairo in April 1971, shortly before Sadat managed to solidify his position by lulling the vigilance of left-of-center political leaders in Egypt and contriving to neutralize them quite unexpectedly. At the meeting, the assignment to deliver a keynote report was given to the Counsellor for Political Affairs, Valery Yakovlevich Sukhin.
Baklanov remembers that Sukhin optimistically represented the first of two schools of thought about Egypt’s future foreign policy vis-à-vis the USSR, that Cairo was most likely going to abide by the earlier developed status quo of relations with Moscow. However, he pointed out that the new President Sadat appeared to be under pressure from forces hostile to the USSR, who were gathering momentum.
Only three of the diplomatic corps staff openly voiced their disagreement with the Counsellor. The first was Baklanov, who relied on certain data, reflecting the financial and economic performance of Egypt’s private sector playing a domineering role in its merger with the state-controlled sector, to arrive at the conclusion that Egypt was going to pursue a new direction. Key components of the new Egyptian model were liberalization and democratization. This new direction would not align with the Soviet model of socialist orientation.
Moreover, the change in direction was not because Sadat was forced to yield to the pressure exerted by some forces hostile to Moscow, but because he himself was the one who advocated for such a reversal of policy.
Baklanov’s point of view was articulated by two more diplomats, Georgy Ivanovich Martirosov and Robert Shakirovich Turdiev.
Turdiev made an interesting prediction:
“There is a Lebanese journal that has never been wrong. This journal wrote that in 1972 the new Egyptian President would completely break free from USSR custody in the military sector and would remove all Soviet military personnel.
We waited all through the year to check in on Robert’s words and much to our surprise, he proved to be right.”
Despite Egypt’s changed policy toward the Soviet Union, Baklanov said they were hopeful that things would turn out alright in the end.
“I was then summoned by Ambassador Vinogradov who told me ‘You were right. But, it is good for you to be smart, you are only responsible for your own area of work, and we are here to make sure that the scenario [Cairo’s pivot to Washington] you talked about does not materialize. So, my task and yours is to make things happen in such a way that your scenario turns out to be a flop and that the one mentioned by Sukhin prevails’.
I raised an objection: ‘Objectively, it will not work out the way Sukhin said.’ In any event, Vinogradov thought it appropriate to show that he had paid attention to the views articulated by us, young diplomats for the most part, at the meeting.
Incidentally, many of those who would later write that they knew everything beforehand, were keeping silent at the meeting in a cowardly fashion and did not utter a word in support of the “sadly negative” assessment. Perhaps they spoke later, but at this meeting, when an important final document was to be issued, they were reduced to silence. For this reason, the overall situation was complicated, there was a clash of opinions, but gradually, the view seeking to recognize the fact that Egypt had been drifting away from us, and moving in the direction toward the United States, began to gain ground.”
The Saudi Quotient While the impressions of retired Soviet diplomats about their work at the embassy in Cairo half a century ago gives one insight about relations between the two countries, an overview of regional developments as well as Egypt-U.S. ties is critical to understanding the changes that gripped the Middle East in the 1970s.
“I haven’t altered my assessments about Cairo’s shift away from Moscow in the least, these were part of my thesis later, which I defended. But at that time, they seemed too bold to be broadly accepted. So, my thesis was labeled ‘For Official Use Only.’”
But on the question of contacts between Egypt and the United States, Baklanov was evasive, saying that he knew little at that time, only that very serious systematic talks were underway. Soviet diplomats were also unaware of the role Saudi Arabia played in bridging Egypt-U.S. ties. Baklanov says that he learned about the Kingdom’s role in earnest during a conversation with Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, with whom he was on good terms, many years later. He remembers asking the prince about the Saudi role.
“I am not only a diplomat; I am also a historian. I am puzzled by one question. Is it true that, within the period, when Sadat reversed Egypt’s policy orientation towards the United States, the chief of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency was actively engaged in this reorientation effort when he came to Cairo and to the United States to conduct negotiations? Did you truly play a key role? I remember your visit, you also spoke in favor of halting the Soviet military presence, etc.”
Baklanov recalled Prince Sultan saying:
“Such were the times. I wouldn’t like to speculate on the details, perhaps we could discuss it in greater detail one day. Yes, we did contribute to a radical reversal of Egypt’s policy aimed at forging friendship with the United States because we were on friendly terms with them ourselves. There were different circumstances then.”
In other words, the Saudis admitted to having assisted in that process, but did it mean that they offered material support to Egypt for such a reorientation effort?
Baklanov believed that they were “just beginning” to do so in the buildup to the war. The investment law mentioned by Ismail Sabri Abdallah in a conversation with Baklanov had already been drafted in 1971. At the time, conversations with the Saudis were well underway and they promised that if Cairo adopted a more reasonable policy—rejecting its socialist experiments, which had stirred up commotion among the Arab people, including on the Arabian Peninsula—they would support Egypt. In 1971, the first social bank An-Nasr (Victory) was set up, based almost entirely on Saudi capital. Yes, monetary injections had already been made.
Another question arises then about how accurate were Soviet in their evaluations of the interests and ambitions of the region’s key players, chiefly Egypt, Israel, Syria, and Jordan?
Baklanov emphasized that the Egypt file was given particular attention within Soviet diplomatic circles as an inalienable part of Soviet foreign policy.
“We had no contact whatsoever with the Saudis and we were not engaged in monitoring their situation. Neither did we have any close relationships with the Jordanians. Later, after the 1970 events, [known as Black September] we tried to grasp what was going on there in connection with our relationships with the Palestinians.
As for Syria, we proceeded from the premise that Damascus was the organizer of the ‘rejectionist bloc.’ Broadly speaking, we were prepared to face a split within the Arab world, a situation where Egypt, while drifting away from collaboration with us, would be transitioning to confrontation with countries that might form an alternative center of power in the Arab world, led by Syria.
Israel, meanwhile, was the focus of our attention. We had a staff member at our Cairo embassy, Komissarov, who had earlier worked in Tel-Aviv, so he continued to monitor developments in Israel. There was a common perception, and I adhered to it, that we needed to restore our relationships with Israel at an accelerated pace. However, Moscow was not supportive of that idea, and neither was Akopov.
We, the younger diplomats, certainly speculated about it. We didn’t proceed from the assumption that it was appropriate to forge relationships with Israel on a positive note, but because we found ourselves in a pretty silly situation. We had ruptured contacts with Israel to please the Arabs. However, in 1970, Sadat expressly stated: ‘Dear Soviet comrades, unfortunately, it so happened that your mediation effort was not enough.’
So, Sadat made his message clear: ‘The key to resolving the problem lies in the hands of the Americans,’ as they had been in contact with both sides. We felt like idiots; it turned out that we had severed our relationships with Israel for the Arabs to benefit, and now they were accusing us, as mediators, of being inadequate.”
Baklanov said he advocated openly for the necessity to resume ties with Israel, but he did not insist on it, “as it was not his field of competence.” While allegiances were shifting in the Middle East, the Kremlin appeared to be holding steadfast that its policies and interests in the region regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict would remain the same.
“Moscow distinctively formulated its goals in the Arab-Israeli conflict in early 1971 and these goals remained almost the same until after the 1973 War. However, that approach turned out to be a noticeable failure. Effectively, another concept came into action. Thus, the incomplete process of revising our concepts about the Middle East had been in evidence for a long time.”
As the Soviets were trying to adjust to the new realities and identify the track that post-1973 developments would take, their biggest challenge was how to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict Moscow had to decide whether to recommit to the peace process on a fresh basis, with no linkage to UN Resolutions 242 and 338, or to stay within the confines of something that sounded very good in the Kremlin, but failed to work properly.
Baklanov said that there was a lack of clear-cut vision and a noticeable inadequacy in how the Soviets pursued their goals in the Middle East. Ultimately, and until new concepts on Middle East policy could be clearly stated, substantiated, and widely supported, the Soviets would adhere to their status quo policies in the region.
This left open the question of how integrated the discussions on the Middle East had been among the various departments of senior government in the Kremlin. There were miscalculations on the Soviet side, which makes it all the more important to highlight the difference in perceptions then and now when considering how that pivotal conflict influenced the regional balance of forces.
Baklanov noted that retrospective evaluations today are dramatically different from the official assessments of the early 1970s.
“I don’t mean the assessments made by experts, which were also very different. You can come to the Russian libraries and look through the book titles, which speak for themselves – the Camp David Collapse, the Camp David Conspiracy, etc. The war had already paved the way for the Camp David process, but Moscow was inclined to perceive it, along the official line, in an exclusively negative light, that it was allegedly founded on an anti-Soviet platform. However, afterwards, a peace process arose out of it. And, at that time, some striking ambiguity was in evidence: on the one hand, a peace process was looming ahead, and on the other, we condemned the phenomena that formed its basis. That was exactly the way as matters stood then. Politics was not really streamlined for a long time to come.”
Baklanov conceded that after the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference co-sponsored by the United States and Soviet Union, previous negative assessments were revised post factum.
For example, the peace treaty with Israel that had been signed by Sadat—for which he had been branded as a traitor—now appeared to be quite acceptable.
Furthermore, the draft Palestinian resolution was much more acceptable in the Camp David agreements than any other toward resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. “If we had agreed to that plan earlier, although it would not have led to the formation of a state, and a degree of self-management,” Baklanov said. “It would have been the most feasible, even more than in the best document related to this issue, which was the plan proposed by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1998.”
Relations with Egypt While the war in 1973 did not change the Soviet approach to Sadat-ruled Egypt at first, over time, and in the wake of the Camp David Accords, Moscow did harden its position.
“Only in the wake of the Camp David Accords did we start to criticize them most severely. After the 1973 War, there was an attempt at launching Arab-Israeli negotiations [the 1974 Geneva process], in which one of the participants was V.M. Vinogradov. Aside from this, even during the war, there was a very odd situation in place. The war was waged without us. Sadat informed us about it for the first time only when Egyptian forces were already crossing to the other bank of the Suez Canal. Sadat called Vinogradov, but instead reached his secretary Vafu Guluzade (The then Second Secretary of the USSR Embassy), talked to him and said enthusiastically that the Egyptian Army had already reached the East bank. That is to say, Sadat did not think it necessary to give an official notice of it beforehand.
Nevertheless, during the war, we provided a lot of assistance to the Egyptians, there was a corridor designated for the deployment of our military equipment, and we also got something, as far as I know, in return, in an amicable way, for example, specimens of Western weapons. We started with a very old British Centurion tank, that was made available to us very easily, and then we received a more modern U.S. M48 tank. From that time on, our Egyptian counterparts began to pass over electronic devices, various improvements under the bonnet etc., less enthusiastically.
Yet, notwithstanding, during the war, we had a channel allowing us to study the specimens of weapons and technology, including combat drones. For instance, one of the first combat drones of Western [American] manufacture at our disposal for the purpose of studying was delivered to us precisely during the 1973 War. They were very interesting, and in any event, according to our evaluation, they were pretty good at furnishing reconnaissance data.”
While historians today might debate whether Moscow should have withheld its military support for Egypt after 1972 and at the height of the October War, Baklanov believed it was a fait accomplis for the Soviets. In terms of the geopolitical realities and in accordance with the integration patterns at the time, he believes Moscow’s assistance was inevitable.
“We supplied a lot of weapons to the Egyptians across that bridge. Suddenly, over a few days, our military support was resumed, given the events that took place. For us, it seemed somewhat odd, as we had already broken up with them. This ability of ours to forget everything suddenly and to embrace each other again, quite unexpectedly for all, is a purely Russian trait, and we could not get rid of it for decades. In that episode, it was there for all to see. We couldn’t have behaved otherwise.”
Baklanov recalled a conversation with the military attaché at the Cairo embassy at the time of the war.
“Half a loaf is better than no bread. They had been already slipping away from our control, but still I, as a military attaché, was obliged to get something to hold in my hands,” he told Baklanov. “And I did it. I sent to Moscow a whole range of very interesting pieces of weapons. For this reason, I feel gratified with the outcome of the 1973 War,” the military attaché added.
The Sadat Conspiracy Theories There have been numerous theories in circulation since the end of the 1973 October War claiming that Sadat had an agreement with the Americans that he would halt military action when he reached a certain point in the Sinai Peninsula and that the Syrians were trying to prevent this from happening.
It was exactly that way, Baklanov revealed.
“I have such a suspicion, because when Vinogradov asked Sadat: “Why did you stop?”
Sadat could not answer him. I also asked Vinogradov about it, and he said that Sadat’s answer was: “Am I supposed to run together with my troops?”
A very strange answer. Yes, they stopped and decided it was enough. Basically, they amassed a minimum of psychological effect for positive energy.”
The Syrians expected that there would be a general offensive launched from both battlefronts.
The ex-ambassador replied that it was hard for him to say anything about the Syrians. As a matter of fact, Baklanov said, the Syrians had a very good intelligence service and they knew exactly what was going on in all countries, including Israel and Egypt. However, and despite having this intelligence, the way they reacted publicly was different. Ultimately, the Syrians had to abide by their own plans coordinated with the top command, at the top of which was the late Hafez Al-Assad.
“I believe,” concluded Baklanov, “that the 1973 War remains a breakthrough moment in Middle East history which requires continued study as we gain more data, we will gradually approach the stage when we comprehend the essence of all the events occurring at that time,” he said.
Shifting Tides: Egypt’s Unexpected Path After the 1973 War
When the war erupted at 2 o’clock in the afternoon on October 6, 1973, I had working for the Center for Political and Strategic Studies at Al-Ahram for the past few months. Earlier in August 1973, I had returned to Egypt after seven years of completing my graduate studies at McGill University in Canada. Soon after, I was appointed as an assistant professor of political science at Cairo University and joined the Al-Ahram Center. The center’s main job to was to monitor the domestic politics of Israel. It was supported by Mohamed Hassanein Haykal, editor of Al-Ahram and a confidante of President Nasser, and directed by Hatem Sadek, Nasser’s son-in-law. It included a group of senior researchers comprising a number of sophisticated social scientists, retired ambassadors, and policy analysts. The senior researchers used to meet on a weekly basis, and by late September, they met daily to discuss the development of events in the Middle East. All of us were at hand and the center was charged with writing daily position papers prepared specially for the president. For the following three weeks, I was commissioned to write the daily political commentary directed toward Israel, which was aired on Egyptian radio.
War is a momentous event in history. It can be a catalyst for societal changes, a source of new ideas, and an impetus for replacement and transformation. War is also closely associated with the process of state formation and the development of national pride and patriotism. Moreover, the balance of power between states is impacted by war, and great wars produce new international institutions and systems.
The October War, especially, had a dramatic impact on most Egyptians. It was a spectacular event and a moment of elation, enthusiasm, and national pride. To us, it was a war of liberation meant to regain the lands occupied by Israel in the previous seven years. In 1973, the prominent literary figure Tawfiq Al-Hakim wrote about the eternal spirit of Egypt which remains active and alert despite the many challenges, including defeats. He described the crossing of the Egyptian army to Sinai as “transcending the defeat” of 1967.[1] Twenty-five years later, the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz echoed the same idea by describing the victory of 1973 as the “restoration of the soul”.[2] The prevailing conviction was that the war would energize Egyptian efforts in all walks of life and start a new chapter in Egyptian history. The term “spirit of October” was frequently used to refer to values of discipline, achievement, and solidarity.
What happened in the following years was different and controversial. It testifies to the concept of irony in history, the unintended and unexpected consequences or a paradoxical outcome of a particular historical event. As the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel suggests, history moves in unpredictable ways; contradictions and conflicts may interact to produce new and unplanned developments.
President Anwar Sadat, who assumed office in 1970, used his newly acquired legitimacy to take Egypt into a different path than that undertaken during President Nasser’s time in office. Sadat initiated a process of restructuring of both the domestic and foreign policies of Egypt. This restructuring reflected a trade-off between political and economic goals as perceived by him, such as rapprochement with Israel in exchange for American aid and support or embracing the image of democracy in exchange of more Western investment.
Sadat told members of the parliament in 1975: “I prefer action to reaction”. His political style was characterized by initiative-taking, surprise moves, and risk-taking. He was not a man of ideas or theories but rather a realist and pragmatist par excellence. He was a master of political survival and dexterity adept at seizing fleeting opportunities. And he was ready to change his strategy in the course of his political maneuvers.
Controlled Liberalization and the Turn Toward Religion Domestic politics in Egypt underwent major changes in the 1970s. Sadat proposed a change in the name of the country from “United Arab Republic” to “The Arab Republic of Egypt” in 1971. The flag was also changed in the same year and the national anthem in 1979. These changes embraced the values and ideas of Sadat’s new official political culture. In contrast to the values of anti-colonialism, revolutionary change, and social justice upheld in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s era, Sadat emphasized co-existence with pro-Western Arab states, traditional values, and economic freedom. At the level of institutions and policies, Egypt moved from a one-party state to partial political liberalization.
Specifically, since 1953, there had been no institutionalized political competition in Egypt and the political landscape was dominated by a single political organization. Gradually in the years following the war, the one-party structures were replaced by a controlled multiparty system. In January 1977, Sadat announced the establishment of three political parties representing right, center, and left
Along with political liberalization, Sadat issued the “October Paper” in 1974. The author of the paper was the famous Egyptian journalist Ahmed Bahaa Eldin who informed me that it was originally intended as a speech to be delivered by the president. Sadat was impressed enough by its content that he decided to make it the guiding blueprint for political and economic change in the country. The key concept of the paper was Egypt’s dire need for “infitah” (opening), i.e., Egypt has to open its doors to benefit from other countries in the world. The infitah was justified in terms of the failure of the “socialist system in Egypt” brought on by Nasser, the desire to attract investments from rich Arab oil-producing countries, and to benefit from the relaxation of global tension at the international level brought about by the policy of détente between superpowers.
In embarking on this new path, Sadat was inspired by two considerations: he wanted to promote the image of Egypt in the West as a modern democratic state. He was also keen to disassociate his new regime from the legacy of his predecessor by appearing more liberal and democratic. But let us make no mistake, these changes were meant to be cosmetic and the extensive powers of the president remained untouched.
The other important and risky move made by Sadat was his rapprochement and tacit alliance with the Muslim Brothers. In the early 1970s, the main opposition to Sadat came from Nasserite and leftist groups, especially among university students and young people. As a counter strategy, he ordered the release of many of the Muslim Brotherhood members from prisons, approved the republication of their weekly magazine Al-dawa, and even tolerated their activities on university campuses and elsewhere.
Sadat similarly sought to leverage Islam to enhance his legitimacy. His speeches included verses of the Quran and were replete with Islamic symbols. For him, Egyptian society had to be based on two pillars: Al-ilm (science) and Al-Iman (Faith). He liked to be introduced in public meetings as the “believer-president” so as to accentuate his piety.
Under the patronage of the government, Islamic groups succeeded in containing the influence and weakening Nasserite and leftist centers of opposition. The plan soon backfired, and as the Arabic proverb states, “the magic turned against the magician”. Islamic groups increased their criticisms of Sadat’s policies, especially toward Israel, and escalated their personal attacks on him. Eventually, a group of militant Islamists assassinated him in October 1981.
Economic liberalization The shift toward economic liberalization was the other major pillar of Sadat’s shift of direction. After the war, Egypt’s economic policy underwent a major change from Nasser’s Arab socialism, moving from central planning and public ownership to an increasingly free market and private sector-driven economy. These new policies carried the name of economic opening—a term that appeared for the first time in a government statement on April 21, 1973. Initially, it referred to encouraging the role of Arab and foreign capital in the housing and construction sectors.
With the declaration of the October paper in 1974, the term took broader dimensions to include all sectors of the economy and the Open Door Economic Policy (ODEP) was officially adopted. The two essential elements of ODEP were to attract Arab and foreign capital through a liberal investment policy and to incentivize Western companies to open branches and factories in Egypt through the establishment of free zones.
In the beginning, the policy was framed as compatible with socialism. Sadat took pains to explain that ODEP was in no way a break with Nasser’s ideas, and that the economic challenges facing Egypt in the aftermath of the war required new solutions. Five years later, in 1979, he informed representatives in the chambers of industry and commerce that capitalism was no longer a crime in Egypt.
The adoption of ODEP was closely related to the changes in Egyptian foreign policy orientation. When a ruling elite decides to pursue a development strategy based on foreign capital and aid, it follows that all necessary steps will be taken to assure and entice its creditors. A stream of international financial dignitaries continued to flow to Egypt throughout 1974. During that year, Cairo received David Rockefeller, chair of the Chase Manhattan bank, who stated that “Egypt has come to realize that socialism and extreme Arab nationalism had not helped the 37 million people.” The U.S. Secretary of Treasury William Simon also visited Egypt and discussed economic policy, and Sadat announced after meeting with him that “we agree 100 percent.”
