The Yom Kippur War
By Elizabeth Stephens
Published in History Today Volume 58 Issue 10 October 2008
Elizabeth Stephens examines how the surprise invasion of Israel
by Egypt and its allies started the process that led to Camp David.
Egyptian forces crossing the Suez Canal on October 7, 1973.
The impact of the Yom Kippur War that erupted on October 6th,
1973, far outweighed its relatively short duration of twenty days of
heavy fighting. It severely tested the détente between the United
States and the Soviet Union as the superpowers sought to defend
the interests of their Middle East clients: Israel on the American
side, Egypt and Syria on the Soviet side. The result was the most
dangerous moment of the Cold War since the Cuban Missile
Crisis in 1962. American support proved critical to the survival of
Israel at this seminal moment as the US-Israel special
relationship, begun in 1967, was consolidated. The conflict is also
remembered for triggering the first energy shock as Arab oil
producers unleashed the oil weapon to punish the United States
and its allies for their support of Israel. Finally, it set off a chain of
events that culminated in the 1978 Camp David Accords, the
landmark peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
Israel’s victory against the Arabs in 1967 had been swift and
absolute, transforming the geographical contours of the Middle
East. Israel’s territorial gains tripled the country’s land area and
dramatically reduced its vulnerability to Arab attack. Egypt lost the
Gaza Strip and Sinai, Syria the Golan Heights and Jordan, the
West Bank and East Jerusalem. In less than a week Israel had
established itself firmly as the regional military superpower and
secured considerable diplomatic and military support from the
United States.
The fundamental cause of the Yom Kippur War was the diplomatic
impasse that followed the Six-Day War. At the Khartoum summit
of August 1967 the Arabs issued their ‘three noes: no peace, no
recognition and no negotiation with Israel’. This played into Israeli
hands and when Golda Meir became Israel’s first female prime
minister in 1969 she obdurately refused to countenance
withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. ‘The Muslims’, she
proclaimed, ‘can fight and lose, then come back and fight again.
But Israel can only lose once.’ She was acutely aware that Israeli
survival depended ultimately on American support. The United
Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (passed on November
22nd, 1967, with US support), called for Israel’s return to its
pre-1967 borders, but also for respect for the sovereignty of every
state in the area. Israel made its willingness to negotiate
dependent on Arab recognition, while the Arabs made the return
of the occupied lands a prerequisite for talks.  
Jerusalem’s intransigence, in response to the Khartoum
Resolution, was compounded by the conviction, shared by the
CIA, that the Arabs were incapable of successfully challenging
Israeli supremacy. An Israeli joke had Moshe Dayan, Meir’s
minister of defence and architect of the 1967 plan of battle,
bemoaning the lack of action: ‘How about invading another Arab
country?’ asks a colleague. ‘What would we do in the afternoon?’
responds Dayan. Such complacency was reinforced by the
construction of the Bar-Lev Line, an interlocking series of sandbased
earthworks on the east bank of the Suez Canal which
consumed $500 million in 1971. Thought to be virtually
impregnable by the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), by October 1973
it was thinly defended. The Israelis also assumed that any
surprise Arab attack, wherever it came, could be repulsed by their
air force, which had proved so devastating in the Six-Day War.
Into this equation came Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Gamal
Nasser as Egyptian president when the latter died suddenly in
September 1970. Sadat was not taken seriously by either
Washington or Jerusalem, being regarded as a transient leader
who made empty threats that were never acted upon. In 1972
Sadat’s sabre-rattling saw him promise ‘to sacrifice one million
Egyptian soldiers’, which was palpably absurd. Yet such contempt
also extended to his intimation made the previous year that, if
Israel acted on Resolution 242, Egypt was ready for peace. Sadat
turned to Washington in an effort to break the stalemate.
The key figures in the White House were President Richard Nixon
and Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor in Nixon’s first
term (1969-73) and Secretary of State in his second (1973-74).
Kissinger had Nixon’s ear, with some dubbing him ‘president of
foreign affairs’. A German émigré who fled Nazi persecution in
1938, Kissinger was an advocate of Realpolitik – ruthless
pragmatism as the basis of national  policy. Neither Nixon nor
Kissinger was keen on staking American prestige on a Middle
East peace settlement they were convinced was unattainable. Yet
Nixon believed, as a Republican president, that he needed to find
a solution to the conflict in his second term. He feared a
completely pro-Israel Democrat successor would give the Soviets
a chance to reinforce their influence among the Arabs.
