The Yom Kippur War - 1973
Israeli NarrativeIn an effort to force Israel to unilaterally surrender captured lands, Egypt and Syria jointly attacked Israel on October 6, 1973, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Other Arab states contributed troops and financial support. Caught by surprise, Israel suffered severe losses in human life and equipment. Following an Egyptian refusal to accept a cease-fire and a Soviet airlift to the Arab states, the U.S. sent an airlift to Israel enabling her to recover from earlier setbacks. Saudi Arabia then led the Arab world in an oil embargo imposed on the United States and other western nations. Following a cease-fire, the war officially ended on October 22, 1973 but fighting continued on the Egyptian-Israeli front and the U.S. and the Soviet Union were nearly dragged into a full-scale superpower confrontation. Such a confrontation was avoided and when hostilities finally ended, Israel held an additional 165 square miles of territory from Syria, and had encircled the Egyptian Third Army on the west bank of the Suez Canal. Egyptian forces held two areas of Israeli territory along the east bank of the canal. Israel, Egypt and Syria all held prisoners of war. In the years following the 1973 war, Israel's enemies realized that they could not defeat Israel on the battlefield. They turned therefore to diplomatic warfare and sought to weaken Israel's international diplomatic position. Due to pressure from the Arab world, most African and third world countries broke diplomatic relations with Israel. In 1975, the Soviet-Arab-Third World bloc at the United Nations succeeded in passing the infamous "Zionism equals racism" General Assembly resolution which was an attempt to delegitimize the right of the Jewish people to return to their ancestral homeland. The resolution was not revoked until December 1991. [1]
|
Palestinian NarrativeYom Kippur War, also known as the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 or the Ramadan War, was fought between Egypt and Syria from Arab side and Israel on the other. This war was the fourth one in the series regarded as fierce military confrontations between Israel and any Arab state. There were two major factors which led up to the Yom Kippur War. First, there were no settled disputes regarding the Arab-Israeli territories which rose from the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. These unresolved disputes related to the return of Sinai to Egypt and the return of Golan Heights to Syria. Efforts of peace initiated from the UN Resolution 242 and from the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat went futile. Sadat intended to sign an agreement with Israel, following which, Israel would lift occupation from all the seized Arab land captured as a result of the 1967 war. However, Israel denied to agree on that and refused to withdraw forces from the occupied land. Keeping in view that no progress was made towards peace, and to recover the legitimacy over the Arab lands, Sadat called for a war with limited objectives. The second factor that led to the Yom Kippur War is also connected to the first one. Israel did not extend hand in efforts for peace as it felt no threat of a war from either Syria or Egypt. It was because of the reason that Israel considered it protected because of the strength of IDF, anarchy of the Arab world and a considerably huge buffer zone formed around Israel because of the Golan Heights, Sinai and the West Bank. Therefore, in spite of the warnings given by Sadat to Israel about a probable attack in 1972 and a number of times in 1973, Israeli commanders remained unprepared for the October attack from Egypt and Syria. It was Israel’s misinterpretation about the gathering of Arab armies along the Suez Canal as military exercise. [2]
|