International financial institutions contributed to the adoption of the new economic policy. As early as April 1975, consultations had begun between IMF staff and Egyptian officials. As a result, the IMF report stated that “the Egyptian authorities have reaffirmed their commitment to the “Open Door” policy.” It added: “The fund believes that in order for this policy to be successfully implemented, fundamental changes in economic policies are required. Domestically, subsidization should be sharply reduced to ease the budget deficit and release resources for investment.”
The report referred to the structural imbalances in the Egyptian economy and recommended the necessity of making adjustments in exchange rate policies.[3] For two years (1975-1976), international financial institutions and Arab and Western creditors pressured Egypt to make its economy more acceptable and accessible to the world’s capitalist market by curbing subsidies and devaluing the Egyptian pound. For these two years, the Egyptian government resisted the demands because of their negative impact on the lower classes. The pressure continued and eventually the Egyptian government succumbed. In January 1977, the government announced an increase in the prices of a number of vital commodities such as rice, gas, sugar, and cigarettes, which triggered a mass uprising in a number of urban centers.
The government was obliged to appease the demonstrators and Sadat eventually rescinded the decisions. The January events had their impact on Sadat who became convinced that a dramatic and game-changing step was needed, leading him to undertake his visit to Jerusalem in November 1977.
Regional Realignment and the Rise of Pragmatic Arabism Similarly, Egypt’s regional policy witnessed significant changes, most important of which was changing its alliances from revolutionary radical states such as Syria and Iraq to the moderate camps of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil-producing countries.
The move was necessitated by the increasing economic and financial troubles of Egypt and the corresponding increase of wealth in Arab oil-producing countries, especially Saudi Arabia, due to the hike in energy prices after the October War. Arab Gulf states’ aid started to flow to Egypt to help solve its economic problems. According to the Riyadh newspaper issued on May 23, 1979, Egypt received 13 billion dollars during the period between 1973 and 1979. Further, the Egyptian government sought to promote Arab and foreign investment and issued a number of laws to encourage them.
As a result, Egypt became increasingly incapable of shouldering its traditional regional role. The withdrawal of Egypt’s central role created a systemic crisis in inter-Arab politics because no other Arab country was qualified to fill this vacuum. The regional structure of leverage was diffused and the hierarchy of power became blurred. Hence, inter-Arab politics witnessed competing rival states struggling for influence. For a while, rich Arab states could not translate their immense wealth into comparable political influence. It took Saudi Arabia more than two decades to emerge as an explicit regional power.
The principle of national interest became more pronounced in the conduct of Arab foreign policies, a change which was described by Ejaz Gilani in 1977 as “the emerging of pragmatic Arabism,”[4] and by Fouad Ajami in 1979 as “the end of Pan-Arabism.” This development brought to the fore the pre-existing contradiction between norms of Arab unity and imperatives of state formation. The call for Arab unity had different consequences; it was a legitimate resource for the adherence to Pan-Arabism, but it was also detrimental to the emerging legitimacy of many Arab states.
Consequently, in the 1970s the goal of Arab unity was replaced by that of Arab solidarity and cooperation. This was reinforced by the continuous failure of all constitutional unity arrangements between Arab states.
Egyptian-Israeli relations also underwent major changes, from Egypt being the only Arab country that fought five wars against Israel in the years 1948, 1956, 1967, 1969, and 1973 to being the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The shift can be explained in light of Egypt’s economic troubles, the rise of popular dissatisfaction and political dissent, exemplified by the January 1977 riots as mentioned earlier, and the continuing fragmentation and disagreements between Arab states on settling the conflict with Israel. The termination of the Arab oil embargo in 1974 and the reopening of the Suez Canal in 1975 further weakened the Arab bargaining position.
President Jimmy Carter sent Sadat a handwritten note expressing his unhappiness with the ongoing course of negotiations between the Arabs and Israel. He related to Sadat his fear that something drastic had to be done. In November 1977, Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem, which eventually led to the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979. Thus, a constellation of domestic and external factors contributed to the restructuring of Egypt’s regional policy.
Shifting Egypt’s Foreign Policy Orientation On the foreign policy front, the period between 1973 and 1978 saw Egypt move gradually from an essentially pro-Soviet position to a virtual strategic and economic ally of the United States. This was not the first restructuring in Egypt’s foreign policy; more than a decade earlier, Nasser made the reverse process when he broke with Western countries and sought arms and economic assistance from the Soviet Union. The rift between Cairo and Washington became deeper in the 1960s due to Egypt’s military support to the Yemeni revolution in 1962 and the intensification of the “Arab Cold War” between revolutionary or radical regimes backed by the Soviet Union and moderate or conservative ones backed by the United States. The rift went as far as suspending American wheat shipments to Egypt in 1964. The Soviet Union seized the opportunity and diverted grain ships bound for Canada and Australia to Egypt. Egypt severed its diplomatic relations with Washington altogether in the aftermath of the 1967 War.
Sadat had deep suspicions of Soviet intentions toward Egypt and the Middle East. He viewed the policy of détente between the United States and the Soviets as an alliance between the two superpowers. For him, this meant preserving the post-1967 status quo in the Middle East, which implied the continuation of the Israeli occupation of Arab lands. Sadat considered the use of the term “military relaxation in the Middle East” in the Soviet-American Communique of May 1972 as confirmation of his views that an alignment between Washington and Moscow could potentially thwart Egypt’s resort to a military option to regain its lost territories. Thus, he understood the delay of Soviet arms shipment to Egypt as a form of pressure on his country and strongly criticized the Soviets for doing this.
Having lost confidence in Soviet policy, Sadat was prepared to break with Moscow sooner than later. Thus, it was not surprising that in his first meeting with Henry Kissinger in December 1973, Sadat spoke of the possible cooperation between the two countries to remove Soviet influence in the Middle East. It is ironic that while Egypt relied almost exclusively on Soviet weapons in the 1973 War, its president was making these overtures to Kissinger, whose country was the chief political and military ally of Israel and had provided Israel with the modern military equipment that put an end to the Egyptian offensive in the October War.
Sadat believed that the United States was the only country that could influence Israel and repeated frequently that Washington possessed 99 percent of the cards of the game. Hence, Kissinger monopolized the indirect negotiations between Egypt and Israel and his “shuttle diplomacy” led to the signing of the first disengagement agreement between Egypt, Syria, and Israel in 1974. Over the following few years, Sadat became more convinced of the importance of the American role in settling the Arab-Israeli conflict. For him, the United States was not just a mediator between Egypt and Israel but rather a full partner in the peace process. He allocated a great part of his time to address American public opinion through meetings with officials, members of Congress, journalists and opinion makers, and leaders of the American Jewish community. As a result, Sadat captured the minds and hearts of millions in the United States and Europe.
In this context, the objective of his visit to Israel in 1977 was not only to assure the Israeli leadership and public but also to gain American confidence in his determined quest for peace. In 1978, Carter invited Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to meet with him in Camp David and initiate a new round of negotiations which led to the signing of “The Camp David Accords” and later the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. In the years following the 1973 War, Egyptian-American relations moved dramatically from an absence of diplomatic relations and deep hostility to close strategic cooperation, and Egypt was frequently referred to in American official documents as the cornerstone of American strategy in the Middle East.
Unmet Expectations Fifty years after the 1973 October War, it is appropriate to reflect on the discrepancy between the revolution in rising expectations in the immediate aftermath of the war and the reality of what happened afterward. The war heralded a period of major changes in Egypt and an unexpected adoption of new politics. The impact of these changes on most Egyptians was profound and devastating. They saw the ideas they were socialized into, such as Arab socialism and Arab nationalism, declared bankrupt, and the heroes they trusted, such as Nasser, heavily criticized and attacked. The pillars of Egypt’s foreign policy that were oriented towards non-alignment, opposition to Western influence in the region, and a pro-Soviet alignment, were replaced with an abrupt shift toward the West, and a budding strategic partnership with the United States.
All of this resulted in a prevailing sense of cynicism, uncertainty, and ideological confusion, a situation very similar to what Emile Durkheim called anomie. As a manifestation of that, different segments of society held various value systems, from liberal Westernized views to strict conservative religious views, shown in their dress codes and social behavior. In this context, Islamists presented religion as a comprehensive value system providing a sense of direction and purpose, which would influence politics for years to come. The Egypt which fought the 1973 War simply faded away in the ensuing years.
[3] International Monetary Fund, Arab Republic of Egypt, staff report for 1976, Article XIV, (August 1976), pp.16-17.
[4] E’jaz Gilani, Pragmatic Arabism: The logic of contemporary Inter-Arab relations, Unpublished PhD submitted to political science department, the MIT, 1977.
Israel and the United States Did Not See the 1973 War Coming
In early October 1973, Israeli intelligence agencies began to receive information regarding Egypt’s (and Syria’s) intention to launch a war against Israel in the coming days. The timing of the expected offensive was not yet known. Only in the early morning of October 6, 1973, would a highly reliable intelligence agent of the Mossad inform Israeli authorities that war would begin in the late afternoon hours.
The exact time was not mentioned, but for one reason or another the Israelis believed the Egyptian military offensive would begin at 6:00 pm. Concurrently, Egypt began to deploy massive military power along the Suez Canal, very close to Israel’s military forces on the other side of the canal. The war broke out at 2:00 pm—four hours before the expected time.
On Yom Kippur, October 6, 1973—the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—the Egyptian and Syrian Armies launched a massive military operation against Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the United States were both caught by surprise. The Egyptian forces were far larger than those the IDF had deployed in strongholds along the canal.
The costs of Israel’s strategic failure were steep. The Egyptian Army killed most of the Israeli forces along the Suez Canal in the first hours of the war, and went on to injure and kill many more Israelis in the fierce military confrontations that took place until a ceasefire agreement was finally reached.
It is safe to say that the Israelis and their allies did not anticipate the outbreak of the war. Israel had consistently denied the possibility of an Egyptian attack. The United States followed the Israeli assessments and policies in the period that preceded the war’s outbreak and accepted ongoing Israeli assessments about the low probability of war. Not only that, the U.S. also supported an Israeli policy which aimed to preserve the status quo that had been created after the Six-Day War.
Israeli Assessments in the pre-1973 War
The low likelihood of war
Israeli intelligence agencies believed—at least since the ceasefire agreement to end fighting along the Suez Canal in August 1970, which concluded the War of Attrition—that the likelihood of war initiated by Egypt was quite low. At the initial stages of the military escalation at the beginning of October 1973 Israeli intelligence stuck to this assessment. It argued that the Egyptian Army was conducting annual exercises and that its deployment was defensive in nature. In the preceding years, the Egyptian Army carried out such exercises almost every year. In each case, a fear crept in Israel that Egypt was secretly planning to carry out an invasion into Sinai. Each time, nothing happened. It was only natural to believe that in October 1973 the Egyptian forces would again follow this routine.
Therefore, Israeli intelligence considered it highly unlikely that Egypt would launch an offensive against Israel soon. This long-enduring assessment was based on seemingly solid assumptions, including, among others, Israel’s military superiority. The dominant narrative within Israeli intelligence in the period that preceded the war was that Israel had acquired an overwhelming military superiority over its Arab enemies. What is more important is the fact that the Egyptian leadership was well aware of Israel’s superior military capabilities. This was due, among other things, to the highly sophisticated arms Israel received from the United States and Israel’s control over Sinai. The United States had supplied Israel in 1972 with 90 skyhawk and 42 phantom jets, which were the most advanced jets at the time. Thus, Israel estimated that any military confrontation with Egypt would almost certainly end in yet another Egyptian defeat.
Egypt had suffered a series of humiliating defeats in the War of Independence (1948), the Sinai War (1956), the Six-Day War (1967), and the War of Attrition (1968-1970). As a result, Israeli officials claimed that Arab states would act in a rational manner and would not want to suffer another defeat. Those wars, many Israelis believed, created a solid and very powerful deterrence against war.
The great powers opposed a war
In the period which preceded the Yom Kippur War, the leading assumption in Tel Aviv was that the great powers opposed a military confrontation in the Middle East. During that period, the United States and the Soviet Union were carrying out a policy of détente. Some hoped this policy would bring an end to the Cold War and lead to the establishment of peaceful relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
At the time, Egypt had very close relations with the Soviet Union. Most of the arms provisions of the Egyptian Army were produced in the Soviet Union. Thousands of Soviet officers and experts lent their support and expertise to the Egyptian Army. Consequently, many Israelis believed that once Egypt realized that the Soviet Union was opposed to a military conflict in the Middle East, the Egyptian leadership would not dare launch a war against Israel.
Divided Arab world
In the period before the war, the Arab world seemed to many Israelis to be more divided than it had ever been. Some experts on Middle East affairs went so far as to claim that hostility between Arab states might even escalate into military confrontations. A civil war broke out in Jordan in 1970 between King Hussein and his loyalists on one side and militant Palestinian groups who sought to topple the Hashemite kingdom on the other side.
Jordan suspected that Egypt supported the Palestinian organizations that operated against the king. Syria was openly hostile towards the Jordanian monarchy, and its army even invaded Jordan during the crisis of September 1970 known among Palestinians as “Black September.” Only a concrete threat by Israel to intervene militarily, accompanied by some strikes on Syrian targets, eventually led the Syrians to withdraw from Jordanian territory. This state of division, Israeli intelligence believed, would impede any thought of launching a war.
Sadat, a weak leader?
Israeli intelligence believed that Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who came to power after President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s sudden death, was a weak president who would not be able to exert leadership on his ministers. Israeli intelligence judged that Sadat only became president because powerful groups within the Egyptian leadership could not agree on who should take the lead, so they decided to nominate an intermediary to occupy the position until they could agree on a “real” leader.
Caught By Surprise All these considerations led the Israeli intelligence authorities to assess that Israel was far stronger than Egypt and that the Egyptians were aware of that reality. The rational conclusion therefore was that Egypt would not dare to get involved in a military confrontation with Israel. As already mentioned, eventually Israel learned that this assessment was not valid. Thus, when the war broke out, Israel was caught almost completely by surprise.
The U.S. administration was also caught by surprise on that very day. In his memoirs, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated that his assistant, Sisco, woke him up at 6:00 am that morning (12:00 pm Israel time) and told him that Israeli authorities had complete certainty that Egypt would launch an attack on Israel within a few hours. He was dumbfounded.
In his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on October 6, 1973, United States Ambassador to Israel Kenneth Keating essentially blamed Israel for failing to foresee the war. The initial U.S. assessment, he said, reflected a real panic at indications of the imminent war. However, U.S. officials approached high-ranking IDF officers who reassured the U.S. administration that there was no real reason to worry.
Later on, Ambassador Keating told Golda Meir, “we asked the Israelis if they knew of any ‘non-scheduled’ Soviet flights to Syria and Egypt’ — an event which raised our suspicions. Israel’s response was that it did know about them but was not clear about their purpose.”
Again, Keating said, we asked the Israelis: what were the goals of the Egyptian deployment along the canal? Israel replied: We know about the Egyptian deployment; we know it looks threatening. However, we estimate it is defensive in its character. We asked the same thing about Syria and got a similar response. We asked if they knew about the return of the Sukhoi bombers to the airfield north of Damascus. They confirmed the validity of this information but admitted they could not explain its meaning.
Keating’s report seems to imply that the tremendous reliance on Israel’s intelligence capabilities at that time led United States intelligence personnel to show complacency in the face of the rapidly approaching offensive. The State Department’s intelligence chief Ray S. Cline claimed during the war that “we were brainwashed by the Israelis, who brainwashed themselves.”
To understand why Israel was blindsided by Egypt’s surprise attack on October 6, 1973, requires a quick examination of the events leading up to this war, including the cementation of a status quo within Israel not only around its invincibility, but around the fact that Israel had to retain the territory it occupied in the Six-Day War at the cost of peace.
A few years earlier, in mid-May 1967, Egypt had begun concentrating massive military forces in the Sinai Peninsula. A short time later President Nasser announced that Egypt would block the passage of ships through the Straits of Tiran heading to the Port of Eilat in contravention of the rules of international law.
The Israeli government was stunned by those Egyptian moves. Nobody really knew the motives behind the massive deployment of the Egyptian troops and tanks in Sinai. The Egyptians could certainly estimate that Israel would not be able to tolerate these moves and might undertake military measures that could escalate into an all-out war.
The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Levy Eshkol, decided to exhaust diplomatic options in order to bring about a settlement that would prevent the outbreak of another Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. administration under President Lyndon Johnson was intensively involved in these efforts. However, it soon became clear that such efforts were fruitless and so Israel decided to go to war.
On June 5, 1967, Israel’s air force launched a preemptive strike against the air forces of Egypt and Syria. Later on, it attacked the Jordanian Air Force. In this attack, Israel managed to destroy large parts of the Egyptian and Syrian air capabilities. This attack was followed by an all-out military confrontation with the armies of those states.
After six days of fighting, a ceasefire was reached. The confrontation, which came to be known as the Six-Day War, dramatically changed Israel’s strategic status. Israel not only defeated the Arab armies but also occupied new territories: the West Bank, Sinai, and the Golan Heights. Israel’s status in the international community and the IDF’s distinction suddenly skyrocketed.
Following the war, the United States, with support from other states, carried out efforts to bring about an Israeli-Egyptian political settlement with different levels of intensity. All these efforts failed.
Following its great victory in the Six-Day War, Israel was highly confident that the occupied territories were a vital strategic asset for her. Therefore, it believed it should try to keep those territories under its control at least until a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and Egypt could be concluded. Israel’s leadership believed that due to its overwhelming superiority over the Arabs and its close ties with the United States, nobody—either by military or diplomatic means—would be able to force it out of the territories it had occupied in 1967.
Consequently, in the eyes of Kissinger, Israel actually adopted a strategy in which it was convinced that sustained control over the occupied territories would best serve its national interests. He believed that Israel should have known that this policy could not lead to peace with Egypt, which demanded complete withdrawal from the occupied territories.
Kissinger repeatedly stressed that Israel’s intransigent policy was based on overconfidence and underestimation of its adversaries’ abilities. Israel was certainly aware that in pursuing that policy it would block the conclusion of peace with its neighbors. Implicitly, Kissinger claimed, the expectations of Israel with regard to the pursuit of peace were higher than those applied to the Arab states. The United States was expecting Israel to do its utmost for the sake of peace. Israel, the United States administration believed, was far from standing by these expectations.
Kissinger recalled a meeting he had with Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban a few days before the outbreak of war to try and promote a peace process. According to Kissinger, Eban claimed that “there was no real need for a peace initiative…because the military situation was absolutely stable and could not be changed, and politically there was nothing to be gained by a peace initiative.” Kissinger said that he tried to persuade Eban of the necessity of a political solution but failed.
Indeed, most Israelis tended to accept the doctrine adopted by the majority of Israeli leaders—both left and right wing—that the extant status quo was the best option for Israel and that Israel would be ready to withdraw from occupied territories only in the context of a comprehensive peace agreement. Prime Minister Golda Meir was quoted as saying that “[if] we retreat an inch from the canal….[we] will in no time go back to the international border.”
Indeed, the new territories gave Israel significant strategic advantage over its enemies. The threat of an Arab military invasion into the populated centres of Israel, which was very real before the 1967 War, almost completely disappeared. In addition to this strategic advantage, the abilities of the IDF in terms of science, technology, and motivation gave Israelis reason to believe that there was a wide gap between the military capabilities of the Israeli and Arab armies.
Under these circumstances, there can be no doubt that Israel wanted to retain the occupied territories under its control. An advertisement plastered all over Israel before the October 30, 1973 election showed an Israeli soldier swimming in the Suez Canal, with the caption: “look at this, our position has never been better.” That was the crux of the Israeli position before the outbreak of the war.
U.S. Status Quo Policy Pre-1973 In our view, there is much validity to the claim that the United States supported the status quo policy of Israel at the time. In the period which preceded the Yom Kippur War, the Nixon administration tried to broker an Israeli-Egyptian peace settlement. However, the United States soon realized that the gaps between the parties were huge and unbridgeable.
The only way to overcome these gaps was through exerting pressure on the parties to moderate their positions and show willingness to make concessions. Since the United States’ leverage over Egypt at that time was limited, the only remaining option was to exert pressure on Israel.
Various considerations led the Nixon administration to refrain from exerting significant pressure on Israel, thus enabling Israel to maintain its status quo strategy. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan stated in his autobiography that the “United States failed to engage in intensive diplomatic activity during the decisive years of 1972-73 when the Arab military build-up reached its peak.”
What considerations led the United States to adopt Israel’s policy?
Israel’s formidability and making the first move
Compared to the rest of the region, Israel was a strong state with a powerful military and advanced scientific-technological capabilities. In a meeting between President Nixon and Golda Meir on March 1, 1973, a few months before the outbreak of the war, Nixon said, “You are in a strong position — you can take care of yourself.”