Throughout 1972, however, Nixon’s overriding concerns were
negotiating the historic SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty)
agreement with Moscow, ending the Vietnam War and his reelection
campaign. Consequently, he was not prepared to risk
political capital on brokering peace between Israel and Egypt.
Sadat’s sudden and unexpected expulsion of most Soviet
advisers from Egypt in July 1972 reduced Nixon’s sense of
urgency about doing anything.
In March 1973, when Meir visited Washington, Nixon and
Kissinger tried to devise ways and means of drawing Israel into
talks with Egypt, thus breaking the deadlock. The previous month
she had rebuffed Sadat’s latest peace initiative.  As Kissinger
perceived, ‘the longer there was no change in the status quo the
more Israel would be confirmed in the possession of the Occupied
Territories’.  Although Sadat repeatedly warned Washington that
the status quo would provoke another war which could bring a
renewed Soviet military presence in Egypt, Kissinger remained
convinced that he was bluffing. As he reflected in his memoirs,
‘our definition of rationality did not take seriously the notion of
starting an unwinnable war to restore self-respect’.
The diplomatic option closed, Sadat now set in motion plans for
war, Operation Badr. Recognizing that he needed a partner,
President Hafez al-Assad of Syria was brought on board to
confront Israel with a two-front war. Where Sadat wanted war to
kick-start the peace process, Assad – his armed forces reequipped
by Moscow – sought to recover the Golan Heights from
Israel. To deceive Israeli intelligence, large-scale military
exercises were staged by Egypt during 1973, twice provoking
Israeli mobilization. The fact that two thirds of the Israeli army
were reservists had a tremendous dislocating impact on the
civilian economy which the Israeli leadership now became
anxious to avoid. The seeming rift with Moscow also played into
Sadat’s hands. While the Kremlin remained unwilling to provide
fighter-bombers, from late 1972 it furnished an array of deadly
defensive armaments including SAMs (surface-to-air missiles)
and the Sagger anti-tank guided missile. Israeli intelligence
overlooked the potential for these defensive weapons to aid
offensive operations, gambling instead that war would only come
once Egypt acquired the offensive capability provided by fighter-
bombers. 
When Egypt and Syria launched an overwhelming surprise attack
that began on Yom Kippur (October 6th, 1973),  the holiest day in
the Jewish calendar, Israel was utterly unprepared. October also
coincided with Ramadan, the month of fasting in the Muslim
calendar, providing yet another justification to the Israeli analysis
of why the Arabs would not want to fight. Just before hostilities,
the Egyptian Army held exercises on its side of the Canal. At the
eleventh hour, after repeated warnings, Israeli intelligence finally
realized this was not an exercise. On the morning of the 6th, Meir
convened an emergency cabinet meeting to weigh the options.
The IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant-General David Elazar, urged
Meir to sanction a repeat of the pre-emptive air strikes that had
destroyed the Egyptian Air Force on the ground during the first
morning of the Six-Day War. For his part, Dayan could not bring
himself to believe that Egypt and Syria were about to strike the
first blow. On this occasion, the message coming out of
Washington was not to pre-empt and Meir elected to come down
on the side of Dayan and the Americans.
At the onset of hostilities – in what became known as The
Crossing –  80,000 Egyptian troops negotiated the Canal in small
craft. Explosives and high pressure water cannons were used to
breach the Bar-Lev Line. Egyptian forces then penetrated fifteen
miles into the Sinai. Many Israeli combat aircraft fell victim to the
radar-guided SAMs while Israeli tanks were knocked out by the
sophisticated Soviet-supplied anti-tank weaponry. It was a similar
story on the Golan Heights. Reeling under the twin assaults,
Israel was forced to abandon its doctrine of fast-moving attacks
with armoured columns backed by devastating air power and
instead to fight a static defence.
Twenty-four hours into the war, as Arab armies advanced, it
looked as if Israel might be brought to its knees. So traumatic was
the experience that on October 8th Meir reportedly ordered
thirteen tactical nuclear weapons readied as a last resort if the
tide could not be turned. In her heart, though, she looked to
Washington for salvation.
