On October 6th, 1973 Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. What is significant in particular about this day is that it was Yom Kippur. Yum Kippur is a Jewish Holiday, which comes shortly after the celebration of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana), where you spend the day at synagogue, fast, repent and reflect. On this day in Israel, almost every shop is closed and there are hardly any cars on the road because most people are at synagogue all day.
Israel was caught by surprise. On the day of the attack, NATO and Israeli forces were mobilized. Israel was outnumbered by the Syrians and Egyptians in both men and tanks. Egypt and Syria also had nine Arab states and the Soviet Union backing them. The United States, as well as NATO, gave Israel some aid, but not a lot. Despite all this, the IDF (Israeli defense forces) was able to stage a comeback. After two days of fighting on the defensive side, Israel mobilized its reserves and began to counterattack. The Israeli forces were able to stop the Syrian advance, force a retreat and begin their own march forward toward Damascus.
As the Israeli's began to advance the Soviets began to worry. Two weeks later the Soviets placed troops on alert to defend Damascus. This created tension between the Soviets and the United States which only escalated over the next two weeks. By October 24th, the Soviets had threatened to intervene in the fighting. In response, Nixon put the U.S. military on alert and increased its readiness for the deployment of conventional and nuclear forces. This was probably the closest the U.S. and Soviet came to a nuclear war other than the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The fighting had begun to shift in Israel's favor and on October 22 the UN security council adopted Resolution 338 which called for a cease-fire. Isreal reluctantly agreed, mostly because of U.S. pressure.
In January of 1974, Israel and Egypt negotiated a disengagement agreement with the help of Kissinger. This agreement was called the Sinai I accord and allowed the Egyptians to retain control of the Suez Canal, freed the Third Army, and drew a cease-fire line on the east side of the canal, with a buffer zone between the two forces. A second disengagement agreement, called the Sinai II accords, was signed in 1975. It called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from two strategic passes in the Sinai and some surrounding territory. The Egyptians were also not allowed back into this neutral zone. The U.S. peacekeepers were deployed to monitor this area.
The Negotiations between Israel and Syria were much harder. In May 1974, a separation forces agreement was signed that created a UN buffer zone, a reduction in troop deployment and the return of the town Kuneitra to Syria. This agreement only came after the renewal of fighting between Israel and Syria earlier that March. The U.S. awarded Syria for this agreement because they wished to have good relations with them. Assad (leader of Syria) however, wanted to impede on the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations out of fear that the agreement would reduce Egypt's willingness to fight for the Arab cause.
The Yom Kippur war was a very traumatic experience for Israel and hurt the political leaders. The fact that they were caught by such surprise raised many questions about the effectiveness of Israeli intelligence systems. The Agranat Commission concluded that Israeli intelligence had sufficient warning of the impending attack, but, for a variety of reasons, had failed to interpret the information correctly. Chief of Staff Elazar bore the brunt of the commission’s blame and resigned. It also called for the removal of the head of IDF intelligence Eliyahu Zeira and his deputy, Arye Shalev. The commission did not assess the role of Prime Minister Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, but the public viewed them as responsible for the mistakes. In the end, the public's anger caused Meir to resign and Dayan would have taken her place but his reputation had been shattered by the war. Yitzhak Rabin, who served in the six-day war, became the next Israeli Prime Minister.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-yom-kippur-war
I like how this post elaborates on international events at the same time as a lot of the material we covered in class. I am especially interested in what effects the Yom Kippur War had on the United States. One of the effects was the weakening of the Soviet sphere of influence, as the negotiations Egypt took part of made them draw themselves further away from the Soviets. Tensions between the US and Soviet Union also seemed to increase, adding yet another issue in the way of detente.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
This article really helped with understanding how the United States engaged in foreign affairs under the Nixon administration, as we only covered the Vietnam War and general tension with the Soviet Union during his presidency. This explains why tension between the United States and the Soviet Union continued to rise even after agreements were made, and also help visualize the concept of proxy wars we discussed in class.
ReplyDeleteI like how you connected this conflict to tensions between the United States and Soviet Union and how it ties into the idea of proxy wars.
ReplyDeleteI think that this post really shows the background and history between Israeli-American relations and why the two countries are such close allies. I also think that this war helped establish the current strained situation in the levant between Israel Palestine and Gaza strip. It's history like this that's crucial in understanding current events like the settlement of the west bank and the exchange of missiles between Hamas and the IDF.
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