Although formally the U.S. administration made clear its expectations that Israel would show readiness to withdraw from territories, there seems to have been an understanding in the administration that a state with such formidable capabilities could not be expected to make concessions to its rather weak enemies.
Furthermore, the administration realized that Israel’s strength would eventually enhance the United States’ position in the Arab World. The Arabs would discern that only the United States could bring Israel to make concessions, which is why they later showed an inclination to promote their relations with the United States. President Nixon reflected this assessment in his saying to Prime Minister Meir: “You are so strong that Egypt is coming to us.”
U.S. could not go against Golda Meir
The United States was well aware that Israel had a very powerful and stubborn leader. Golda Meir was an authoritative figure who faced no real opposition within the government. Ministers admitted they were afraid to adopt views that were not identical to hers. Golda Meir was very popular with the Israeli public. This certainly led the administration to believe that exerting pressure on her would not be effective. Rather, it would be better to carry out a dialogue with her that might eventually lead to an understanding.
Finally, it should be stressed that Meir adopted a sophisticated formula with regard to a possible settlement. She never opposed the option of withdrawal from the occupied territories. However, she made it clear this would only take place in the framework of direct dialogue with Egypt leading to a comprehensive peace agreement. The administration found it difficult to oppose such a formula. Egypt, at the time, was not willing to go so far as to establish a thorough peace settlement with Israel. Moreover, the United States’ leverage over Egypt was limited. Thus, in practice, the U.S. ability to impose on Israel a withdrawal from territories was not high.
These factors eventually led the Nixon administration to adopt a strategy that was inclined to support Israel’s aspiration to maintain the status quo as long as there was no dramatic change in the Egyptian attitude toward Israel. In an interview with the press, Israel’s ambassador to the United States Simcha Dinitz, just two weeks before the outbreak of the war, outlined the following main principles guiding U.S. policy towards Israel:
The United States is committed to ensuring Israel’s military superiority over its enemies. This will guarantee a high level of deterrence which will likely prevent the outbreak of war.
The United States does not believe in an imposed settlement on the parties to the conflict in the Middle East. The settlement should be agreed upon by the partners in the conflict through intensive dialogue.
The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the U.S. administration adopted de facto the “status quo vision” which was a central pillar of the strategy of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan in the period preceding the Yom Kippur War. Kissinger himself admitted that the administration did not act decisively to change the status quo created after the Six-Day War: “Before the war,” Kissinger said in a meeting with congressional leaders, “Israel thought that any war conflict would be similar to what happened in the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel thought it was in the best position it could be. There was no real pressure on them to change their positions.”
Kissinger’s conversation with then-Ambassador to the United States Yitzhak Rabin gave unequivocal evidence of the policy of the American administration under Nixon and his Secretary of State Kissinger to maintain the existing status quo. In response to Ambassador Rabin’s assertion that the situation in the Middle East was “fine,” Kissinger clarified that “the stability that has existed in the Middle East over the past year is based on our ability to create the illusion that we will do something [to advance a political settlement] when we all know that nothing has been done. That’s been my strategy since 1969.”
The author wishes to thank Zhanyang Liu, Alexander Price, and Sophia Schmidt for research support for this article.
United States Diplomacy and the 1973 War
The 1973 Arab-Israeli War ushered in a period of active American diplomacy that contributed to two Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreements, one Syrian-Israeli disengagement agreement, and, several years later, the Camp David Accords and the Egypt-Israel Treaty of Peace. The successes of the American efforts masked a number of significant weaknesses in concept, strategy, and tactics that would plague U.S. diplomacy in the decades that followed.
The story of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be told through “before and after” narratives of critical inflection points. The period after World War I—which witnessed the adoption of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine—was unlike anything that preceded the Great War. The period after the 1948 war—Israel’s war of independence and Palestine’s nakba—upturned history and took the central characters of that era in an entirely different direction from what preceded. The same can be said for the June 1967 war.
In many respects, the “before and after” history of the 1973 War was different, for it involved reshaping not only the trajectories of Israeli and Egyptian politics (and, to some extent, Syrian politics as well), but it also had a monumental impact on American diplomacy, launching a period of U.S. diplomatic activity that lasted forty years. In today’s environment, in which many analysts believe the United States has “pivoted” away from the Middle East in general and from the Arab-Israeli conflict resolution process in particular, it is worth reflecting on the profound changes that were brought about by the 1973 War.
Before the 1967 War The “before” with respect to the United States had its beginnings in the days after the ceasefire in June 1967. From 1948 until 1967, the United States was relatively uninterested in the deepening conflict between Israel and the Arab states. The United States also paid little attention to the plight of the Palestinians, who had receded from the center of regional affairs. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations suggested various schemes for repatriating a limited number of Palestinian refugees, but these ideas went nowhere.
For the United States, the 1956 Suez War was a two-fold distraction. The British-French-Israeli war was launched at the same time as the Hungarian uprising, which the U.S. administration hoped would be the beginning of the unraveling of the Soviet bloc. The war also started just days before presidential elections in the United States, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower was least interested in dealing with another international crisis.
That said, the war led to the Eisenhower Doctrine, an important element of Eisenhower’s approach to global affairs that stipulated a country could request U.S. economic or military assistance if it was threatened by aggression from another state. But the Doctrine had nothing to say about the Arab-Israeli conflict, focusing instead on regional security from the threat posed by Soviet expansion. The first test of the Doctrine came in 1958 when American forces intervened in Lebanon in response to the threat posed to a moderate regime by what was perceived as Soviet-backed radicals. Yet, other challenges in the region which did not involve the perception of a Soviet threat—for example, the Baathist revolution in Iraq and the challenge to the Jordanian monarchy by elements encouraged by Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser—went largely unheeded by the Eisenhower administration.
To be sure, Eisenhower twice dipped his toe into Arab-Israel affairs, but never jumped in all the way. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles traveled to the region carrying some ideas for advancing the prospects for peace, an effort that lingered for a bit without any success. And Eisenhower dispatched a water expert to assess whether an agreement on water sharing could serve as a basis for regional cooperation. Interestingly, that effort also failed formally, although Israel and Jordan essentially abided by the U.S.-proposed water-sharing arrangements in the decades that followed.
After the 1967 War The change in America’s attitude, modest at first, was triggered by Israel’s overwhelming victory in 1967, defeating the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. President Lyndon B. Johnson reasoned that Israel could be induced to come to the bargaining table now that it enjoyed a position of unrivaled strength; and that the Arab states might negotiate in light of their demonstrated inability to destroy Israel by force. Johnson delivered a major speech just two weeks after the war in which he articulated five principles on which a peace settlement could be based. Five months later, these principles were enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was to become the basis for all peacemaking efforts that followed.
Following the adoption of Resolution 242, the Johnson administration gave way to the United Nations to try and activate a peace process. Little progress was made, however, leading President Nixon’s Secretary of State William Rogers to try his hand at peacemaking in 1969, when he unveiled an outline for a comprehensive settlement. Both Israel and Egypt rejected the Rogers Plan, not only because of faults they found with it, but also due to the behind-the-scenes sabotage of the plan by Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Eschewing a comprehensive approach and uninterested in dealing with the conflict, Kissinger back-channeled the parties and said Nixon did not stand behind Rogers’ effort.
Part of Kissinger’s motivation derived from the myriad global challenges with which the Nixon administration was coping. The Vietnam war was raging, Nixon and Kissinger were interested in an opening to China, the seeds were being planted for détente with Russia, and Palestinian terrorism was grabbing headlines at the 1972 Olympics and in air hijackings. It was also the time when the Watergate crisis was about to unfold, leading to a drawn-out process that consumed Nixon and his presidency and left much of foreign policy in Kissinger’s hands.
Even before Watergate, in 1969, Nixon had an idea for dealing with complex crises in regions where U.S. power was being stretched. On a visit to Asia, in the context of the Vietnamization of the drawn-out war in Southeast Asia, Nixon articulated what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, seen as a means of outsourcing some American security responsibilities to local allies. In the Middle East, this role went to Iran and Israel. The effect of the Nixon Doctrine was to thin out the American presence and over time to diminish American experience and expertise in this area. The Iranians and the Israelis were expected to represent American interests—as well as their own—in the Middle East.
The War of Attrition: Kissinger’s Errors The Egyptian-Israeli “war of attrition” between 1967 and 1970 engaged the superpowers and America’s attention. Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser appealed to the Soviet Union for advanced fighter jets, flown by Soviet pilots, to deal with Israel’s long-range bombing campaign undertaken in response to Egyptian artillery shelling of Israeli forces in Sinai. Israeli and Soviet jets tangled in the spring and summer of 1970, leading Secretary of State Rogers to negotiate a ceasefire that August. At about the same time, civil war erupted in Jordan after King Hussein clamped down on Palestinian terrorist groups that had hijacked international airliners and had them land on Jordanian soil. Kissinger made his first foray into Middle East diplomacy, trying to end the fighting before Syria could intervene against King Hussein. Nasser also worked to stop the fighting, and fatigued from the war of attrition with Israel and from his effort to mediate an end to the civil war in Jordan, died in September 1970. Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s vice president, succeeded Nasser, but everyone assessed him as weak and unlikely to last in power very long. With the immediate crisis having been solved, American attention turned away from the Arab-Israeli arena.
Kissinger was later to admit that he had underestimated Sadat, even after Sadat repulsed an effort in May 1971 to unseat him by allies of Nasser. Nixon and Kissinger did take notice when Sadat expelled most of the Soviet advisers in July 1972, and they opened a backchannel to Sadat via Egypt’s national security adviser Hafez Ismail. While Nixon was consumed with re-election politics, he was also worried about a blow-up in the Middle East. On the other hand, Kissinger was less concerned, and his two secret meetings with Ismail in 1973 led nowhere. As he was to say later, he only dealt with crises when they were hot, and in the aftermath of Sadat’s becoming president, the Arab-Israeli crisis did not appear hot.
Kissinger’s coolness toward Sadat’s initiative was supported by Israel at the time. Mordechai Gazit, a respected Israeli diplomat, analyzed Sadat’s moves after the fact and concluded that they were not to be taken seriously. It is nonetheless hard to understand just how dismissive the United States was—as well as Israel—of Sadat’s insistence that the Israeli occupation of Egyptian territory was unacceptable. Americans and others dismissed Sadat’s rhetoric that 1971 was the “year of decision,” and when 1971 came and went, it was easy to forget that the occupation remained.
It is also hard to understand how Kissinger and Israel either misunderstood or affirmatively dismissed the range of strategic changes that Sadat was instituting at the time in Egypt’s domestic and foreign policies. In addition to his insistence that the occupation of Sinai could not stand and that he was interested in a process of peacemaking, Sadat also began effecting changes in Egypt’s economy, moving away from Nasser’s disastrous “Arab socialism” to a more market-based system which he called the “infitah”, or opening.
And yet, despite all this, and because of everything else that was happening at the time, it is possible to excuse the strategic errors of Kissinger before the 1973 War. What is curious, however, was the diplomatic path chosen by Kissinger after the war.
Kissinger Comes Around A short digression: Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser in the Nixon and Ford administrations, is portrayed accurately in academic literature as a brilliant master strategist and consummate diplomat. His legacy, however, remains a source of significant disagreement among historians. Some highlight his successes with the opening of U.S.–China relations, détente with the Soviet Union, and a hard-fought end of the Vietnam War. Other, less favorable, assessments attribute to him mistakes in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent that contributed to tens of thousands of deaths. Most assessments agree that a high point of his diplomatic acrobatics was his diplomacy after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that resulted in convening the Geneva peace conference, two disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt, and a disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria.
Kissinger’s achievements are, in some respects, unique and magisterial. He brought to Washington a deep and penetrating understanding of history, in particular the statecraft and dynamics of European diplomats and their balance of power diplomacy. In the Middle East, the diplomatic agreements he shepherded paved the way for the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, a monumental achievement by Sadat, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and President Jimmy Carter that reshaped the Middle East for decades to come.
Any evaluation and critique of Kissinger’s diplomacy needs to consider this vast literature regarding his statecraft. Kissinger’s achievements in the Arab-Israel arena, however, are more nuanced and less certain, with several significant questions regarding judgment, timing, strategy, and tactics that would plague American diplomacy in the decades that followed.
Between 1948 and 1967, the Arab-Israeli conflict was largely defined by Arab rejection of Israel’s existence and what the Arabs saw as the injustice suffered by the Palestinians. Following the 1967 War, however, two factors changed that. First and most importantly, the war ended with Israel occupying significant territories previously governed by Arab states. Second, the Palestinians reasserted themselves in the conflict, after almost two decades of Arab state dominance, by engaging in spectacular acts of terrorism and insisting on international recognition. For Egypt and Syria, though continuing to pay lip service to the Palestinian cause, the central element of their interests became Israel’s occupation of the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip remained on the Arab state agenda but with far less centrality.
U.S. diplomats understood the Arab concern over the occupation of their territories, but American diplomacy did not focus on this underlying cause of the perpetuation of the interstate conflict. As noted above, Kissinger dismissed Rogers’ peace plan that called for Israeli withdrawal; he paid little attention to Sadat’s initiative before the 1973 War; and, after the war, he rejected the idea of a comprehensive settlement in favor of a step-by-step, incremental approach. It took the onset of the war itself to shake Kissinger into action, but even then, his diplomacy undervalued the significance of continued Israeli occupation of Arab lands.
After the 1973 War, Kissinger assessed that Israel was not ready for a comprehensive settlement with Egypt. The step-by-step approach adopted by Kissinger met the needs of the Israeli government, but was greeted less enthusiastically by Sadat. The situation in Egypt after the war was not favorable, as the economy was in crisis, and Egypt had no benefactor, with Sadat having ousted the Soviet military before the war. Sadat wanted peace immediately as a means of unlocking the relationship with the United States. Kissinger moved slowly but persistently over many weeks in a process designed to help the Israeli government cope more easily with the required concessions.
The United States and the parties remained committed to an incremental approach for almost two decades after Kissinger introduced it during the disengagement negotiations following the October War. The Reagan Plan in 1982 tried to outline the contours of a final settlement, but it was rejected out of hand by Israel and garnered no support from the Palestinians. The 1988 Shultz Plan focused more on process and laid out some of the building blocks of what became the Madrid peace conference in 1991. Even the Oslo Accords, negotiated bilaterally between the Israelis and the Palestinians, centered on a five-year interim agreement that was supposed to lead to a final agreement by 1999. However, the accords provided no hint of what a final agreement might look like. In the years after Oslo, some Israeli and Palestinian negotiators lamented the absence in the accords of a final-status vision of two states.
There is also the question of whether the diplomacy after the 1973 War reflected a missed opportunity. Jordan did not join that war, but reportedly expressed interest in getting involved in the diplomatic process. Kissinger briefly examined the possibility of a Jordanian-Israeli interim agreement, but the gaps were too large: King Hussein wanted a 10-mile Israeli pullback from the Jordan River, while Yitzhak Rabin said Israel would hold the Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem, and Jordan could “administer” the populated parts of the West Bank.
But Kissinger was uninterested, focusing on the Egypt and Syria disengagement negotiations. Did Kissinger err in not focusing more on Jordan and the Palestinian issue? He clearly had his eye on the two Arab regional powers, Syria and Egypt, and probably believed that adding Jordan and the Palestinians to the mix would overload the political circuits in Israel. Kissinger also may have been concerned that Jordan’s interest in the West Bank and Jerusalem alone would have driven Israel from the table. At the time, there was no Palestinian track, and there is little reason to believe that outreach to the Palestinians would have made sense.
This question of Israel’s occupation of Arab territory has remained front and center ever since Kissinger’s diplomacy. But American diplomatic efforts have not made enough strides to advance a comprehensive settlement. The most recent U.S. proposal on the Palestinian track—the so-called “vision of peace” put forward by President Donald Trump—chopped up the West Bank into Palestinian sovereign cantons and ignored the negotiating history since the 1991 Madrid peace conference. Since Madrid, the parties had come close to accepting the 1967 line as the reference point for the future border between Israel and a Palestinian state, with swapped lands to account for several large Israeli settlement blocs. Trump also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The Biden administration has not reversed the Golan Heights decision and has not advanced a formal proposal to replace the Trump “vision” of peace. Perhaps most importantly, the United States has done almost nothing over the years to stop the advance of Israeli settlements, whose purpose is to assert control over all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. American policymakers have not understood a simple reality with which the peace process must deal—it is the occupation.
Looking Back, Looking Ahead Writing during a period of minimal U.S. activity in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, it is easy to forget how engaged U.S. administrations were in the years after the 1973 War, but also how few promising moments resulted from American diplomacy. Even if the United States only rarely initiated a successful peace breakthrough, the most important advances in the peace process would have been impossible without active American engagement. Indeed, even when U.S. strategy or tactics did not succeed, they often stimulated movement within the region that paid dividends later. Carter’s initial preference for a U.S.-Soviet-led process stimulated Sadat to take control, and he found a willing partner in Begin. Shultz’s abortive peace plan created the groundwork for the breakthroughs at Madrid. The Camp David summit and Clinton’s parameters, far from succeeding at the time, created the conditions for peace negotiations for the decade and a half that followed.
The key issue, then, is not the brilliance of the plan or the strategy or the tactics, but rather the willingness of the leaders to invest in the effort to advance peace. If determined leaders start the engine of peacemaking, the exact route followed in the negotiations is less important than the willingness of those leaders to stay the course, adjust speed and direction, and push back against opponents and spoilers. Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker launched his pre-Madrid diplomacy without a clear sense of where it should end, but he was determined to succeed, refusing to take no for an answer. He navigated a course between the rejectionist tendencies of Palestinian and Israeli leaders, one that would have been unthinkable without determined American leadership and staying power. Of the many lessons to be learned from the diplomacy that followed the 1973 War, this may be the most critical and far-reaching.
We Downplayed the Signs of Peace, Then Downplayed the Signs of War
By Yossi Alpher
The October War came as a shock to the Israeli leadership and security community. Their failure to take Sadat’s peace approaches and the imminent threat of war seriously led to changes to both the regional and domestic Israeli political landscapes
From an Israeli standpoint, the 1973 October War can be understood through several parallel narratives. Following the wars of 1948 and 1967, it was the last all-out clash between Israel and a coalition of Arab states. It represented a horrendous intelligence, logistic, and diplomatic miscalculation on Israel’s part, resulting in extensive loss of life and unparalleled national trauma.
For a few critical days early in the war, Israel collectively feared for its future. Senior generals were contemplating “the destruction of the Third Temple”—Moshe Dayan’s phrase that echoed the destruction in ancient times of the first and second temples, ending earlier episodes of sovereignty for Israel and Judea. That trauma in turn ushered in dramatic domestic political change—the advent to national leadership of the Likud—that prevails to this day.
Nowadays, Israelis are intensely aware of the fifty-year commemoration of the war. Its devastating intelligence failure resonates at a time when, in the view of many, the current government is ignoring warnings that it is leading the country down an anti-democratic path that threatens to weaken the entire security community and invite enemy aggression.
The October War (for Israelis, the Yom Kippur War) and the peace process that followed were key steps on Israel’s road to expanded regional and global relations. That road began with Egypt, then expanded, as an indirect but vital by-product, to a host of additional Arab countries and major powers like Russia, China, and India.
The peace with Egypt represented for Israel the abandonment, for the first time since 1948, of the perception of an “existential threat” posed by virtually the entire Arab World. Today this sense of relief is increasingly compromised by Iranian and Islamist threats to Israel’s existence, coupled with concern in many quarters that the absence of a solution to the Palestinian issue is leading Israel and Palestine toward a violent, conflicted one-state reality.
I served in the Israeli intelligence community from 1965 to 1981, the years that preceded and followed the October War. I will discuss the pre-war period when the Israeli leadership foolishly ignored or belittled Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s peace feelers while Israeli intelligence, paralleled by the leadership, missed or dismissed the signs of war. This will be followed by a look at the post-war period, when secret diplomacy produced the November 1977 Sadat trip to Jerusalem and the subsequent peace. The great powers of the day, the United States and the Soviet Union, are present throughout—at times unhelpfully.
Intelligence Failure For most Israelis, the October War constituted a jarring and painful awakening from the hubris that pervaded society in the aftermath of the 1967 victory. Back then, a disparaging undertone infected the way Israel looked at Arabs in general. “Why would Egypt and Syria start another war? We’ll break their bones” was the overwhelming sentiment among the public, the Israel security community, and the political echelon prior to October 6.
After all, since 1967 Israel had strategic depth: the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. It was certain that it could win any war and conquer even more Arab territory. Head of Intelligence of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Eli Zeira spoke of “low probability of war” right up until the war began, at 14:00 on October 6.