The US response to the crisis was threefold. The highest priority
was given to preserving détente and averting a direct
confrontation between the superpowers. Second, and to Israel’s
chagrin, Nixon and Kissinger tried to ensure that neither Israel nor
Egypt secured an outright victory. If the conflict produced a
standoff it could pave the way for fruitful peace negotiations, just
as Sadat hoped, and possibly lure Egypt out of the Soviet camp.
Third, in the midst of the Watergate crisis, diplomatic manoeuvres
might draw the public’s attention away from criticism of Nixon.
Between October 6th and 9th Kissinger became the principal
official overseeing diplomatic exchanges with the Israelis and
Soviets about the war. In the early hours of October 9th the Israeli
ambassador, acting on Meir’s instructions, pressed Kissinger for
significant arms supplies as Israel desperately needed to
replenish its arsenal. Kissinger consulted Secretary of Defense
James Schlesinger, who warned a major rearmament of Israel
was liable to provoke an Arab oil boycott. As a result, no firm
decision was taken. With Nixon mired in the Watergate scandal,
Meir was aware that Kissinger was calling the shots. She sought
to circumvent him, contacting Nixon directly and reminding him
that she had vetoed a pre-emptive air strike that would have
saved many Israeli lives.
The situation was more complex than this. Nixon and Kissinger
sought the withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied Territories, but
not as a consequence of a major Arab victory – one that would
make the Arab states even less willing to negotiate a lasting
peace. Furthermore, on October 10th, with the Egyptians and
Syrians still holding their own, the White House suspected the
Soviet Union of stalling on supporting a UN ceasefire resolution.
An Israeli defeat would be likely to increase Moscow’s influence in
the Middle East. Watergate, US fear of an oil embargo and
Nixon’s stake in détente may have encouraged the Soviets to
overplay their hand.
Nixon’s critical decision to launch a massive military resupply
operation to Israel in the second week of the war came in
response to the failure of UN ceasefire initiatives, the Soviet arms
airlift to Egypt and Syria and his need to bolster his faltering
backing among domestic supporters of Israel. It was the logistical
aspect of implementing the president’s decision that was
problematic. Since October 15th, El Al planes, their markings
concealed, had been collecting armaments from depots in Virginia
but the quantities were insufficient to replace Israeli losses. On
October 19th, after insurance companies refused to cover Israeli
chartered aircraft flying into a war zone, it was decided to use US
C-5s to transport equipment to Israel. The proviso from the White
House was that the take-offs and landings should take place
under cover of darkness.
It was at this juncture that Nixon’s attempts to maintain the image
of America as an ‘honest broker’ between Israel, the Arabs and
the Soviets unravelled. For refuelling purposes the C-5 aircraft
were flown to Israel via Lajes Field, the Portuguese air force base
in the Azores. However, adverse weather conditions delayed their
departure, with many arriving in Israel at dawn and not in the
dead of night. Visual proof of the huge US re-supply operation
delighted the Israeli public and the media, but the surrounding
publicity unleashed the wrath of the Gulf States in the form of an
oil embargo.
Before the war Sadat recognized the value of being able to exert
some pressure on Washington through a third party. On August
23rd, 1973, Sadat had secretly met King Faisal of Saudi Arabia
and convinced the head of the world’s largest oil-producing state
to use the oil weapon in a future Arab-Israeli conflict. Since 1967
the US had become a net oil importer. As a consequence,
bargaining power shifted from the US oil companies in favour of
the producing nations, thus giving Sadat’s strategy a realistic
chance of success.
Saudi Arabia was a crucial swing producer within the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)  and the Organization
of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC). With the tide of
the war starting to turn in Israel’s favour, the Saudis were
prepared to use the termination of oil supplies as a form of
leverage against the West. On October 13th Nixon received an
ominous letter from the chairmen of the oil majors Mobil, Exxon,
Chevron and Texaco, warning of Faisal’s dismay with the course
of events. 