Israeli military intelligence, with its monopoly on the early warning and assessment processes within the Israeli system, contributed to the pre-1973 euphoria of ignorance. The IDF’s Egypt experts were openly disdainful of the Mossad’s human sources, including the now renowned Ashraf Marwan—the debate regarding whether he was a double agent or the greatest spy of his day continues to this day in Israel, at times acrimoniously—but also additional well-placed agents in key Arab countries. When in September of 1973 King Hussein of Jordan traveled to Israel to warn the leadership of the impending war, IDF intelligence for the most part doubted him, too.
Furthermore, IDF intelligence fell victim to its own conception which held that Egypt would not cross the Suez Canal without first attaining air superiority, which it was understood to lack. IDF intelligence dangerously underestimated existing Egyptian air defense and anti-tank missile capabilities. Accordingly, an Arab attack was deemed unlikely and in a worst-case scenario could be rebuffed within days.
The additional signs of impending war that the IDF contrived to ignore make, in retrospect, for painful recollection for members of the security community. Those include the Egyptian and Syrian military buildups virtually under our noses, and the hasty Soviet evacuation from Egypt and Syria of advisers and their families, among other things.
This experience of wholesale intelligence early-warning failure generated, in Israel’s post-war stocktaking, far-reaching reforms. The Mossad and foreign ministry would be enjoined to develop intelligence analysis units in the spirit of pluralism; IDF military intelligence would create a function dedicated specifically to challenging accepted assessments or “conceptions”. Prime ministers would be exposed not only to refined intelligence assessments but also to raw intelligence such as intercepts and human intelligence reports.
These reforms overall have been useful. However, the late-1987 outbreak of the First Intifada, for example, was still a total intelligence surprise.
Miscalculated Diplomacy and Intelligence Prior to the 1973 War, U.S. National Security Adviser—soon to become secretary of state as well—Henry Kissinger had tried to generate a bilateral peace process between Egypt and Israel. He met with a high-level Egyptian emissary, national security adviser Mohammed Hafez Ismail, and transmitted President Anwar Sadat’s proposals to Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.
Kissinger’s mediation effort failed, a failure that would contribute directly to the October War. For one, it was not entirely clear to Meir and Dayan whether Sadat was offering, via a third party and without direct negotiations, full peace or only non-belligerency in return for all of the Sinai Peninsula that Israel had occupied in 1967.
Regardless, that was not the main issue. Whether or not Sadat was then sincere about offering genuine peace in return for all of Sinai, Meir and Dayan clearly were not prepared to accept such a deal. Prior to October 1973, they were still too immersed in the euphoria of the 1967 victory to consider it. Dayan’s hubris led him to make public statements like “Better Sharm [al-Shaykh] than shalom (peace)”. Under his security stewardship, readiness for war—operationally and logistically—declined.
In February 1972, Israel was considering offering Egypt, via Kissinger, far less: an interim arrangement comprising a non-belligerency pact and a limited withdrawal from the Suez Canal sufficient to enable Egypt to reopen it for global maritime traffic. On the other hand, Meir reportedly sent via international emissaries a number of offers to Sadat, to which he did not respond. These offers included undertaking secret, bilateral and unconditional peace negotiations face-to-face—the consistent Israeli position toward all its neighbors.
With elections scheduled for late 1973, Meir and Dayan told Kissinger they would entertain the Egyptian proposals only after getting a renewed mandate for their Labor party from the Israeli public, at which point they could examine the possibility of concessions to Egypt without incurring political risk. Kissinger agreed, but extracted from the Israelis—following a May 1973 false alarm in Israel regarding an Egyptian attack—a commitment not to preempt a war and not to contribute to any escalatory process in the meanwhile.
This exchange with Kissinger presumably helped persuade Israeli leaders that a peace process with Egypt, rather than war, was in the offing, thereby further lulling them to the signs of an Egyptian-Syrian attack. In this sense, one could argue that Israel’s failure to anticipate war constituted a lapse of diplomacy as well as an intelligence fiasco.
Kissinger and Israel’s Responses After the War Then, immediately following the devastation and loss of October 1973, and having won a narrow electoral victory before the Israeli political process could fully absorb the import of the war, Meir and Dayan again postponed a diplomatic process with Egypt via Kissinger. They were too concerned about their political futures and too preoccupied with the commission of inquiry that had been set up to examine the reasons for the “October surprise”.
Kissinger was also resented by the Israeli leadership for ostensibly delaying U.S. emergency arms shipments to Israel to replace initial huge ordnance losses when absorbing the brunt of the Egyptian-Syrian two-front attack in the first half of October. This, it was alleged in some Israeli quarters, was intended to ensure a sufficiently devastating war for Israel to persuade it to enter post-war peace talks—a charge Kissinger has consistently denied.
The dissonance between the effort invested by Israel in retaking the combat initiative from mid-October and bringing the war deep into Egyptian territory on the one hand, and the lingering sense that the U.S. secretary of state was manipulating events at a huge cost in Israeli losses on the other hand, was palpable to the public. Kissinger again pressured Israel after the war, when separation of forces agreements with Egypt and Syria were being negotiated, by invoking “reassessment” and delaying arms shipments.
Yet, to Kissinger’s great credit, the October 28 post-war kilometer 101 talks, followed by separation of forces agreements, constituted the true beginning of an Israel-Arab peace process that continues to this day. Like so many issues surrounding this war, Kissinger’s role cannot be painted only in black and white.
The Road to a Peace Agreement Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister and minister of defense in 1975, thereby replacing both Meir and Dayan. Prior to October 1973, as Israel’s ambassador in Washington, he had served as a conduit for the Kissinger-Ismail-Israel contacts. Now he entered into secret peace negotiations with Sadat’s representative, Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Hassan Tuhami. The talks were held in Morocco, which had good relations with Egypt and a solid clandestine relationship, managed by the Mossad, with Israel.
In May 1977, Menachem Begin and the Likud were elected to lead Israel. Begin appointed Dayan his foreign minister. Together, they took over the secret track from Rabin. Like Rabin before him, Dayan, too, made at least one secret trip to Morocco to meet with Tuhami and advance the negotiations with Egypt, donning a fedora and removing his signature eye patch. Rabin had worn a blond wig. They both succeeded in traveling incognito, courtesy of the Mossad. Additional communications were passed between Egypt and Israel through the good offices of the Shah of Iran and President Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Jimmy Carter had been elected president and took office in January 1977. His approach to peacemaking in the Middle East was different from Kissinger’s. Rather than trying to advance bilateral Egyptian-Israeli negotiations, Carter wanted to convene a major international conference in Geneva, Switzerland, where Israel and all its Arab enemies would be seated around the table, along with the United States and the Soviet Union.
Confronted with Carter’s concept, neither Egypt nor Israel confided fully in Washington regarding their secret Moroccan peace discussions. Egypt had left the Soviet bloc and wanted a strategic relationship with the United States. Israel, too, saw the Soviets as an impediment to peace, at Geneva or elsewhere. Moreover, both Egypt and Israel viewed the presence of other hostile Arab states such as Syria and Iraq, as well as the PLO, at a Geneva roundtable as a potentially dangerous complication to their discreet attempt to reach a bilateral peace.
The notion of an “international solution” to the Arab-Israel conflict had a long history prior to 1977, generally involving the United Nations. Israel’s boundaries with the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to this day armistice lines negotiated at Lausanne under UN auspices in 1948-49. The Geneva conference idea adopted by Carter was born after the 1967 Six-Day War. A Swedish diplomat, Gunnar Jarring, served between 1967 and 1973 as UN special envoy charged with implementing UNSC Resolution 242 and developing a formula for a multilateral international approach to Israel-Arab peace.
Israel was almost pathologically suspicious of an initiative in which the USSR and the United States would compel it to withdraw from the territories conquered in 1967 without genuine peace with the Arabs and without adequate security guarantees. In general, it recalled with anxiety and disappointment its experiences with multilateral UN initiatives and UN peacekeeping forces following the wars of 1948-49 and 1956.
Moreover, the Soviet Union was in Israeli eyes nothing less than an enemy. On July 30, 1970, Israeli Air Force combat aircrafts had shot down five Soviet MiG-21s in a dogfight over the Suez Canal. That clash, with its successful outcome from Israel’s standpoint, was kept secret for months by Israel for fear lest publicity catalyze intimidation by Moscow. Indeed, one of the scenarios contemplated with trepidation at the time in Israeli security circles was the “Finlandization” of Israel.
In the event, the Soviet military presence along the Suez Canal, both air and ground forces, ended shortly after the dogfight. So did the Egypt–IsraelI War of Attrition. Subsequently, Israel was more than happy to see Jarring—who incidentally was then also Sweden’s ambassador to the USSR—fail.
Israeli-American tensions over Carter’s Geneva initiative peaked in early October 1977. The US and the USSR issued a joint statement that appeared to Begin and Dayan to present Israel with a fait accompli. The Soviets and Americans would consult regarding the details of a new Middle East peace process, with PLO participation, to be dictated at Geneva. Dayan traveled to the United States in October 1977 to lobby Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance against a Geneva conference. He recruited the American Jewish lobby, which had helped get Carter elected, to support the Israeli position.
Dayan insisted that a separate Egyptian-Israeli track was preferable and possible. His official American interlocutors thought he was fantasizing, but agreed to back down temporarily.
This was the backdrop to Sadat’s surprise announcement on November 9, in which he was inviting himself to Jerusalem to speak before the Knesset and make peace. Now, not only Begin and Dayan but Sadat as well were undermining Carter’s Geneva initiative. On the other hand, one could argue that great power pressure to submit to a Geneva summit had perhaps forced Sadat’s hand.
Sadat’s dramatic visit to Israel, beginning November 19, was a masterstroke. By telling Israelis “we were wrong to reject you,” he converted Israeli public opinion overnight from Dayan’s “better Sharm than shalom” mantra to a readiness to withdraw from Sinai in return for peace. But he apparently had not worked out all the details. When he returned to Egypt on November 23 after a successful Israel visit, it was not clear precisely how the now overt Egypt-Israel peace process would play out.
Within days, Sadat proposed to Begin, presumably through the Moroccan channel that the Israeli prime minister place an “American” in the U.S. embassy in Cairo. I was informed by Head of Mossad Yitzhak Hofi late on the night of November 30 that I had been selected to carry out that mission. I would for all intents and purposes be seen as an American, my Israeli identity known only to the U.S. ambassador and to Sadat. I would liaise between Sadat and Begin.
Note that Egypt and Israel were still officially at war, and that varying degrees of anger at Sadat over his peace move were brewing both in Egypt and throughout the Arab World. What exactly I could do at the United States’ Cairo embassy to further the peace was not entirely clear and was ultimately irrelevant; the simple fact of my presence there under U.S. auspices was all Sadat needed. After all, American agreement to and connivance in my mission would mean, effectively, that Carter was abandoning his Geneva multilateral initiative and endorsing what both Sadat and Begin wanted: a bilateral peace track sponsored solely by the United States.
Yet, by December 1, a day after my late-night talk with Hofi, the Carter administration had offered only the faintest blessing even for Sadat’s visit, which had concluded eight days earlier, much less for a bilateral Egypt-Israel peace process. The Americans were focused on Geneva and had been caught completely off guard. They proceeded to deal with the Sadat initiative, however briefly, with monumental ignorance.
As Carter’s Middle East adviser William B. Quandt wrote in his 1993 book Peace Process, “on November 9, when Sadat publicly revealed his intention to go to Israel, Washington was caught by surprise […] there was some concern that negative Arab reactions, coupled with Begin’s essential rigidity on the Palestinian issue, would cause the initiative to fall […] short.”
Needless to say, negative Arab reactions, the Palestinian issue, and the Soviet position were precisely the reasons why Israel and Egypt had decided to go it alone. “It took some weeks,” Quandt concludes diplomatically, “for American officials to correctly assess Sadat’s reasons for going to Jerusalem.”
Small wonder, then, that Carter refused Sadat’s request to connive in the posting of an Israeli to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. In any case, had I been posted there, my stay would have been short. The Americans came around in late December by sponsoring a face-saving roundtable at Ismailia in Egypt. The bilateral peace process was launched, and Israelis began traveling openly to Egypt. Carter made amends for his initial opposition to an Egyptian-Israeli bilateral peace by contributing at Camp David in 1978 to bridging the stubborn gaps still separating Begin and Sadat.
Israeli Presence in Africa Sadat had masterminded the October War and choreographed Egypt’s role in the subsequent disengagement process. He had managed the Soviet departure and welcomed the Americans. He needed to outflank and neutralize Carter’s Geneva initiative, to negotiate with Begin and Dayan, and to ensure a bilateral Egypt-Israel peace process that would cement an Egyptian-American strategic relationship. He was prepared to lose Arab support temporarily.
Were other regional factors at work here as well? In retrospect, it would appear that in the heart of Africa to Egypt’s south, where Cairo was being outflanked strategically, Sadat had yet another rationale for seeking peace—this one linked directly to Israel.
Since the 1950s, Israel’s “periphery doctrine” had enabled it to develop a foothold in African countries south of Egypt, in addition to embracing Iran and Turkey on the Arab World’s eastern and northern borders. The strategic outflanking operation to Egypt’s south was intended, inter alia, to signal to Cairo that it could not isolate Israel and ultimately would have to deal with it diplomatically rather than militarily.
Three Israeli periphery operations, in particular, had alerted Egypt that Israel was able to operate militarily at or near the sources of the Nile River, Egypt’s existential lifeline. One was prolonged military assistance to Ethiopia, source of the Blue Nile. A second operation, assistance to the South Sudanese Anya Nya movement fighting for independence from the Khartoum government during the late 1960s to early 1970s, placed Israeli military advisers on the shores of the White Nile in southern Sudan, deep to Egypt’s south.
Perhaps most impressive was the Entebbe rescue operation of July 4, 1976. An Air France aircraft carrying 248 passengers had been hijacked to Uganda by terrorists from Waddie Haddad’s breakaway branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with the radical German Revolutionary Cells. Uganda and Libya collaborated with the terrorists. In a spectacular move, the Israel Air Force and Israeli commandos rescued the hostages with minimal losses after landing stealthily at Entebbe, Uganda, near the very source of the White Nile.
Both operationally and in terms of intelligence capabilities and clandestine contacts, the Israeli outflanking presence deep in Egypt’s African strategic depth appears to have been a constant preoccupation of Egyptian strategic thinkers. It seems that the Entebbe Operation genuinely shocked them. To what extent this may have influenced Sadat’s post-October War peace initiative scarcely a year later might be an interesting topic for Egyptian scholars to research.
An Eagle’s Eye View of the October War From Israel’s standpoint, the October War with its devastating losses and trauma was a consequence of tragic mistakes made by its democratically elected leaders and its military. Ultimately, the Israeli “system” dealt successfully with the war’s aftermath, thus launching—not without painful fits and starts—an era of peace between Israel and a growing number of its Arab neighbors that prevails to this day.
For roughly thirty years, Egypt had been Israel’s principal enemy. It was responsible for most of Israel’s wartime casualties, leading the Arab anti-Israel wartime alliances. Between 1973 and 1977, this reality changed dramatically.
It must be noted that the era of great Middle East leaders like Sadat, Begin, and Rabin appears to be over. The region, like much of the rest of the world, no longer seems to produce outstanding national leadership. Ultimately, a leadership deficit has strategic consequences.
Delivering the Palestinians to Israel: The Lasting Effects of the 1973 War on the Palestinian Question
While the June Six-Day War in 1967 is widely regarded as the seminal event in Arab-Israeli geopolitics and diplomacy, the effects of the October War of 1973 have been equally, if not more critical, in shaping the post-1967 political and diplomatic order. The period following the 1973 War remains perhaps the most dynamic and formative in shaping Arab-Israeli peacemaking and U.S. and Palestinian official postures toward one another over the next half century. Almost every aspect of the contemporary Middle East peace process and U.S.-Palestinian relations can be traced to the critical months and years immediately following the 1973 War.
It was only after the 1973 War that the United States, with all its political and ideological idiosyncrasies, emerged as the undisputed leader of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Moreover, the policies and priorities put in place by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—seen as both the architect of the Middle East peace process and the godfather of U.S.-Palestinian policy—would go on to shape Arab-Israeli peacemaking for most of the next half century. These included the preference for a piecemeal peace process over comprehensive settlement negotiations, reliance on American and Israeli preeminence, and, most importantly, the strategic downgrading of the Palestinian issue. The 1973 War also marked a decisive shift in the diplomatic strategy of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In the wake of the war, PLO leaders came to the stark conclusion that the road to Palestinian statehood ran exclusively through Washington, even as U.S. officials sought to exclude Palestinians from the diplomatic process in the decades that followed.
These same basic dynamics persisted even after the PLO joined the peace process in 1993, whereby the Palestinians were granted a conditional seat at the table in the hope of transforming the Palestinians into a suitable peace partner. Palestinian leaders were prepared to cede a measure of their internal autonomy with the expectation that the United States would eventually deliver Israeli concessions. In the end, the process succeeded only in institutionalizing Palestinian dependency and weakness.
The Conflict Begins (1948–1973) Israel’s creation in 1948 entailed the destruction of Arab Palestine and the displacement of roughly two-thirds of its Arab population, an event known as the nakba, or “calamity”. Afterwards a new generation of Palestinian political leaders and institutions took up the mantle of Palestinian liberation. New paramilitary units, known as fedayeen, took up arms against the nascent state of Israel with the aid and encouragement of various Arab regimes. The 1950s and 60s also saw the emergence of new semi-autonomous Palestinian political forces, such as Fateh in 1959 and the Arab National Movement (ANM)—the precursor of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—as well as the Arab League-sponsored Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. The United States and other western powers, while nominally supporting a diplomatic resolution based on United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirmed the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, continued to view the Palestinian question as a distinctly humanitarian and increasingly pressing security issue, rather than a political one.
It was only after the 1967 war that U.S. officials began to look at the Palestinians as political actors in their own right. Israel’s occupation of the remnants of Arab Palestine, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Gaza Strip, foisted the Palestinian issue back into the global spotlight. Even so, UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called on Israel to withdraw from Arab territories occupied during the war in return for peace with Arab states—the so-called “land for peace” formula—failed to mention the Palestinians as being anything other than refugees. Meanwhile, the humiliating defeat of combined Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordan forces convinced the Palestinian factions and fedayeen groups on the need to take matters into their own hands. By early 1969, the fedayeen had taken control of the PLO and, under the leadership of Fateh’s Yasser Arafat, transformed the organization into a genuinely autonomous, and broadly representative Palestinian, decision-making body.
In the years after 1967, particularly following the PLO-Jordan civil war of late 1970, Palestinian nationalism had emerged as a potent political force in the region. Moreover, despite its defeat and subsequent expulsion from Jordan, the PLO was now the central address for the Palestinian national movement. With its commitment to armed struggle and positioning Palestinian liberation within the global context of anti-imperialism and decolonization, the PLO built alliances with other liberation and revolutionary movements across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, while remaining largely ambivalent toward the superpower rivalry. Although the PLO was formally part of the nonaligned movement, sentiment within the organization leaned heavily toward the Soviet Union while remaining deeply distrustful of the United States because of its role in Israel’s creation.
American officials, for their part, remained highly conflicted in their approach to the Palestinians. While a growing number of U.S. officials in the foreign service and intelligence communities recognized the need to accommodate Palestinian political aspirations in some form, most U.S. officials remained highly distrustful of the PLO, in no small part due to intense Israeli opposition to any accommodation with the PLO or Palestinian nationalism. The PLO’s involvement in violence, including terror attacks on U.S. and other western targets, also soured U.S. officials on the organization.
Despite their mutual suspicions (and perhaps because of them), starting in 1970 the PLO leadership and U.S. security officials agreed to establish a mutually beneficial secret backchannel run through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While the PLO leadership hoped the clandestine talks would ultimately lead to a political dialogue with Washington, U.S. officials viewed it in strictly utilitarian terms. The PLO-CIA track proved invaluable in the intelligence and security realms, providing valuable intelligence on a wide range of anti-American threats, including thwarting terror plots by rogue Palestinian factions, but would remain decidedly apolitical.
Few U.S. officials were more hostile to Palestinians than Henry Kissinger, the chief architect of Nixon’s foreign policy who served as national security advisor before becoming secretary of state in the weeks before the 1973 War. For Kissinger, a staunch Cold Warrior, the PLO was little more than a group of radicals and a tool of the Soviet Union as well as a political nonstarter for Israel. Thus, not only would the PLO have no role in any future peace process but would need to be marginalized and weakened for Arab-Israeli diplomacy to succeed. Despite intense antipathy toward the PLO, however, Kissinger was not opposed to engaging with it, both for its utility in the intelligence sphere and as a way to limit its troublemaking ability.