Three days later, the New York Times reported that Faisal had
demanded that the White House terminate arms supplies to Israel
and that Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 borders; otherwise USSaudi
relations would become ‘lukewarm’. Next day, the 17th,
when a positive  response was not forthcoming, OAPEC
announced that it would cut ‘oil production by 10 per cent and 5
per cent a month thereafter’ until Israel withdrew from the
Occupied Territories. Two days later, after Nixon’s official request
to Congress for an appropriation of $2.2 billion to cover the cost of
the airlift, Faisal imposed an embargo on oil shipments to the US,
a policy soon replicated by other Arab oil producers.
The coordinated efforts of OAPEC did not have as profound an
effect on White House policy as Sadat had envisaged. The
administration prioritized relations with Moscow and the survival
of Israel, not the rising cost of oil.
Between October 6th and 19th the superpowers furnished the
combatants with aircraft, artillery and other weaponry. This
competition ultimately favoured the Israelis who, recovered from
the trauma of the opening week, focused first on defeating the
Syrian forces nearing towns in Galilee. Between October 11th and
14th the IDF pushed the enemy from the Golan Heights and back
into Syria. Damascus asked Cairo to relieve the pressure.
Brushing aside the protests of senior commanders, Sadat ordered
Egyptian forces forward. On October 14th, now out of range of
their SAMs, they were decimated by Israeli aircraft and armour,
losing around 200 tanks. The following day the IDF began a
sustained counter-attack, exploiting the point where the flanks of
the Egyptian Second and Third Armies met.
By the second week of the war, with Israel in the ascendancy, the
Soviet Union gave support to a cease-fire. Now it was the
American position that became more ambivalent. On October
20th, as Kissinger flew to Moscow, Nixon informed President
Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, that the Secretary of State
had full authority to negotiate on his behalf. Kissinger was
outraged that Nixon had deprived him of the ability to stall. He had
intended to tell the Soviets that he would have to consult the
President before agreeing to the terms of a cease-fire. Such a
delay would have enabled Kissinger to buy the Israelis more time
to consolidate their position on the battlefield and for him to find a
way to exclude the Soviets from the negotiations. Yet a telephone
conversation with Joseph Sisco, Assistant Secretary at the State
Department, restored Kissinger’s confidence in his own authority.
Nixon was so preoccupied with Watergate and his own selfpreservation
that he did not have time to think about the Middle
East, thus enabling Kissinger to ignore his instructions.
On October 22nd the superpowers brokered UN Security Council
Resolution 338. It provided the legal basis for ending the war,
calling for a cease-fire to be in place within twelve hours,
implementation of Resolution 242 ‘in all its parts’ and negotiations
between the parties. This marked the first occasion the Soviets
had endorsed direct negotiations between the Arabs and Israel
without conditions or qualifications. Meir, who was not consulted,
was offended by this fait accompli, though she had little option but
to comply.
Nevertheless, Meir was determined to gain the maximum
strategic advantage before the final curtain came down on the
conflict. Given the entanglement of the Egyptian and Israeli
armies, the temptation was too great for the Israelis to resist. After
a final push in the Sinai expelled the Egyptians, Meir gave the
order to cross the Canal. The IDF was soon threatening to cut off
the retreating 40,000 soldiers of Sadat’s Third Army. Kissinger
was incensed because he had assured the Soviets that Israel
would respect the latest cease-fire. Both superpowers were
monitoring the fighting through satellite surveillance photography.
Brezhnev, for the first time during the Nixon presidency, used the
hotline to request presidential intervention. Soviet and American
credibility was at stake. As Kissinger cautioned the Israeli
ambassador: ‘There were limits beyond which we could not go,
with all our friendship for Israel, and one of them was to make the
leader of another superpower look like an idiot.’
Israel, after breaching a second UN ceasefire, took the US to the
brink of direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Brezhnev
threatened unilateral military intervention if Washington found it
‘impossible to act jointly’. The message came through when
Nixon, ‘overwhelmed by his persecution’, as Kissinger described
his mental state, was in bed. Kissinger elected not to wake the
President but to convene National Security officials to formulate a
response. After a three hour White House meeting, ending at
2am, it was agreed to move US forces to DefCon 3, the highest
state of peacetime preparedness. On a psychological level, the
impact was immense. Washington had signalled its willingness to
go to war with Moscow to preserve both Israel and its position in
the Middle East. The alert had the desired effect as the Kremlin
backed off. Yuri Andropov, KGB chief, encapsulated the Soviet
attitude: ‘We shall not unleash the Third World War.’