Shifting Perceptions: The 1973 War and its Aftermath The October War reshuffled the geopolitical deck once again, as well as U.S. and PLO postures toward one another. The war shattered the aura of Israeli invincibility, giving rise to a new diplomatic process centered around an international peace conference to be held in Geneva before the close of the year with the aim of pursuing a comprehensive peace between Arab states and Israel. Although officially sponsored by both superpowers, the Geneva conference and the peace process itself was now the sole purview of the United States in general and of Kissinger in particular. The war also marked a strategic, decisive shift in the PLO’s approach to Palestinian liberation, which now began to downplay armed struggle in favor of diplomacy. Moreover, like Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Arafat had concluded that the United States held all “the cards” and that the road to a future Palestinian state ran inexorably through Washington. While the Soviet position was considerably more in line with the PLO’s sentiments and aspirations, only the United States, it was believed, could deliver Israel—a belief that would shape PLO diplomacy for the next half century and is still evident today.
Hoping to earn the PLO a seat at the table in the Geneva process, Arafat intensified his outreach to Washington in the months following the war. This time American officials were more responsive, with Kissinger authorizing CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters to meet with Arafat’s confidantes in Morocco in the months before and after Geneva. Tapping both the CIA track and various third parties, Arafat conveyed a series of increasingly bold messages to the Nixon administration, including explicit recognition of Israel and willingness to live in peace with it. The PLO “in no way seeks the destruction of Israel, but accepts its existence as a sovereign state,” Arafat privately assured the Americans in December 1973, while noting that the PLO’s primary political aim was “the creation of a Palestinian state out of the ‘Palestinian part of Jordan’ [i.e., the West Bank] plus Gaza.” This was the first, albeit unofficial, endorsement by the PLO leadership of a peace settlement based on a two-state solution, fifteen years before it became official PLO policy and a quarter century before either the Israelis or the Americans came around to the idea. It was also a highly risky move from the standpoint of domestic Palestinian politics, where such ideas remained highly contentious, if not treasonous.
Despite Arafat’s apparent willingness to engage with his adversaries, Kissinger had no intention of bringing the PLO or the Palestinians into the negotiations, which he felt would only “radicalize” the Arab states and enrage the Israelis. Thus, while Arafat hoped to use the dialogue to demonstrate the PLO’s moderation and pave the way for its entry into the peace process, Kissinger viewed it solely as a way to gain some diplomatic “maneuvering room” while limiting the PLO’s ability to create problems for his diplomatic strategy—the central focus of which was not the Geneva conference.
Kissinger had little interest in a multilateral process that would afford the Soviets an equal role to the United States or that would allow Moscow to serve as the “lawyer” for the Arab side at the United States’ and Israel’s expense. The Geneva process was therefore primarily for international, and especially Arab and Soviet, consumption. The real process, meanwhile, would be conducted by Kissinger through “step-by-step diplomacy.” Under this formula, the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian tracks would be handled separately, thus preventing the emergence of a unified stance toward Israel and ensuring both American and Israeli preeminence. In the first phase, Kissinger focused on brokering disengagement agreements between Israel, Egypt, and Syria, with the ultimate aim of securing separate peace deals between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors. Egypt, as the most potent political and military threat to Israel, was especially crucial to Kissinger’s plan, especially since Sadat had signaled his intention to turn away from the Soviet Union in July 1972. The Palestinians would be brought in at the end of the process, preferably after the PLO had been weakened. The “Palestinian problem,” in any event, was not a matter that concerned Israel but rather “an inter-Arab concern” whose resolution lay with Jordan’s King Hussein rather than the PLO.
Despite being cut out of the Geneva process, Arafat continued to push a pragmatic agenda, both internally and externally, while working to enhance the Palestinians’ international standing. In June 1974, Arafat’s convinced the PLO’s parliament-in-exile, the Palestine National Council, to adopt a new political program which called for the establishment of a “fighting national authority” on any liberated part of Palestinian territory. Although rejected by hardline PLO factions like the PFLP and the Syrian-backed Al-Saiqa, the measure was widely regarded as a win for PLO moderates.
The PLO’s stepped-up diplomacy underscored a broader shift in international and U.S. attitudes toward the Palestinian issue in the aftermath of the October War, especially among large segments of the U.S. national security and intelligence establishments. By early 1974, the Soviet Union had effectively normalized ties with the PLO, while the Europeans for the first time publicly acknowledged the Palestinians as a party to the conflict as well as their “legitimate rights”. Moreover, by early 1975, key elements within both the State Department and the White House had come out in favor of engaging with the PLO, which despite some if its more distasteful activities, was a political reality that enjoyed the sympathy and support of millions of Palestinians. Even Congress, where pro-Israel and anti-PLO sentiment ran especially high, was beginning to show signs of change, as a number of senators and representatives spoke openly for the first time about Palestinian rights and past suffering.
Yet, Kissinger remained unmoved and viewed the PLO’s growing international acceptability with growing frustration and alarm. After the Arab League’s October 1974 vote to recognize the PLO as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” Kissinger blasted the decision as a “fit of emotional myopia” that undercut King Hussein’s claims over the West Bank while empowering the one actor [the PLO] Israel was unwilling to negotiate with. A month later, the UN General Assembly—despite strong U.S. objection—followed suit and voted to recognize the PLO as the official “representative of the Palestinian people” while affirming the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”. To add insult to injury, Arafat was invited to address the world body. “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun,” declared Arafat in his now famous address before the UN General Assembly, “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
Despite Washington’s intense hostility toward the Palestinian leader, U.S. officials continued to engage with the PLO. As if to underscore U.S. ambivalence, on the day of Arafat’s speech, senior PLO and CIA officials met in an upscale Manhattan hotel to hammer out an agreement on security- and intelligence-sharing and on the training of Palestinian forces that would provide security for U.S. diplomats in Beirut. But if Arafat thought that collaborating with the CIA would make it impossible for Washington to continue ignoring the PLO politically, then he was in for a rude awakening.
Following the UN vote, developments on the American-Palestinian front evolved rapidly—but in two different directions. As Washington became more open to Palestinian perspectives and aspirations, the door to Palestinian participation in the political process was simultaneously being closed. Within weeks of the UN vote, even as PLO forces began providing security escorts for U.S. diplomatic personnel in Beirut, the Ford administration issued a blanket ban on visas to PLO members, exempting only the PLO’s UN personnel. American official ambivalence was on full display in late 1975.
The shift in attitude was particularly pronounced on Capitol Hill, where in the fall of 1975 the House of Representatives held a series of groundbreaking Congressional hearings covering all aspects of the Palestinian issue, including, for the first time in decades, testimonies from prominent Palestinian voices. While a handful of Congress members spoke about Palestinian rights, a few of their more daring colleagues set off to meet with Arafat at his headquarters in Beirut.
The Ford administration was also showing signs of change, using the fall 1975 Congressional hearings as a platform to announce a new approach to the Palestinians. Administration officials reiterated the standard U.S. position that any future peace process should take into account “the legitimate aspirations or interests of the Palestinians,” and for the first time also recognized the Palestinian question as a political matter and not merely a humanitarian one.
Washington’s apparent openness to the Palestinian question did not translate into a more accommodating policy toward the PLO or the Palestinians, however. In fact, the opposite occurred. Even before the Congressional hearings on the Palestinians had commenced, in an attempt to push stalled Egyptian-Israeli disengagement talks, Kissinger signed a secret memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Israelis, pledging that the United States would not “recognize or negotiate with” the PLO until it recognized Israel’s right to exist and accepted Security Council Resolution 242. Arafat, owing to his own domestic opposition, was in no position to publicly accept such conditions, as Kissinger and the Israelis no doubt understood, particularly in the absence of any comparable concessions by Israel.
Lasting Legacies: From Camp David to Oslo and Beyond Kissinger’s MOA would effectively tie the hands of subsequent U.S. administrations in their ability to effectively mediate between Israelis and Palestinians. More to the point, the peace process designed by Kissinger in the aftermath of the 1973 War—with its focus on American and Israeli preeminence, piecemeal progress, and a strategic aversion to the PLO—would become a template for all future American peacemaking in the Arab-Israeli arena in both procedural and ideological terms. In addition to solidifying U.S. “ownership” over the Arab-Israeli negotiations, Kissinger’s policies succeeded in keeping the PLO out of the peace process for nearly two decades, as well as in prioritizing separate peace deals between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors over a comprehensive peace settlement, all of which were designed to prioritize U.S. and Israeli interests over those of the Arab states and their backers. Even the Carter administration, despite its preference for a comprehensive peace and persistent attempts to bring the PLO into the peace process, ultimately reverted to the Kissinger model, thanks both to the 1975 MOA and Egypt’s decision to pursue a separate peace with Israel in 1978.
The proposal for limited Palestinian autonomy contained in the 1979 Camp David Accords became a precedent for dealing with the Palestinian track, not just as a model for a future interim arrangement (i.e., the Palestinian interim self-governing authority stipulated in the 1993 Oslo Accord) but also for its willingness to determine the fate of Palestinians without their participation.
Moreover, the exclusion of the PLO was not strictly a function of the group’s actions but also reflected a particular ideological view that fundamentally devalued—even pathologized—the politics and aspirations of the Palestinians. While Kissinger’s disdain for the Palestinians was by no means unique—and may well have been an inevitable byproduct of the “special relationship” and the Israel-centric lens through which U.S. policymakers and politicians viewed the issue—he nevertheless succeeded in elevating this mindset into an article of faith of the U.S.-led Middle East peace process, of which the formal exclusion of the PLO was only one part.
This same constancy is evident on the other side of the equation. Since the mid-1970s, the PLO leadership, with very few exceptions, has remained remarkably loyal to a U.S.-led peace process—even when it was clear that the United States could not deliver. Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which a U.S.-brokered ceasefire failed to prevent the massacre of some one to three thousand Palestinian refugees at the hands of pro-Israel Lebanese militiamen, marked one of the bloodiest episodes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the first instance of U.S. mediation between the PLO and Israel. The Lebanon debacle left the PLO badly weakened and internally divided but otherwise did nothing to diminish the PLO’s faith in Washington, which only intensified in the decades that followed.
The PLO eventually joined the peace process in 1993, although from a position of weakness, as Kissinger had hoped. Indeed, the Oslo process itself, as a set of interim deals with a focus on incremental progress and lacking a clear endgame and in which the United States served as the sole mediator, was quintessentially Kissingerian.
Moreover, if the PLO leadership had spent most of the 1970s and 80s trying to join a U.S.-led peace process, the advent of the Oslo process effectively cemented the PLO’s American strategy. The fact that Oslo was not simply a process of conflict resolution between two parties but also a process of “state-building” for the Palestinians gave outside actors, including the United States, foreign donors, and even Israel, a direct say in—and in many ways an effective veto over—key aspects of Palestinian political life. Under U.S. stewardship, the Oslo process became as much a tool for transforming Palestinian politics as for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. If the Palestinians’ entry into the peace process was predicated on the PLO being tamed, as Kissinger had sought, then the Oslo process would help ensure that its successor, the Palestinian Authority (PA), would be fully domesticated.
The Palestinian leadership, for its part, was willing to give up a degree of control over internal Palestinian politics and decision-making in the hope that the United States would ultimately “deliver” Israel, namely by convincing Israel to end its occupation and enable the creation of a Palestinian state. Oslo did not lead to Palestinian independence, however, but instead deepened Palestinian dependence on the United States and on Israel. Moreover, as the two most powerful actors bound by a special relationship, the United States and Israel had both the ability and the incentive to shift as many of the political risks and costs onto the Palestinians as possible, especially when things went wrong. This was the case following the collapse of the Camp David summit and the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, as well as the repeated violent eruptions in Gaza and other subsequent crises.
Despite occasional attempts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to break free from, or at least moderate the PLO’s longstanding “American strategy,” the Palestinian leadership remains too weak and dependent on the United States, as well as Israel, to abandon the strategy completely. In the end, initiatives such as attempts to join international bodies, seek redress from the International Criminal Court, pursue reconciliation with Hamas, or sever security ties with the United States and Israel have almost always been either tactical in nature, short-lived, or both. Moreover, the Palestinian leadership’s inordinate dependence on the United States has come at an increasingly high price domestically. Not only has the single-minded focus on American deliverance over the previous five decades failed to bring Palestinians closer to independence, it has actually helped weaken Palestinian politics, institutions, and leaders, limiting the Palestinian leadership’s freedom of action while simultaneously eroding its domestic legitimacy.
When Success Breeds Failure Looking back at the last half century of Arab-Israeli peacemaking and American-Palestinian relations, it is hard to escape a basic paradox. On the surface, both the U.S.-led peace process and the PLO’s “America strategy” were highly successful, as both largely achieved what they initially set out to accomplish. The diplomatic process that Kissinger engineered, with considerable help from Congress and the pro-Israel lobby, effectively kept the PLO and the Palestinians out of the peace process for the better part of two decades, while domesticating Palestinian political and governing institutions thereafter. Likewise, the PLO succeeded in eventually joining the U.S.-led peace process and in enlisting American support for Palestinian statehood.
And yet, both of these seem like pyrrhic victories today. Indeed, the process Kissinger created worked too well, first by delaying the PLO’s entry into the peace process and then by attempting to tame it. In the end, the Oslo process institutionalized Palestinian weakness and dependence on the United States and Israel, in ways Kissinger could only have dreamt. At the same time, a weak and divided Palestinian leadership, far from being an asset to the peace process as Kissinger had expected, has instead become a source of chronic violence and instability. For most of the last fifty years, the Palestinian leadership, from Arafat to Abbas, has wagered on the United States as the only party capable of compelling Israel to end its occupation and of allowing the emergence of an independent Palestinian state. The lopsided power dynamics that Kissinger was so keen to enshrine in the peace process, however, reversed that formula. Instead of the United States delivering Israel, the U.S.-led peace process ended up delivering the Palestinians to Israel. Instead of Palestinian statehood or independence, the peace process eroded Palestinian agency, as well leadership’s domestic legitimacy and internal Palestinian political cohesion.
The 1973 War and its Aftermath: The View from Damascus
Fifty years ago, Egypt and Syria launched a joint attack against Israeli forces, triggering the fourth Arab-Israeli war. Unlike its predecessors, the 1973 October War, also known as the Ramadan War or the Yom Kippur War, was the first time that Arab armies jointly launched an otherwise unprovoked attack against Israeli forces, giving themselves unprecedented strategic advantage.
The joint attack was well-coordinated and meticulously planned, and, unlike previous wars, Arab officers were more proficient, and the infantry better trained and well-equipped. Historically, Moscow had provided its Arab clients second-class military equipment for fear that they would go to war against Israel and draw the Soviet Union in a conflict with the United States. Moreover, fellow Arab states displayed an unprecedented level of solidarity, some by assisting symbolically in combat operations, and others by imposing an oil embargo on states supporting Israel.
Paradoxically, although the 1973 October War was exceptional in terms of Arab preparation and Arab solidarity, its aftermath was fiercely divisive. In fact, the polarization in which the Middle East currently finds itself can be traced back to it. This essay provides a brief narrative of the October War fifty years ago, as viewed in Damascus, and highlights the major events it triggered, both regionally and internationally. While a plethora of literature exists on the war itself, few analysts have considered how it shaped the next five decades.
The 1967 June War Sets the Stage The 1973 October War cannot be understood without reference to the 1967 Six-Day War. On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a blitzkrieg against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In the first few hours of the war, Israel destroyed their respective air forces. In the Sinai, with little if any Egyptian air cover to speak of, Israeli forces crushed the Egyptian army and took over the entire peninsula. That operation lasted two days. In the following two days, Israel defeated the Jordanian army and occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River—the remaining 22 percent of what was left of Palestine, administered by Jordan since 1949. In the final two days of the war, between June 9 and 11, Israel occupied Syria’s Golan Heights, almost without a fight.
The Golan Heights, a mountainous region overlooking Lake Tiberias and the Hula Valley, had long been a source of friction between Syria and Israel. Israeli settlers would repeatedly encroach on territories in the demilitarized zones, drawing Syrian fire. Israel would later justify its assault of the Golan by claiming that Syrian gunners above would shell Israel below. This narrative is disputed even by Israel’s then-defense minister, Moshe Dayan, who was later quoted in a 1997 article in the Agence France-Presse as saying: “Israel could be blamed for over 80 percent of the incidents which enflamed tensions around the demilitarized zones between Israel and Syria ahead of the 1967 War.”
In order to provoke incidents with Syrian troops and change the ceasefire lines between the two countries, the Israelis “would send a tractor into a disputed zone to plow even when we knew the land was unplowable, in expectation that the Syrians would open fire on them, which they did.” Dayan goes further by admitting “I made a mistake in allowing the conquest of the Golan Heights in 1967. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time.”
It is the Golan’s abundant water resources that Israel coveted, not security as Israel claims. The source of the Jordan River is in the Golan. Israel’s attempts to divert Jordan river water and channel it through its “National Water Carrier”—a system of giant pipes, open canals, tunnels, reservoirs, and large-scale pumping stations—to the Negev Desert and Syrian efforts to counter it laid the ground for the June 1967 War.
The October War did not take place in a vacuum. The joint Egyptian-Syrian decision to resort to force was the product of Israel’s failure to withdraw from the territories it had occupied in the Six-Day War, as per United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. It was also a product of the diplomatic stalemate that followed the 1967 War—a stalemate facilitated by superpower inaction.
United Nations special envoy Gunnar Jarring’s six-year effort to settle the conflict (along with other diplomatic initiatives) was unsuccessful. Anwar Sadat, who became Egypt’s president in 1970, was cooperative, offering among other things to reopen the Suez Canal. The canal was closed to international shipping since June 1967. Diplomacy failed in large part due to Israel’s intransigence. Buoyed by U.S. military and financial support, especially following Richard Nixon’s U.S. presidential election in 1972, Israel dug in its heels.
In the meantime, Syria’s leader Hafez Al-Assad quietly observed Sadat’s diplomatic overtures, knowing full well that diplomacy without teeth would go nowhere. In Al-Assad’s mind, Arab territories could be reclaimed through diplomacy only if backed by power.
Assad and Sadat had additional reasons for resorting to force. For Al-Assad, recovering the Golan Heights was perhaps his highest priority following his takeover of power in November 1970. As defense minister in 1967, Al-Assad was partly responsible for Syria’s defeat. Moreover, it was he who broadcasted “Proclamation 64” during the Six-Day War. The proclamation asserted, prematurely, that Qunaytra, the capital of the Golan, had fallen to Israeli forces when, in reality, it had not. The idea—a bad one as it turns out—was to prompt the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire before Israeli forces advanced further into Syrian territory. Little did the Syrian leadership know that the U.S. representative to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, would intentionally delay Security Council proceedings through excruciatingly long speeches to allow Israeli forces time to complete their conquest of the Golan—even after the June 10 ceasefire went into effect.
The fallout from “Proclamation 64” was disastrous: Syrian troops stationed along the front heard it on Damascus radio and withdrew in utter chaos. It also had a shocking effect on Syria’s citizenry. How can the Golan front, with its seemingly impregnable Maginot Line-like defenses, fall in only two days? A local conspiracy theory spread like wildfire. According to that theory, Al-Assad, a member of the Alawite minority in a Sunni majority country, was supposedly complicit in Syria’s defeat. Therefore, for Al-Assad, recovering the Golan, by hook or by crook, would become his central security and foreign policy challenge throughout his presidential tenure.
For Sadat, Egypt’s war-shattered economy weighed heavily. His predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had carried out the costly 1969 War of Attrition, a tit-for-tat static war consisting of Egyptian artillery shelling of Israel’s frontline positions followed by devastating Israeli air strikes against Egyptian infrastructure and cities. Egypt could no longer sustain the war economy that the status-quo dictated. This led to Sadat’s decision to use force to break the stalemate.
Sadat proclaimed 1971 to be “the year of decision”. His declaration was only half a bluff. Al-Assad and Sadat began planning the two-front strategy in early 1971. By the end of that year, the two leaders appointed General Mohamed Sadiq, Egypt’s defense minister, as supreme commander of both armies and reached an agreement on a broad strategy. They devoted much of 1972 and 1973 to filling their arsenals with Soviet military equipment, implementing deception campaigns, and training their troops in countless rehearsals for D-day.
The Canal and the Golan On October 6, 1973, at 14:00, Egypt and Syria launched their joint attack. Some four thousand Egyptian guns and 250 aircraft pounded Israeli forces along the Bar-Lev Line—a defensive line named after the pre-war Israeli chief of staff, Haim Bar-Lev. The Bar-Lev Line was a chain of fortifications built by Israel along the eastern bank of the Suez Canal after it occupied the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt during the 1967 War. It came in response to Egyptian artillery bombardments during the 1969 War of Attrition. Israel developed the fortifications into an elaborate defense system spanning 150 kilometers along the Suez Canal. The Bar-Lev Line was designed to defend against any major Egyptian assault across the canal and was expected to function as a graveyard for Egyptian troops.