The military alert was also successfully employed to force Israeli
cooperation. As Meir came under increasing pressure from
Washington to leave the trapped Egyptians unharmed, with great
pragmatism she acquiesced. She understood her obligation to
safeguard Israel’s relationship with ‘the only real friend we have
and a very powerful one’. As she acknowledged, ‘the trouble with
friends is not what they can do for you, but what they prevent you
from doing for yourself.’
On October 25th the UN Security Council passed Resolution 340,
calling for an immediate cease-fire, a return to the October 22nd
lines and the implementation of Resolution 338. This time the
ceasefire held and the war was finally brought to a close. The
associated oil embargo on the US was lifted in March 1974.
Kissinger moved to centre stage to kick-start a peace process. At
a news conference the morning after the alert, he presented his
position: ‘The conditions that produced the war were clearly
intolerable to the Arab nations, and ... in a process of negotiations
it will be necessary to make substantial concessions.’ The
following day he convinced Israel to permit the resupply of the
Third Army, thereby preventing a decisive victory for Israel and
delivering the military stalemate for which he had worked
throughout the war. A grateful Sadat took due note.
The effects of the Yom Kippur War echoed throughout the Middle
East and across the world. A quadrupling of oil prices to $12 a
barrel by 1974 reflected the strength of the Arab producers’
punishment strategy. In the American case, imports derived from
Arab sources plunged from 1.2 million barrels a day to just 19,000
barrels. Petrol rationing, speed restrictions and Project
Independence, a plan to make the US energy independent, were
the result. The first oil shock brought the ‘Long Boom’, the era of
commercial growth dating from 1950, to a juddering end.
In Israel, the war became known as ‘the Earthquake’. The public
clamour for answers over what went wrong led Meir to establish
the Agranat Commission to look into the conduct of the war. Its
interim report exonerated Meir and Dayan of any intelligence and
operational failures but recommended the dismissal of LieutenantGeneral
Elazar and Eli Zeira, the head of military intelligence. The
political fallout did not stop there. Disgruntled reservists, appalled
by the heavy loss of life, demanded Dayan’s resignation, which
came the following month, and then began targeting Meir who
resigned shortly thereafter, on April 11th, 1974, forever haunted
by the thought that she should have authorized pre-emptive air
strikes. In that event, Kissinger subsequently remarked, Israel
would not have received ‘even a nail’ from Washington.
Although Nixon, with Kissinger’s blessing, tried to claim the kudos
for managing the crisis, it did not save his presidency and he
resigned in disgrace in August 1974 to avert impeachment. The
ultimate loser was Moscow. The momentum in the peace talks
that ensued carried Sadat into alignment  with Washington, the
superpower he considered able to deliver Israel to the negotiating
table. Kissinger engaged in ‘shuttle diplomacy’, flying between the
interested capitals. Under Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, he put
into action the ‘step-by-step’ diplomatic strategy he considered
would deliver a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. 
In November 1977 Sadat travelled to Jerusalem to address the
Knesset. This encouraged the Democrat President Jimmy Carter
to put his personal prestige behind reaching an Egyptian-Israeli
settlement. The outcome of the Camp David negotiations,
involving Sadat and the Israeli leader Menachem Begin in
September 1978, was the signing of a peace agreement the
following year, removing the largest and most populous Arab state
from the anti-Israel Arab alignment. Israel returned the entire Sinai
Peninsula to Egypt; in return, Egypt recognized Israel. The
agreement transformed Egypt into the second largest recipient of
US foreign aid, after Israel.
Before October 1973, Washington had continually restated its
commitment to Israel’s security but this rested on little more than
words. When words needed to be backed by action, as they did in
May 1967 and the first week of October 1973, American policymakers
responded by arguing, agonizing and weighing their moral
commitment to Israel against a range of diplomatic and strategic
objectives. Congressional approval of a $2.2 billion commitment
to Israel, in the midst of the Yom Kippur War, finally ended this
debate. America was now signalling to the world that it stood
behind Israel’s survival and security regardless of the
consequences, a position it has maintained ever since.
Source URL: http://www.historytoday.com/elizabeth-stephens/yom-kippur-war