That the Egyptian forces seized the Bar-Lev Line in two hours is testimony to the meticulous planning behind their assault. Hundreds of rubber dinghies ferried waves of infantry across the Suez Canal, overran the thirty-five forts of the Bar-Lev Line, and quickly established a forward perimeter. High velocity water jets blasted some eighty passages through the sixty-foot-high sand barrier piled up along the eastern bank of the canal.
At exactly the same time on the Syrian front, a massive three-pronged armored thrust of three infantry divisions, the fifth, the seventh, and the ninth, stormed the 1967 ceasefire line along the Golan front. The first and third divisions had been held back in reserve to take advantage of any breakthrough. Simultaneously, helicopter-borne commandos, later joined by Moroccan commandos, seized the Mount Hermon observation post in hand-to-hand combat, depriving the Israelis of gunnery spotting. The advancing divisions made uneven progress: in the north and center of the Golan where Israeli defenses were stiffer, the seventh and ninth divisions made only modest gains, at a high cost in troops and equipment, as they crossed the Israeli anti-tank ditch. The ditch was four meters deep and four to six meters wide along the sixty-five-kilometer front, flanked by a high earth embankment and protected by minefields on all sides. In the south, however, General Ali Aslan’s fifth division broke through Israeli defenses and drove its defenders from much of southern and central Golan. The hurried arrival of Israeli tank reservists prevented a total collapse on the morning of October 7.
When Al-Assad and his army chief of staff Youssef Chakour saw the progress of the fifth division, they ordered the first armored division to slice through the center of the front and attack Israel’s key Golan command post at Nafak. On the night of October 7, two Syrian thrusts by the fifth division and the first armored division were within striking distance of Lake Tiberias, otherwise known as the Sea of Galilee. One more push and Syria would recapture the Golan.
There was great elation throughout the Arab World. Images of jubilant Egyptian troops crossing the Suez Canal spread rapidly. In Damascus, people stood on rooftops to watch Israeli air force pilots parachuting from their burning Phantom F-4 fighters, downed by Syrian SAM-6 surface-to-air missiles and by MIG-21 interceptors. Cheers could be heard throughout the city as Syrian television broadcast footage of Syrian tanks punching through Israeli defenses, and of beleaguered Israeli troops taken prisoner. The June 1967 humiliation suffered by Egyptian and Syrian forces at the hands of Israel was temporarily erased from public mind. This was a moment of great national pride and an unprecedented spirit of national unity. The legitimacy of both Sadat and Al-Assad was at its peak.
The Egyptian Letdown Just as Syrian forces were on the brink of liberating the Golan, the Egyptian high command ordered an operational pause between October 7 and 14. Having successfully crossed the Bar-Lev Line, Egypt’s armies sat in their defensive positions, making no attempt to race for the key Mitla and Giddi passes that control the only east-west route across the peninsula. The pause was not meant to consolidate gains or to absorb an Israeli counter-offensive, as one might expect. It was the product of Sadat’s secret strategy: to shake the superpowers out of their lethargy in the hope that they would resolve the conflict diplomatically. His decision to pause was backed by senior military officers: the Egyptian high command did not want Egyptian forces to advance beyond the area covered by Egypt’s surface-to-air missile network so as to protect their ground forces from Israel’s superior air force.
The problem is that this was not the plan Sadat shared with Al-Assad when the two leaders decided in early 1971 to launch their joint attack. The plan they had agreed on was to recover the territories Israel occupied in 1967. As it turns out, Sadat had two plans: a fictitious one he shared with Al-Assad, and another plan—a secret one—that he shared only with his senior military commanders. The Soviet leadership was as stunned at the Egyptian pause as Al-Assad was outraged. In short, Sadat misled Al-Assad.
During the pause, the U.S. Air Force Military Airlift Command conducted a massive airlift to Israel between October and November of 1973. Code-named “Nickel Grass,” the airlift included 22,325 tons of tanks, artillery, ammunition, and supplies shipped in C-141 Starlifter and C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft. The airlift saved Israel from certain defeat.
Isreali units making their way to Damascus and occupying Syria’s urban centers. Oct. 16, 1973. Leonard Free/Magnum Photos
The Egyptian Pause and its Consequences As a result of the Egyptian pause, which the Israeli high command detected early on, Israel shifted its focus to the Syrian front as the Syrian advance in the Golan represented an imminent threat to Israel. Whereas the Sinai is an open and distant desert, far from Israel proper, the Golan then included newly established Jewish settlements (illegal under international law) and was merely a few miles from the old Syria-Israel 1949 armistice line. Given the stakes, Israel deployed the bulk of its reserves along the Syrian front.
The counterattack began on October 11. The Israeli air force now focused on Syria, started bombing economic targets, such as the Homs refinery, and urban centers, including Damascus, to disperse Syria’s highly effective SAM-6 surface-to-air missiles. Whereas the Israeli air force then flew fifty sorties a day against Egyptian forces, it flew a thousand a day against Syrian forces.
The result of the Egyptian pause and the subsequent Israeli counter-offensive against the Syrian front was that Israeli forces were able to stop the advance of Syrian forces and to roll them back, reaching the town of Saasaa, only twenty-four miles away from Damascus. The Israeli thrust into Syrian territory beyond the 1967 ceasefire line was halted in part by Iraqi artillery. It was only following Saudi Arabia’s refusal to end its oil embargo—unless the United States pressured Israel into withdrawing from the new pocket that its forces now occupied—that U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger negotiated a disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel that turned Israeli forces back to the pre-October 6 line.
As a result of the intense pressure that Al-Assad applied, Sadat took the political decision—against the advice of his senior military commanders—to resume operations in the Sinai. At this stage, Sadat could not afford to sour relations with his wartime ally. He ordered Egyptian forces to advance on October 14. That decision was a military disaster. On the night of October 15-16, Israeli forces were able to separate the Second and Third Egyptian armies, enabling them to break through the canal. At Deversoir, north of the Great Bitter Lake, the Israelis established a bridgehead and crossed into Africa. They penetrated the interior of Egypt and surrounded the Third Egyptian army. Egypt appealed for assistance and the Soviet Union seemed ready to respond. On October 25, Washington placed its armed forces around the world on nuclear alert.
In sum, the pause harmed Egypt as well. Failure to follow up on Egypt’s initial successes enabled Israel to absorb the massive inflow of American equipment described above. It also enabled Israeli strategists to pinpoint weaknesses in Egypt’s frontline positions.
The Consequences of Egypt’s Defection For Syria, the Egyptian pause was a colossal setback, and this was only the beginning in a slippery slope that would take Egypt out of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Following several Kissinger-brokered disengagement of forces agreements between Egypt and Israel, Sadat authorized secret talks with Israeli officials in Morocco, journeyed to Israel, addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem, held more talks at Camp David, and signed a separate peace treaty with Israel in March 1979. The peace agreement was made in violation of Arab League resolutions that prohibit Arab states from pursuing this option. In brief, Sadat’s Egypt defected from the Arab camp.
In Western eyes, the Egyptian leader was a man of vision and a man of peace. He won the Nobel Peace Prize along with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. In Syrian and Arab eyes, Sadat was believed to be a “traitor”. Egypt’s membership in the Arab League was suspended for ten years, and the headquarters of the Arab League was moved from Cairo to Tunis.
Egypt’s defection from the Arab camp tilted the Arab-Israeli balance of power heavily in Israel’s favor. With Egypt’s strategic weight largely absent, Israel was free to pursue its illegal settlement activity in the Golan Heights and in the West Bank, annex the Golan in 1981, bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor that same year, and invade Lebanon in 1982—free from the threat of any significant retribution. The challenge for Syria to contain Israel within its 1967 boundaries, the reason for which it went to war in the first place, became greater than ever before.
Syria Shifts Alliances: Egypt Out, Iran In Although there is no direct relationship between Egypt’s defection from the Arab camp in March 1979 and the Islamic revolution in Iran in February of the same year, Egypt’s defection triggered a major regional shift. It brought about a strategic alliance between Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran. To date, this alliance is the most enduring strategic alliance in the Middle East.
Iran under the Shah was, along with Israel, a major pillar of U.S. power in the region, and Iran and Israel had been like-minded in their hostility towards the Arab World. In contrast, the new regime in Tehran brought down the Pahlavi dynasty, tore the CENTO treaty with the United States, expelled the Israeli embassy and its staff from Tehran, turned the Israeli embassy over to the PLO, and called for the liberation of Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the June 1967 War.
It should then come as no surprise that Al-Assad, being the balance-of-power man that he was, would embrace the Islamic revolution. For Al-Assad, the Islamic revolution was a godsend; Iran would become the substitute to Egypt as a counterweight to Israel. Parenthetically, that the Islamic Republic condemned the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—at the time in the throes of war against the secular Al-Assad regime—was, for Al-Assad, the icing on the cake.
In light of this, Al-Assad seized the opportunity that the Islamic revolution provided to strengthen Syria’s hand against Israel. Al-Assad opened Syria’s gates to the Pasdaran—a branch of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—to train Lebanese Shiite recruits who were the main victims in the Israel-PLO slugfest of the late 1970s in the south of Lebanon. This led to the emergence of Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-sponsored Shiite militia and a sworn enemy of Israel, and the establishment of the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance: the “Axis of Resistance.”
In conjunction with the alliance with Iran, Al-Assad sought to reach strategic parity with Israel. Strategic parity did not necessarily mean tank-for-tank and plane-for-plane, but rather a balance of power that deters Israel from further expansion and provides teeth to the Arab negotiating position.
In the end, Al-Assad’s policy of strategic parity proved to be elusive. Although Syria was able to re-arm during the 1980s to the point of becoming a potential challenge to Israeli power, the policy was doomed with the advent of Soviet Communist Party Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s policy of reducing tensions in U.S.-Soviet relations had a stultifying effect on Syria’s security policy: the Soviet Union would no longer back Syria in its effort at establishing strategic parity.
Al-Assad’s relationship with Iran fared better, even though it put Syria temporarily at odds with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, especially during the Iran-Iraq War. Whereas Al-Assad viewed Israel as the biggest threat to the Arab World, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states viewed the theocracy in Iran as an even greater threat to their security—especially given that the Iranian leadership was openly seeking to export its revolution.
The Net Results of October 1973 The October 1973 War has rightly gone down in history as a landmark in the annals of warfare. Militarily, the initial gains of the joint Arab forces were admirable, whether it be the engineering behind the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal or the Syrian breakthrough in the Golan. These achievements were evidence that Israel was not invincible. In fact, had it not been for the massive U.S. airlift, Israel would have faced a major defeat.
The October War also showed that Israel is not necessarily safe by expanding its territory at the expense of others. To the contrary, territorial expansion through force breeds further conflict. In this instance, had Israel not attacked its neighbors in June 1967, the 1973 War might not have broken out.
That said, Israel was able to reverse the situation thanks to massive U.S. support, including putting out a nuclear alert. This shows the extent to which Washington will go to assist its junior ally. The initial Arab military achievements and the concomitant threat to Israel led Washington to increase its assistance to an even higher level: arm Israel to the teeth so as to maintain superiority over any combination of Arab power.
Politically, the October war achieved Sadat’s goal, as it got the attention of the superpowers—the United States in particular. The result of Egypt’s statism was an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in which Egypt recovered its sovereignty over its territory. However, Sadat’s success in recovering the Sinai back was due not to Israeli benevolence but to a conscious Israeli move to snatch Egypt, the strongest Arab power, out of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Egypt’s statism, however, did nothing for the rest of the Middle East in general and for Syria and the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in particular. Nor did the Middle East peace process of the 1990s for that matter. In fact, Egypt’s defection produced the opposite. It led to an even more violent Middle East in which Israel’s attempts to impose its rules were countered by an emerging “Axis of Resistance”—more threatening to Israel than the Syrian-Egyptian alliance ever was.
What if the October War Had Happened Differently?
Most analysts who have written about the October 1973 War agree that it was a major international event that had long-lasting consequences for the Middle East region, for global power relations, and for the world economy. The basic narrative of what happened and why is largely agreed upon, although some puzzles remain. The American archives, and more recently the Israeli ones as well, provide access to documents that shed considerable light on internal deliberations at the highest policy levels, and many memoirs and journalistic accounts are also available to fill in some of the gaps, especially concerning policymaking in the Soviet Union, Syria, and Egypt.
Despite this historical consensus around the broad lines of the war, some questions, of course, linger. For example, when and why did Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat decide that some limited military action, rather than diplomacy, would be needed to break the post-1967 War impasse? Furthermore, when and how did Saudi Arabia reach an understanding with Egypt that it would use its oil to pressure the United States to adopt a more even-handed policy if war breaks out? On the American side, there are questions about President Richard Nixon and his role in the diplomatic efforts before, during, and after the war. He was mired in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and this left policymaking on the American side largely in the hands of his newly appointed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. If Nixon had been more engaged, might American policy have been different? We know from the infamous tape recordings that Nixon often spoke quite bluntly about “squeezing” the Israelis and working with the Soviets to impose a settlement in the Middle East. Kissinger would sometimes imply that he agreed, but his actions suggest that he was much less willing than Nixon to go down either of those roads.
Some of the answers to these and other questions may be made clear with the passage of time and the release of additional documents. However, I do not really think we should expect many new, surprising revelations. Instead, I suggest that the most interesting angle of historiography concerning the October 1973 War will come from the treacherous terrain of exploring the “what ifs” surrounding this crisis. This is, of course, a risky business because alternative scenarios cannot be empirically verified. Yet, the question remains: what might have happened if different decisions had been made at certain junctures? I raise four of these “what ifs” in this short essay, knowing full well that I cannot prove that any one of them would have necessarily changed the course of history. Still, I think it is a worthwhile exercise.
First What If: The War Was Preventable First, there is the question of whether the war was inevitable. Those who say yes point to the mindsets and power balances in the region at the time. Israel had easily prevailed in the 1967 War against three Arab armies. The United States, the preeminent world power, was providing substantial military, economic, and diplomatic support to Israel, and few believed that the Arab parties, even with Soviet support, had a viable military option to force a change in the status quo. The prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, expressed the view during 1973, in exchanges with Americans, that if Egyptian President Sadat decided to go to war, that would be a problem for him, not for Israel. Israel would defeat Egypt’s forces even more readily than they had done in 1967. For good measure, she added that he had no chance of recovering all of Sinai even if he agreed to negotiate. In short, diplomacy might be possible if Egypt came to its senses and accepted that it would have to make significant territorial concessions, as well as recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Sadat was certainly aware of this adamant Israeli stance, and he had made it clear that it could not be the basis for negotiations. He had made a number of gestures in 1971 and 1972, including speaking openly of “peace” with Israel and sending home Soviet military advisers, which had brought him little in return, and he was beginning to talk about the inevitability of another round of military conflict. The dominant view in Israel and the United States was that he was bluffing. But the United States had taken notice of a noteworthy decision he made in mid-1972 when he announced the departure of some 15,000 Soviet military personnel from Egypt. This was precisely the kind of gesture that could be expected to attract the attention of Nixon and his primary foreign-policy adviser, Kissinger. And it did. Soon after this announcement, the United States agreed to establish a backchannel means of communicating directly between the White House and Sadat. (the State Department was not included.). Through this channel, by the latter part of the year, after Nixon had been reelected in 1972, it was agreed that high-level diplomatic contacts would take place between Washington and Cairo involving Kissinger and his Egyptian counterpart Hafiz Ismail.
Kissinger’s memoirs make it clear that he had modest expectations for anything of substance to emerge from this initiative. He had never met Sadat and had a very low opinion of Egypt’s military potential. Still, he knew that Nixon wanted to move forward on the Middle East dossier, and this was his chance to wrest Middle East policy from the State Department, where Nixon had initially wanted it to stay. In the first half of 1973, he had two secret meetings with Ismail. While Kissinger respected Ismail for his professionalism, he concluded from his lengthy talks that the Egyptians had unrealistic expectations of how much and how quickly they could achieve their goals—mainly the recovery of their territory in Sinai—through diplomacy. He did, however, say to Ismail that after the Israeli elections late in 1973, he would initiate some kind of diplomatic process to see what might be possible.
The extensive notes of Kissinger’s two meetings with Ismail are now in the public domain, and a careful reading of them suggests that the Egyptians were willing to be quite flexible on a number of key issues, except for the return of all their territory in exchange for peace. But they did agree to move ahead with negotiations with Israel, even if other Arab parties were not included at the outset. Egypt also made it clear that the Palestinian issue should be dealt with primarily by Jordan and whichever Palestinians would agree to join Jordan in negotiating. Exchanges took place on distinguishing between sovereignty, which the Egyptians insisted must be recognized as a basic principle, and security arrangements, which might limit military deployments in certain areas.
At the end of his second meeting with Kissinger in May 1973, Ismail expressed concern that the United States did not see the need for urgent movement on the diplomatic front in order to prevent another war. He urged Kissinger to visit Cairo to meet with Sadat directly to see if there was a way to move things forward. Kissinger declined, saying that he would need time to set the stage for his planned Middle East initiative later in the year. In short, he brushed aside Ismail’s plea to accelerate Kissinger’s gradualist approach.
We know that Kissinger did finally meet with Sadat, but only after the October war. He later admitted in his memoir that he had greatly underestimated the man and his strategic vision. One wonders what might have happened if he had accepted Ismail’s proposal to meet with Sadat. Most accounts say that Sadat had not made up his mind about going to war until after the U.S.-Soviet summit in the summer of 1973. So, one of my unanswerable “what ifs” is whether or not a Kissinger-Sadat meeting on the heels of his meeting with Ismail might have prevented the Egyptian decision (and the Syrian one) to go to war.
One way of reacting to this query is to say that Sadat needed to go to war in order to subsequently make peace. Sadat’s own memoir makes it seem as if that was the case, and people close to Sadat have agreed. But when one thinks of what a risky venture the war was, and how close Sadat came to being humiliated by military defeat in the last days of the war, one has to wonder if a serious diplomatic overture launched in mid-1973 might not have been quite tempting to him. A move like this would certainly have been supported by the Soviet Union and could have been a success for the policy of détente.
Second What If: A Different Kissinger and Nixon My second line of inquiry involves the relative positions of Nixon and Kissinger as the crisis of October 1973 evolved. Nixon was already deeply preoccupied with the Watergate crisis when the war broke out. In fact, he was in Florida reviewing the secret tape recordings of his own conversations, presumably to ensure that any incriminating material could be taken care of. To say the least, dealing with a crisis in the Middle East was not on his priority list, although he, more than Kissinger, had been talking about the need to take some diplomatic initiative in the Middle East, including with the Soviet Union. Nixon, more than Kissinger, saw “détente”—one of his signature policies—as a way for the two major powers to coordinate their diplomatic initiatives to reduce the risk of regional conflicts that could threaten global stability. Kissinger had a more ambivalent view of dealing with the Soviets, but he had a good working relationship with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and had a special phone line that went directly to his office (as he did with the Israeli ambassador).
It is important to recall that Kissinger only became Secretary of State (while retaining his position as National Security Adviser) one month before the outbreak of the October War. So, he was relatively new to his role as the undisputed key foreign policy figure in the Nixon administration. And yet the Middle East was not an area that he had had much experience dealing with. The war put him, his relationship with Nixon, and his ability to master a whole series of new issues to the test.
My recollection at the time, as one of Kissinger’s aides in the Middle East office of the National Security Council, is that his initial reaction to the outbreak of the war was surprise, anger, and a belief that the Israelis would quickly reach the outskirts of Cairo. But almost immediately he and Nixon received a message from Sadat that made it clear that his goal in starting the war was limited to breaking the diplomatic impasse, not defeating Israel. Sadat went so far as to say that when the war was over, he wanted to work with the United States to solve the Arab–Israeli conflict once and for all. Kissinger, at Nixon’s urging, began to develop a relatively cautious approach to the war. He talked to the Soviets about the need for an early ceasefire and for restraint by both superpowers. When the Israeli leadership seemed to be in a state of panic on the third day of the war because of early military setbacks, he urged patience and did not overreact to their requests for direct American intervention with arms resupply.
Over the next few days, he came close to reaching an agreement with the Soviets on the idea of a ceasefire-in-place that would be the centerpiece of a UN resolution. On October 10, just as the USSR began an airlift of arms to Syria and Egypt, the Soviets notified Kissinger that they believed that Sadat, as well as Syrian President Hafiz Al-Assad, was ready to consider a ceasefire. For the next three days, Kissinger worked to find a formula for a ceasefire. Had it gone into effect, it would have meant that Syria would have lost all of its initial territorial gains that they fought hard for—even more Syrian territory was under Israeli occupation—but the opposite was the case on the Egyptian front, where Egyptian forces were dug in on the east bank of the Suez Canal and were fairly well protected from aerial bombardment by robust air defenses.
ThirdWhat if: An Earlier Ceasefire For reasons that are not clear, the Soviets said that any UN resolution should not be sponsored by the United States and Soviet Union. In fact, they thought it would be best if the two superpowers abstained. It is unclear how Nixon and Kissinger dealt with the ceasefire initiative at that point. Kissinger eventually turned to the British to sponsor a ceasefire resolution, and meanwhile secured Israel’s agreement to accept it. The full story of how that happened has not been told, but it seems as if the top leadership in Israel felt that the gains on the Syrian front would offset the modest losses in Sinai, and that a ceasefire would allow Israel to rebuild its military forces to deal with whatever would come next. The British claimed Sadat was opposed to a ceasefire and therefore they refused, to Kissinger’s dismay, to introduce such a resolution in the UN.
My unanswerable question about this episode is, why did the United States and Soviet Union not jointly introduce a ceasefire resolution on October 12-13? They did just that ten days later. Would Sadat or Al-Assad really have refused to comply if such a resolution was passed by the UN Security Council? If a ceasefire had gone into effect at this point, the United States would not have begun its large-scale aerial resupply effort to Israel, the Arab oil producers would most likely not have announced their oil embargo and production cuts, and there would have been little likelihood of anything like the Soviet threat of military intervention and the subsequent US stage-three military alert that occurred in the October 24-25 period. Détente might have looked like a more successful policy than it did in the aftermath of the most serious U.S.-Soviet confrontation since the Cuban missile crisis. So, I am still puzzled by why both the United States and Soviet Union were hesitant to agree to sponsor a ceasefire-in-place in the October 12-13 period. Perhaps if Nixon had been more in charge, he could have communicated directly with General Secretary Brezhnev to clinch the deal. Had that happened, the October 1973 crisis would have come to a different end, with much less risk for global stability and the health of the world economy. A post-war diplomatic initiative, largely led by the United States, would have still been likely and would have probably begun with disengagement agreements on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts.
Fourth What if: A Ceasefire to which Israel Committed My fourth question involves Kissinger’s trip to Moscow and the negotiation of a ceasefire agreement with the Soviets, which became UNSC Resolution 338 on October 22, followed within twelve hours by a full cessation of hostilities. Kissinger then flew to Israel, where he was soundly criticized by Meir for not giving Israel a bit more time to improve its military situation on the Sinai front. Kissinger, who had wanted to use Israeli military pressure to convince the Soviets to get the Syrians and Egyptians to stop the fighting, was now in the awkward position of telling Israel to stop just short of their goal of encircling the Second and Third Egyptian armies. He admits that he may have left the Israelis with the impression that they did not have to abide strictly by the twelve-hour deadline for the ceasefire.
By the time Kissinger was back in Washington, Sadat, with a sense of desperation, was calling for the United States and the Soviet Union to send forces to the region to enforce the UN Resolution that they had just sponsored, and that Israel was violating by continuing to advance after the twelve-hour deadline. This led to several exchanges of urgent messages between Moscow and Washington, ending with the Soviet threat on October 24 to send its own military forces if the United States would not agree to some sort of joint initiative. Kissinger’s reaction, and Nixon’s absence from the decision making, raised questions at the time that are still somewhat unanswered. The fact that Nixon was not present at the meeting when the stage-three military alert was decided upon is now largely attributed to the pressure he was under because of his domestic political problems. He was also known to be drinking more than he could easily manage and was probably unable to participate in the meeting for that reason.
Under those circumstances, I conclude that the alert was a deliberate overreaction from the American side in response to the exaggerated threat of unilateral military intervention from the Soviets. In short, we had two weak political leaders, at a crucial moment in history, trying to look more threatening than they had any intention of being. But we also now know from recently declassified Israeli sources that Kissinger was playing a complex game of telling the Israelis to keep up the military pressure on Egypt, even though that would risk undermining the ceasefire that had been negotiated with the Soviets. Fortunately, by October 25, Kissinger and Dobrynin managed to defuse the risk of confrontation, and the ceasefire finally went into effect. But it was a nerve wracking few hours, when reckless moves by each superpower nearly jeopardized the formula they had just worked out to end the crisis.
Although the accepted version of the October 1973 War is correct in seeing it as a major turning point that eventually opened the way to peace negotiations that were at least, in part, successful, I still believe that we should reflect on the questions raised here. Could the war have been prevented altogether? Would things have worked out differently on the American side if Nixon had not been in dire domestic political circumstances and Kissinger not relatively new to the issues of the Middle East? Once the war began, was an opportunity missed—had the ceasefire initiative succeeded—for a serious diplomatic initiative for peace, without all the added human and economic costs of war, disruption of the world economy, and undermining of détente that resulted from the last phase of the crisis? Could and should the superpowers, who pushed through UN Resolution 338, have spent more time and energy on trying to ensure that it was implemented properly? While no one can be sure of how best to answer these questions that I have been pondering now for fifty years, my personal view is that the answer is a cautious yes in each case.
1973—A Global Paradigm Shift
Half a century has passed since the 1973 October War, yet which side emerged victorious from this pivotal conflict remains an open question that is still debated endlessly both globally and in the Middle East. Military strategists often couch the answer in terms of territories gained or lost, or as a function of military and human cost. Political scientists and practitioners of diplomacy focus more on whether the optimum goals of conclusive victory of one side over the other were achieved, or whether all outstanding problems between the parties were settled.
Both criteria are inappropriate. Victory or defeat is not determined by hard tangible assets, nor can success or failure be assessed in absolute terms given the fog of war and the complexities of negotiations on reaching a settlement to the conflict. Assessing the outcome of war hinges on the question of whether the respective parties ended up in better or worse circumstances in its aftermath, and whose predetermined objectives were achieved. It is important in this respect to underscore that the use of force is a tool to achieve a core political objective.
Addressing the “who won” question requires revisiting the politico-military environment before October 1973, Egypt’s objectives for going into the war, as well as the negotiating process after the guns went silent. To this end, this essay focuses mainly on Egypt, which together with Syria initiated the war, while also reflecting on Israel, as well as the other parties to the conflict: the United States, the Soviet Union (now Russia), Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians.
The Prelude to War Late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat firmly believed that his country needed to vigorously embrace modernity and socioeconomic development. He also understood that the interminable Arab-Israeli conflict was imposing a heavy toll on Egypt
It is worth noting that his predecessor Gamal Abdel Nasser had accepted the unilaterally developed peace “plan” offered by U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers in 1969. It called for a “fair solution” to the Palestinian refugee problem without offering a political solution for the Palestinians while ignoring Syria altogether. It aimed at securing first and foremost an Egyptian-Israeli agreement and offered to establish an agreement between Jordan and Israel. That plan was quickly derailed because of Israeli reticence and ironically internal divisions within the Nixon Administration, resulting from objections raised by U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who had little respect for the State Department then, and no real interest or experience in Middle Eastern affairs.
Sadat assumed office following Nasser’s sudden death in September 1970. Disappointed and uncomfortable with his relations with the Soviet Union and concerned about domestic political opposition, Sadat publicly floated several peace initiatives to Israel including opening the Suez Canal to international shipping if Israeli forces were to withdraw fifty kilometers eastward from the canal zone. He also sent his national security adviser Hafez Ismail to meet Kissinger twice in 1973 in the hopes that the latter would serve as an interlocutor in negotiations between Egypt and Israel. Sadat’s overtures, however, were received with disinterest by both the Israelis and the Americans, neither of whom took Sadat seriously at the time. Both the Israelis and the Americans miscalculated that Sadat did not possess any agency, and they shared a sense of hubris flowing from Israel’s perceived military dominance that obviated any need to negotiate.
With his efforts falling on deaf ears, and his personal domestic credibility increasingly eroding, Sadat had the foresight to conclude that Egypt needed to militarily demonstrate a seriousness of purpose in order to change the political paradigm. That would surely spur negotiations. At the same time, he also wisely understood that given Israeli’s military superiority, it would be unrealistic to attempt a complete liberation of the occupied Sinai by military means. His objective was to initiate a limited targeted military operation with calculated objectives against a stronger adversary for the purpose of creating a more conducive negotiating paradigm. He took the courageous step toward this objective even though Israel could militarily depend on the United States, while Soviet support for Egypt—which ultimately came through—was questionable given that its military experts had been asked to leave just a year earlier.
The United States, the Soviet Union, and Israel had no appetite to negotiate peace in the Middle East before the 1973 War. Washington and Moscow were focused on superpower détente, while Israel basked in a sense of invincibility, its forces secure behind the supposedly impenetrable Barlev defense fortifications on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. None of the other parties wanted war, or even seriously considered that Egypt possessed a war option.
Sadat, on the other hand, wanted to negotiate peace, and initiating military operations with the specific objective of initiating negotiations was a means to an end. Syria decided to join a military coalition with Egypt, although it remains unclear whether it felt it could liberate the Golan Heights militarily or, like Sadat, was intent on engaging militarily to create a window for negotiations. It is my firm conviction that Egypt emerged as the biggest winner from the 1973 War because Sadat’s immediate goal was achieved, irrespective of the final disposition of forces at the time of the ceasefire or the conclusion of diplomatic negotiations.
The Aftermath of War I was about to finish high school during the 1967 Six-Day War and my university studies just after the 1973 War. I vividly remember how the 1967 defeat was a severe blow to Egypt that shattered its self-confidence. On the other hand, the 1973 war was a profoundly traumatic event for Israel, and shocked the United States and the Soviet Union into realizing that Egypt’s military initiative was a game changer in the Middle East. The war also left the United States reeling from the effects of the Arab oil embargo, while the Soviet Union had become embittered as it watched its influence diminish in the region.
Perhaps more importantly, the war restored a sense of confidence and pride among the Egyptian people. This is difficult to quantify, but it was an invaluable pivot point and an indispensable precondition for dealing with the intricacies and complexities of balancing relations with the Soviet Union, the United States, and the Arab World, as well as negotiating with Israel.
The 1973 War was invaluable in creating a geopolitical paradigm which fostered negotiations between the Arabs, particularly with respect to Egypt and Israel. Without the war, negotiations would have been questionable considering the highly stagnant pre-1973 geopolitical environment. Given Sadat’s specific war aims, the immediate consequences of the 1973 War were very much aligned with Egypt’s objectives, more so than with any of the other parties to the conflict.
The decreased role of the Soviet Union in light of Sadat asking their military experts to leave in 1972 benefitted America in its Cold War competition. This advantage, however, was not the result of U.S. initiative. Rather it was Egypt that took the initiative despite its situation of military disadvantage after the 1967 defeat.
The Israelis ultimately gained from the war as well, albeit after having to swallow some bitter medicine and undergo serious and painful reflection. Having been forced to abandon their sense of invincibility, Israel’s reassessment of its place, which was prompted by the war, opened the door for negotiations that would conclude with several peace agreements with Arab states. It is important to note here that these agreements did not come about because of any premeditated willingness by Israel but as a direct consequence of the 1973 conflict.
The Soviet Union only gained incrementally and indirectly from the war by way of its weapons not being defeated in the theater of operations (as had happened in 1967), but it did witness a diminishing role in the Middle East. This was a significant American goal which then-President Richard Nixon openly mentioned to Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy at the White House on October 31, 1973, just a few days after the war ended, when he affirmed that the United States now recognized Egypt as a central player in the region and would act accordingly.
The strategic landscape of the Middle East was thus profoundly changed as a result of the war. The ultimate agent of that change was Sadat’s determination to develop a limited war option to force an Israeli—and American—reassessment, prompting both to consider negotiations seriously. The United States and the Soviet Union did not want Egypt and Syria to initiate the 1973 War, nor for that matter were they always supportive of different Arab negotiating positions or tactics. Sadat’s strategy thus underscores the importance of regional parties reserving the ability to take independent national decisions, irrespective of relations with friend or foe.
Major global players also need to better understand and be cognizant of regional dynamics. Superpower competition has wider global scope and context, but it is not the exclusive determinant in world affairs. Regional dynamics will have consequences on the interests of global powers, a reality starkly revealed by the fact that the United States raised its nuclear alert level during the October War to deter Soviet engagement.
Pivoting From War to Peace The Geneva Peace Conference on the Middle East took place in Switzerland from December 21-23, 1973, under the aegis of the United Nations and the sponsorship of the United States and Soviet Union. Egypt welcomed the co-sponsorship but insisted that it be under UN auspices because this reaffirmed the legal basis for conflict resolution. Interestingly, Jordan participated even though it had not joined the war effort, while Syria absented itself. This raised questions regarding Syria’s motivation, but more importantly, it was a grave mistake for the Syrians because it was the first indication that the Arab front was not politically united.
The United States brokered two Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreements in 1974 and 1975, as well as a disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel in 1974, all signed in the context of the reconvened Geneva Conference. Because the United States and Soviet Union were focused on having their respective allies militarily disengage, Jordan did not get a disengagement agreement as it was not a party to the war. With the luxury of hindsight, this appears to have been a substantial mistake. Bringing Jordan into the post-war diplomacy would have entailed a focus on the territory of the West Bank of the River Jordan occupied by Israel as a result of the 1967 War, which could have been the kernel of a Palestinian State if further progress in the peace negotiations had been achieved.
Sadat and the Egyptian foreign policy establishment wanted a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, including a Palestinian state where Palestinians could express their national identity. Both were adamant that all occupied Egyptian territory without exception would be returned to Egypt. I remember years later former Israeli President Ezer Weizman recounting to a group, which included myself, that the Israelis found Sadat’s and Egypt’s negotiating styles perplexing. They were surprised that the initial and concluding positions on fundamentals like territory were identical and unwavering, while the Israelis would always exaggerate requests or inflate problems to create room for negotiations and justifications for compromises made. The difference is simple and profound: put simply, Egypt had sovereign international borders and respected international law while Israel’s borders were not legally defined and over the years had shown very little respect for international law.
I believe that the October War created a negotiating paradigm, induced a sense of national confidence on the Arab side that enhanced its negotiating position, generated a higher level of respect toward Arab demands, and forced a sliver of Israeli realism. It also established a higher sense of international priority to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the Palestinian cause, which became prominent on the international agenda, leading to then-PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat addressing the UN General Assembly in New York on November 13, 1974.
A Still Elusive Comprehensive Peace In later years, peace agreements between Israel and Egypt—and Jordan—would be successfully concluded, and decades later, the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians would be signed. However, a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement has still not been realized in the region. Occupation of Arab territories continues while Palestinians remain deprived of their national rights and live under inhumane circumstances. Violence continues more than seven decades after the conflict was initiated.
From the outset, the Arabs have complained bitterly about Kissinger’s pro-Israeli bias. Equally important, if not more so, it was evident that he never attempted or wanted to achieve Arab-Israeli peace. His declared objective was to establish “order” to allow him to manage relations with the Soviet Union. This is explicitly confirmed in numerous books by and about Kissinger, including most recently by Martin Indyk’s in his comprehensive book on Kissinger’s Middle East diplomacy Master of the Game. Consequently, it is unquestionable that Kissinger did not invest in peacemaking and intentionally limited the prospects for peace that could have been realized as the result of the paradigm shift brought about by the October War. This served Israel’s interests but was mostly a Kissingerian U.S. objective. Over-dependence on the United States, and increasingly on Kissinger himself given his leading role as a result of the turmoil of the closing Nixon years, was a major mistake made by the Arabs despite the validity of their objectives.
Another egregious mistake years later was to move the peace process out of the aegis of the United Nations to that of the superpowers, and subsequently to the sole supervision of the United States. This undermined the centrality of the sole internationally recognized framework of Arab-Israeli peacemaking embodied in the principle of “land for peace”—a phrase used as a euphemism for Security Council Resolution 242. Ultimately, with the breakdown of the Soviet Union and changing circumstances including American administrations less committed to a two-state solution, a distorted Israeli concept of “Peace for Security” and now “Arab-Israeli peace before Israeli-Palestinian Peace” is unabashedly promoted by the Israeli government.
Any negotiator versed in the Arab-Israeli conflict will have a depth of experience in how detailed, legalistic, recalcitrant, and expansionist Israel can be when it comes to the return of territories even when there is no Israeli ideological basis for their occupation, such as the situation with the Sinai Peninsula. That being said, Israel appreciates the strategic security value of signed agreements. Security trumps everything.
Israel complained for years about a cold peace with Egypt. There were also infrequent but not insignificant issues relating to the Egyptian-Israeli border. Not once, however, has Israel threatened to abrogate the peace agreement concluded with Egypt, and the reason is quite simple. The Egyptian-Israeli peace agreements—with end-of-conflict provisions—essentially removed any potential for an Arab-Israeli war in the future. Should such a conflict have erupted, it would have been devastating for the Arabs without the Egyptian Armed Forces.
Consequently, after completely ignoring the Camp David Accords signed at the White House between Egypt and Israel in September 1978—which established a framework to address the Palestinian issue with then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin openly saying he was not committed to anything beyond the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty— Israel ultimately withdrew from Egyptian territory completely after legalistic jostling about actual placing of border postings. It was a case of pragmatic realpolitik that established security for Israel in exchange for land for Egypt, and that remains the underlying rationale to this day.
Opposition to Sadat’s Post-War Diplomacy There have been vehement voices of opposition in Egypt and the Arab World to Sadat’s strategy of agreeing to peace with Israel; some have even unjustifiably questioned his sincerity in pursuing comprehensive peace. Sadat was a courageous and astute politician and strategist who focused on the bigger picture—the war would not have happened without him—whereas the Israeli approach was dominated by a security-focused obsession with micro-level details.
Sadat and his Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy held each other in high respect and were quite close. Both wanted a change in direction for Egypt’s foreign policy as well as a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. How best to deal with Israel and Egypt’s relations with global powers was nonetheless a contentious subject between Sadat and Fahmy. Sadat was a courageous leader focused on the big picture. Fahmy was a strategically seasoned diplomat and highly acclaimed negotiator. Ultimately, however, the latter resigned in objection to Sadat’s 1977 Jerusalem visit because of his strong conviction that this would feed into Israeli negotiating tactics of divide and conquer and only lead to a bilateral peace agreement between the two countries. Bilateral peace would leave Israel free to completely ignore all other issues thereafter, making comprehensive peace unachievable. Israel stayed true to its practices and did little to accommodate Sadat’s magnanimous gestures.
Interestingly, however, Sadat’s Jerusalem trip took the Americans by surprise. Stuart Eisenstadt, President Jimmy Carter’s liaison with the American Jewish community, recounts in his book that Carter first thought this to be folly that would disrupt his efforts to reconvene the Geneva Peace Conference aimed at bringing all the conflicting regional parties together. He only backed off opposing the Jerusalem trip when its political momentum rapidly grew and became unstoppable.
ROI for Middle Eastern Peace Regionalizing peacemaking, despite its cumbersome nature and inherent complexities, is the only real solution to achieving comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. That is what the George Bush Administration tried to achieve when it convened the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference in 1991, under a regional umbrella, and with focus toward bilateral negotiations and multilateral peace-building. Russia was a nominal partner in this effort and the United Nations was regrettably not the hosting body. However, letters issued by then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to the parties clearly and correctly established the internationally recognized parameters for peace in the Middle East.
The process did not proceed smoothly, but it brought the parties back together again under one umbrella to provide international support for a major effort to reach a resolution to the decades-old conflict, as well as to counter naysayers like then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir by substantially increasing the regional return on the investment in peace.
Numerous efforts and permutations developed thereafter, including—but not exclusively—the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo process. Negotiations with limited participants are normally easier to manage and even more efficient tactically, especially with Israel’s penchant for detail. It is also clear, however, that the more we compartmentalized tracks and isolated them, the more difficult it was to resolve the core Palestinian-Israeli issues at the heart of the conflict, particularly when there exists a strategic imbalance of power.
Looking back at the outcome of the October 1973 War, one cannot deny that it was historic in its numerous consequences. It was all the more so because the geopolitical environment of the time was not conducive to bold decision-making. Most of all, the war opened the door for negotiations between regional parties big and small.
The credit for the decision to go to war goes first and foremost to Anwar Sadat, who was unwavering in his pursuit of peace in the region. One can legitimately question his negotiating tactics thereafter, and fault will be found. No one, especially politicians, are perfect. I strongly believe that while the results of the negotiations are not what we had hoped for in terms of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, the 1973 War was most beneficial, especially for Egypt, but equally so for those sincerely pursuing conflict resolution rather than continued occupation or the status quo.
However, I am dumbfounded by those who belittle the significance of the October War as a monumental game-changer, or question that Egypt was the greatest beneficiary, even if all its goals were not fully realized. These historic opportunities for peace would not have existed without the 1973 War. Hopefully, the prospects of peace can be revived without the region having to suffer another conflict.
October 6, 1973: The War for Peace
Over the years, we have dedicated the pages of the Cairo Review to commemorate historic milestones that have altered the course of events globally and regionally. Few such milestones can compare to the momentous and transformative impact of the 1973 October War on Middle East regional politics, as a major turning point in the Cold War, and as a defining case study in the diplomacy of war and peace.
This month marks fifty years since Egyptian troops broke through the Bar-Lev defensive line on the east banks of the Suez Canal. Since then, the Middle East has witnessed enormous change, yet, in many ways, we still live in a region defined by the legacy of what historians now refer to as “the last Arab–Israeli war”. After the watershed moment of October 1973, the prospect of peace was transformed from a distant hope to a tangible reality, through the careful and painstaking diplomacy that unfolded in the aftermath of the war.
Today, the historic peace that was forged between Egypt and Israel in 1979 still endures. Moreover, the October War brought an end to what appeared to be a perpetual cycle of large-scale regional conflicts. Indeed, after the largest tank battles since World War II were fought in the deserts of Sinai and the slopes of Syria’s Golan Heights, the Middle East has not witnessed a full-fledged armed conflagration that threatened to engulf the entire region. One can only speculate as to what the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War, or the 1991 Gulf War, or the numerous conflicts between Israel and Lebanon and Gaza would have looked like in the absence of the peace established in the wake of the October War.
The countries that fought the war have seen their own share of transformative change— most recently, the Arab uprisings that convulsed Egypt and Syria, and Israel’s myriad political and identity conflicts revolving around the unsettled question of what it means to live in a “Jewish” state. However, the legacy of the 1973 October War continues to occupy a central place in their respective national narratives, and the fiftieth anniversary of that conflict will no doubt be an occasion for reflection and commemoration in each of these states.
Globally, the war was no less consequential. October 1973 was more than just another crisis in a long series of flashpoints that punctuated the Cold War. The war itself brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to a confrontation that prompted both to go on nuclear alert, thus giving us one of the most dangerous moments of superpower rivalry that was only narrowly averted. Perhaps more significantly, the war ushered in a decades-long era of American dominance in the Middle East. Washington’s deft diplomacy in the aftermath of the war solidified Egypt’s exit from the Soviet camp, and consolidated its role in Arab-Israeli peacemaking for decades to come. Despite the legacy of America’s long and entangled involvement in the region since, there is little doubt that it was in many ways enabled by the game-changing moment of October 1973.
For all these reasons, the legacy of the war continues to define the regional security and political landscape of today’s Middle East, fifty years since the guns of October 1973 fell silent. To reflect on that legacy, we asked a distinguished group of Egyptian, Israeli, Syrian, Russian, American, and Palestinian authors to offer their perspectives on the war. The essays that follow in this special issue of the Cairo Review are not meant to provide a historiography of the events related to the war from the different national outlooks of the authors. Rather, they offer a more analytical, and occasionally personal, perspective that assess how the war is remembered, and the lessons that should be drawn for the challenges of war and peace that confront today’s Middle East.
From our own perspective, perhaps the most important legacy of the war is that it offered a true example of statesmanship and statecraft, commodities that are sadly rare in Middle East politics. For all the remembrance of this occasion as an armed conflict, October 1973 was a testament to the limitations of military force, as well as to the reality that deep-seated conflicts can only be resolved by peaceful settlement. In going to war, Egypt’s late President Anwar Sadat aimed not to vanquish Israel militarily, but to shock Israel’s leaders from their sense of hubris that the status quo of unjust occupation could be sustained indefinitely by their military superiority. The ultimate objective was to alter Israel’s—and America’s—calculus in order to engage in diplomacy. October 1973 was ultimately a war waged for the sake of peace, an apt description that we chose as the title for this special issue.
It is our hope that the leaders of today’s Middle East reflect on this most important of lessons from the 1973 War, at a time when the desire to settle conflicts by force of arms still animates much of the region’s politics. In no conflict does this lesson apply more than in the case of Palestine, the longest-standing military occupation in modern history.
Cairo Review Co-Managing Editors,
Karim Haggag
Firas Al-Atraqchi
October 1973: Memoires of a Soldier and Scholar
It has been fifty years since the 1973 October War. Time has passed and the world has changed immensely since then. But to me and other members of my generation, that war was a turning point in our lives, not so much because of what happened in that great event, but because it was a major revolution that had simmered for six years, starting with the shocking defeat of the June 1967 War and culminating with the crossing of the Suez Canal on October 6, 1973.
The Anguish of Defeat
Perhaps the starting point of my journey was that long sixty-kilometer march we undertook on June 9-10, 1967—from Al-Bajour in Menoufiya governorate to Cairo—to call on Gamal Abdel Nasser to remain in power, after he said he would abdicate over the outcome of the Six-Day War. The defeat was resounding and degrading for the twelve young people, myself included, who took it upon themselves to make the point that the defeat was not the end of the story. We had hoped that the great leader of the time, Nasser, might find a way to pull through it as he did during the Suez Crisis of 1956. We may have been students of political science at Cairo University, required to bring some academic detachment to the study of domestic and international politics, but like all other youth at that moment, all we felt was profound anguish and distress at the disaster that had befallen Egypt. We poured into the squares of the capital in throngs, believing this was the only response to Israel’s aggression.
Our first order of business was to put Nasser back in power. After we felt that we succeeded in the glorious act of reinstalling the zaeem (the leader), we went back home, this time taking a bus. On that ride, we were deep in conversation, and it dawned on us that in the wake of war, that season’s cotton crop—a major Egyptian cash crop at the time—was neglected and would be severely damaged if left unattended. I was among a group who volunteered to rescue the cotton harvest that had almost been lost in the aftermath of the war. I then signed up for military training, which took place in Al-Dakhila near Alexandria. That was where I had my first brush with death. A bullet whistled by my face after having been fired by a colleague who had forgotten to take the necessary safety precautions.
After that, the academic year was about to begin. The Fall of 1967 began like no other before it. A pall of disappointment and grief had settled on the returning students. There was also a single and shared conviction that we could not accept what happened on June 5, 1967 and that this rejection needed to be associated with a process of evaluation and criticism. Nasser was no longer infallible. His fellow “Free Officers” were no longer automatically blameless. The whole of Egypt was not above reproach. The country had just experienced one of its most significant historical failures.
We continued to follow the news from the front closely. Then came International Students Day on February 21 1968 and along with it the court sentences doled out to Egyptian Air Force commanders alleged to have been responsible for the “setback” (the “setback” was a description penned by famed journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal to refer to the defeat). The commanders were tried in military tribunals. My colleagues and I gathered in the cafeteria of the Faculty of Law, which shared some buildings with the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences. There we heard about the worker demonstrations, and from there we joined what became known as the first youth revolution in Egypt since the events of July 23, 1952 that transformed Egypt from a monarchy to a republic.
The 1952 revolution was not a revolution in the strict sense of the term. It was perceived as a “blessed movement” led by army officers set on ousting the British, who had overstayed their welcome since their occupation of Egypt in 1881. But the Free Officers Movement turned into a revolution that would spread its wings over the entire Arab region as it pursued industrialization and agricultural reform at home. The revolutionary fervor faded, apart from protest movements that arose in the aftermath of the 1967 defeat when university students took to the street to call for war against Israel. A revolution of a different sort erupted with the bread riots of January 17-19, 1977. That wave ultimately ended with the assassination of President Anwar Sadat by the Muslim Brotherhood because he had concluded a peace treaty to liberate Egyptian territory.
We wanted another war in order to take revenge. We wanted to bring officials to account for the crime that led to the defeat. Quite simply, we wanted another Egypt than the one that had been so remiss in its responsibilities that it was occupied twice in the space of two decades. Our revolution produced the March 30 Program that put-on record, for the first time in Nasser’s Egypt, that the situation in the country was not as it should be and that there was need for reform. The program did not go over well as it objected to the concept of the one-party state as epitomized by the Arab Socialist Union at the time. But the War of Attrition was set into motion and the cause of combat took precedence. I was recruited to the army on September 12, 1970.
The students’ revolution—or the youth revolution as we would call it today—persisted throughout all those years, reaching its peak in 1972 with the creation of the Supreme National Students’ Committee. The committee spearheaded a huge ten-day long strike that concluded with a sit-in at Cairo University’s main auditorium. Shortly after midnight, I returned home to put on my military uniform. My long leave to complete my university studies was over. At dawn, from the window of the bus as it passed in front of the Giza security directorate, I saw an amassment of police cars and Central Security Forces. I knew that the sit-in was being—or had already been—dispersed.
This does not mean that the student revolution was crushed. It would have taken a war to do that. It continued in various forms and the world stood amazed at the youth of Egypt while youth elsewhere had found their solution in the “love overcomes all” ideal that had taken root since 1968. We did not pay much attention to that revolution in our days. In fact, the divisions among us, between left and right, and the numerous subdivisions within those two camps, did not concern us greatly as long as we were all resolved on war.
As of the Spring of 1973, there was a noticeable pick up in the pace of preparations in our various regiments. I was now a chemical weapons monitor tasked with keeping abreast of the enemy’s use of chemical or nuclear weapons. In addition to my machine gun, I was equipped with two devices. In one you would insert a sample of soil or air and, if it changed color, you would know there had been a chemical weapons attack. The other device measured radioactive emissions.
This was not my only mission. Having completed training courses in the chemical warfare, army morale, and survey divisions, it was only natural that I would be brought on board the reconnaissance unit in the 654th anti-tank missile battalion that was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Hafiz and whose operations were headed by Major Mohamed Abdel Wareth.
“War games” are military drills generally performed in military academies and by armed forces in various combat formations, to train soldiers for similar scenarios in actual combat. Often the exercises involve realistic simulations of such scenarios. In May and August 1973, when I was a recruit in the Egyptian Armed Forces, I personally bore witness to comprehensive simulations that would train us for the crossing of the Suez Canal. It turned out that they closely resembled what actually took place during the war that year.
War Is Coming Mobilization operations on the front began on September 22, 1973. Although we had spent most of the year until then performing various maneuvers—or, for some of us, in demonstrations, one of which landed me in jail for three weeks—I felt there was something different this time. On the morning of September 28, Lieutenant Colonel Hafiz asked me to take a 36-hour leave. That was strange given the heightened maneuvers, but the prospect of a hot shower beckoned to me and I took the leave. I do not think that I have ever spent a 36-hour stretch more exciting than this one. I had that curious sensation that I was on the brink of a great event from which I had no way of knowing whether I would return alive or dead.
The rest of the day, on September 28, I spent with my sister: we even went to see The School of Misfits, a popular play by Ali Salem. The following morning, I went to Cairo University; it was the only place that remained a fixed base for the revolution and for the war drive for young students at the time. I met up with a group of revolutionary youth, among whom was my friend the late Mohamed Al-Sayed Said, Taha Abdel-Alim, Magdi Hussein, a Palestinian with his future Egyptian wife, and others. As always, when we met, we had quickly engaged in a heated discussion. I said that war was imminent and that it was the duty of each and every one of us to go to the front to take part in the event for which we had been campaigning for many years. There was a short dispute when one of the people there objected that the current regime did not have the ability to wage war, and even if it did, it would only be to serve “bourgeois” and colonialist interests. Therefore, it was not worth taking part in it. Said, my friend, interjected firmly, “But this is a patriotic war.” That put an end to the discussion.
That evening, Said and I returned to the front together on the same train, along with my friend Abdel-Moneim Al-Mashat. Later I would learn that this “leave” had been part of a strategy to deceive the enemy. On the morning of October 6, Lieutenant Colonel Hafiz told me that he was going to the headquarters of the 16th infantry division and that our battalion had been assigned to support, as its anti-tank arm might be assigned an important mission and that we might have to readjust the maps when he returns. He returned exactly an hour later, and this time his face bore the expression of a man who realized that a historic hour was at hand. The war was about to begin. At 1:00 pm, the troops would gather. At 2:00 pm, they would move into action.
The commander met with the unit commanders and then with the troops. He was very business-like. There was no impassioned speech or expression of patriotic fervor. We would engage in combat as we had practiced during our many previous maneuvers, only this time it was for real, and we would be armed with our training, patriotism, and faith. There was a reserve officer who erupted into a fury when he learned that he was to be leading the rear-guard of the brigade and would not be taking part in the Suez Canal crossing. “What am I going to say to my son when he learns that his father was in the army on the day of the crossing but didn’t cross?” he asked angrily. Some rearrangements were made so that he could accompany us. He fought valiantly, was wounded in battle, and returned a hero.
The command position of our brigade was situated a few kilometers away from the Suez Canal where our tank units were deployed on artificial ridges. From there we watched the planes soaring over the canal to launch the aerial strike after which around one thousand artillery guns began to fire. Our mission was to protect the units that crossed the canal from enemy counter-offensives. My task was to assist the head of operations by plotting the information I received on our maps. At precisely 8:00 pm, our units descended from the earthen ridges and moved towards the canal. As we approached, the head of operations rushed forward and then came back to bring me to the most wonderful sight in history. The pontoons had been locked into place from one bank to the other, and along the sides were a series of posts lit with red and blue lights. I stared at our unit’s pontoon bridge amazed. Sensing how overcome I was by emotion, my commander said, “Isn’t it as beautiful as Qasr Al-Nil Bridge at night?” Qasr Al-Nil Bridge was the byword for romance in those days.
The war unfolded through various phases, from the glory of the crossing to the pain over loss of life and equipment. But we also destroyed fifty-four enemy armored units, including forty tanks. In other words, we paid the enemy back twofold. From the ranks of our battalion, Sergeant Mohamed Sadek earned the Sinai Star for having taken out twenty Israeli tanks singlehandedly. Six conscripts also won medals.
What a splendid moment it was and how proud I felt to have been among those who fought under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Hafiz and Major Abdel Wareth. After the guns fell silent, the diplomatic battle was waged to secure the liberation of the occupied territory. When that succeeded, our youth revolution had reached its end, but perhaps revolution had begun for others in another form.
Looking Back as a Scholar
It must be five decades since I began researching why U.S. intelligence agencies failed to predict the two-pronged Egyptian-Syrian attack against Israel in 1973. The October War was the subject of my PhD thesis, and this aspect of my research naturally led me to study other cases featuring the element of surprise, which has long been a subject of interest to political scientists.
The war opened a road to finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Egypt succeeded in regaining the occupied Sinai Peninsula; Syria regained some of its occupied territory; and the Palestinians, through organized resistance and popular uprisings, succeeded in creating the first Palestinian national governing authority on Palestinian land.
For seven decades, the Arab-Israeli conflict revolved around two variables: the creation of realties on the ground, and political, diplomatic, and military prowess. The result was the establishment of the state of Israel, its expansion beyond the borders set by the 1948 UN partition resolution, and its subsequent expansion after the 1967 War to an empire extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and from Quneitra in Syria to Qantara east of the Suez Canal in Egypt.
The Arabs only began to tip the scales in the other direction following the war, which led to the shrinkage of the Israeli empire through the subtraction of Sinai, parts of Jordan, and bits of the Syrian Golan. Meanwhile, the Palestinians have remained unable to realize their dream of an independent state. They have achieved a “national authority” on Palestinian land for the first time in history. But that authority is weak and limited in resources and in power.
The October War effectively turned the conflict from an existential conflict to a non-existential one. In the beginning, Arab states were in complete denial of the legitimacy of the Israeli state. The conflict was about existence, not borders, as it was said. Israel, on the other hand, rejected the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. The Jews were a people without a land, and they came to a land without people; so it was alleged. The war started the first serious processes to disengage the two parties from the conflict.
With the signing of the Israel–Egypt and Israel–Syria Disengagement Agreements, the conflict was no longer centered around the existential survival of either side, as key Arab states abandoned the Khartoum Summit’s “Three Nos” in favor of first steps toward eventual accommodation with Israel.
This was reflected particularly in Egypt’s decision to pursue peace with Israel. Egypt’s decision to reach an agreement with Israel was transformative and affected the entire region. In turn, Israel adopted a multi-faceted policy, making all the concessions required to reach a peace agreement with Egypt while pursuing an aggressive policy regarding Iraq’s nuclear program and the PLO’s presence in Lebanon.
In the realm of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, the most dramatic breakthrough in Arab willingness to make peace with Israel was the stunning visit by Egypt’s President Sadat to Israel in November 1977, a first-ever by an Arab leader to the state of Israel; the Camp David Accords, the agreement produced through the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations at Camp David in mid-1978; and the signing of a peace treaty between the two countries in March 1979.
It was through Camp David that the peace treaty, which brought an end to the Israeli occupation of Sinai in 1982, was finalized. Just over a decade later, another set of face-to-face meetings led to the Jordan–Israel Peace Treaty. In between came the Oslo Accords which established the first Palestinian national authority, creating an unprecedented reality on the ground in Palestine.
Sadat’s trip to Israel was preceded by a number of important but less dramatic positive developments in Egyptian-Israeli relations. The first was the Disengagement Agreement signed by the two countries on January 18, 1974. The second Egyptian–Israeli Disengagement Agreement, signed on September 1, 1975, allowed for further Israeli withdrawals.
Despite the success of the Camp David Summit, the road to signing the Egypt– Israel Peace Treaty was not easy. When the two sides resumed discussions in the summit’s aftermath, this time at Blair House on October 12, 1978, the talks ran into difficulties over the linkage between the proposed bilateral treaty and the issue of establishing autonomy for the Palestinians, as well as some aspects of the bilateral deal—notably the issue of oil supply for Israel and Egypt’s demand in return for early Israeli withdrawal.
On March 10-13, Carter visited Egypt and Israel to iron out the remaining differences. On March 19, the Israeli g government approved the text of the peace treaty, and on March 22, the Knesset approved it by a margin of 95 to 18 with five members/votes abstaining or absent. The Egyptian parliament unanimously approved the peace treaty with Israel on March 21, and on March 26, the treaty was signed at the White House.
As an important part of implementing its obligations under the peace treaty, Israel evacuated its settlements in Sinai in 1982. Eighteen settlements consisting of about seven thousand settlers were evacuated. Just prior to transferring the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in April 1982, Yamit, the largest settlement with three thousand inhabitants, was evacuated after resistance by many of its settlers.
After Sadat was assassinated, his successor, Hosni Mubarak, kept Egyptian foreign policy on course. If the peace with Israel turned “cold” in the 1980s, this was not because Sadat was gone but because Israel refused to withdraw from Taba, bombed the nuclear reactor in Iraq, and invaded Lebanon in 1982. With the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference that led to the conclusion of the Oslo Accords, some warmth was restored to Egyptian-Israeli relations. The same applies to the Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement. That was unaffected by the death of King Hussein and the succession of his son, King Abdullah II. Nor did official Palestinian policy change significantly on the points of dispute and agreement with Israel with the transition from President Yasser Arafat to President Mahmoud Abbas. On the whole, Arab governments that were committed to the peace process remained so, even after major changes.
Complexity and Resilience Although the October War has been a turning point in the Arab–Israeli conflict, both the conflict and the peace have proved to be resilient. As a result of the war, it was no longer plausible to refer to an “Arab-Israeli” conflict. The conflict now became centered around two parties, the Palestinians and the Israelis, as Arab countries started to face new internal political pressures and external geopolitical and geostrategic concerns. The “Arab Spring” was instrumental in changing the priorities of Arab countries to place much more emphasis on domestic issues and reform. As the trajectory of the Arab Spring devolved into a battle between Islamists of different sorts, the “core Arab issue” of Palestine lost its centrality. The growing threats and pressures of Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia on the security of the Gulf and water supplies to Syria, Iraq, the Gulf countries, and Egypt have made the Israeli and Palestinian crisis less threatening. In fact, the gates became open for different types of cooperation including in the realm of defense and security.
However, inside both Israeli and Palestinian societies, a sharp turn to the religious right has deeply complicated the domestic politics of each and has driven both polities away from peace.
Yet, Arab–Israeli peace not only proved to be resilient but has expanded to take the form of the Abraham agreements between Israel and another four Arab States—the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco—that involved recognition and normalization. Although there is no sign of warming in the relations between Israel on one hand and Egypt and Jordan on the other, engagements between them are growing on national security and energy interests. The formation of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum has been a step forward for the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, and the Egyptians. About five Gaza wars between 2008 and 2023 have inflamed the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, but the continuation of different types of cooperation has been possible.
At the time of writing this article, efforts by the United States have concentrated on peacemaking and normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The ideas coming out of the political interactions reflect a grand project that affects not only relationships but also the peaceful use of nuclear energy and regional security. A possible deal might also affect the internal configurations of power within both Palestinian and Israeli body politics.
The legacy of the 1973 War on conflict and peacemaking is still the call of the day. The resilience and complexity of a very protracted conflict is the result of a process that requires fortitude and resistance. What is becoming clear for all the parties is that they are on their own. Deepening their bilateral relations can address their own dilemmas and perhaps move the Israeli-Palestinian conflict closer to resolution.
