Ofer Israeli
Dr. Israeli teaches in the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya. From 2009 to 2011, he was a visiting researcher at the Center for Peace & Security Studies, Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service (SFS).1
At 2 p.m. Middle Eastern time, on October 6, 1973, Arab military forces stormed over the 1967 ceasefire lines with Israel.2 Masses of Egyptian soldiers crossed the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula, attacking Israel's Bar-Lev line. Simultaneously, hundreds of Syrian tanks pushed through the Golan Heights into northern Israel.3 The 1973 war — also known as "The Fourth Round" and the Yom Kippur War by Israelis and many Western scholars, as well as the Ramadan War by Arabs — was launched.4
In the years following President Anwar el-Sadat's rise to power, Egypt had suffered two major defeats at Jerusalem's hands. After losing the entire Sinai Peninsula in the military catastrophe of the June 1967 Six-Day War, Cairo suffered an additional 10,000 casualties in the Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition of 1969-70.
Sadat's several pre-1973 peace initiatives did not persuade the stubborn Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, to accept a partial territorial agreement with Egypt.5 In July 1973, only three months before the outbreak of the war, Meir announced that it was her intention to "hold on to every inch of occupied territory until the Arabs [are] ready to negotiate — on Israel's terms."6 At the same time, Sadat was unsuccessful in convincing the U.S. administration of President Richard Nixon to intervene in order to initiate a peace process between Jerusalem and Cairo. As Sadat had accurately predicted several years earlier, however, only the arrival of Egyptian troops on the east bank of the Suez Canal could ultimately achieve Egypt's strategic goal: reclaiming the Sinai Peninsula by triggering a complete Israeli withdrawal.7
The Arab defeat of June 1967 came at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in particular its strategic division, the Israeli Air Force (IAF). The 1973 war, however, was fundamentally and qualitatively different. The Arabs dealt Jerusalem a major blow; it was the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict that Arabs were not totally defeated on the battlefield. On the contrary, the first phase of the war saw impressive Arab advances. The Syrians as well as the Egyptians attained numerous achievements, including the penetration of the Bar-Lev Line.8
As compared to previous Arab-Israeli wars, the relative success of the Arabs, the Egyptians in particular, during the early stages of the 1973 war, improved the possibility of a settlement. Therefore, although the war constituted one of the most traumatic events in Israel's history,9 it also led to the peace treaty between Israel and its strongest rival, Egypt, the largest and most important Arab country.
Based on the findings of this study, the 1973 war led directly to the 1978 Camp David accords. It ultimately brought peace between the two countries, following Cairo's decision to sign a bilateral agreement with Jerusalem — at the expense of its relations with the Arab and part of the Muslim world.10 Nearly two-and-a-half decades after the Camp David accords were signed on September 17, 1978, it is appropriate to take a fresh look at what happened and how.
ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE FAILURE
Although there is no question that the IDF emerged from the 1973 war victorious,11 according to many Israelis the war was a failure. It is often described as a catastrophe, for the following reasons: (1) the surprise of the synchronized Egyptian-Syrian attacks,12 (2) the great number of casualties,13 (3) the inability of the IDF to achieve a crushing military victory over the Arabs (due to superpower intervention), and (4) the loss of territory that followed the conclusion of the war.14 Beyond these factors, early in the war, in a panicked response to the Egyptian and Syrian coordinated surprise attacks,15 Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan believed that the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel was a real possibility. He told Prime Minister Golda Meir: "This is the end of the Third Temple."16
To fully understand how Israelis remember the 1973 war, one should start with the Israeli intelligence's mehdal, Hebrew for shortcoming, omission or oversight. Mehdal is strongly connected to the 1973 war, describing an event that went terribly wrong and could have been prevented or mitigated.17
After Sadat seized power, AMAN, the Israeli Military Intelligence Unit, prepared an unfavorable personal profile portraying Egypt's new ruler "as intellectually low-level, narrow-minded and lacking independent political thinking; a mediocre statesman." Sadat had already decided in the fall of 1972 to resort to war against Israel and instructed his generals to prepare to attack on October 24.18 Based on AMAN's analysis, known in Israel by the Hebrew term for conception, top Israeli political and military leaders did not believe Egypt would consider going to war until it could strike Israel's interior,19 and they believed that Syria would not go to war without Egypt.20 Ultimately, Egypt's strategic surprise in October 1973 was ideal;21 it found the IDF entirely unprepared.22
SUPERPOWER INVOLVEMENT
The Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack on Israel on October 6, 1973,23 triggered the emergence of a new situation that had been precisely predicted by President Sadat. According to his forecast, both superpowers — and the United States especially, which Sadat had tried to engage on his side in the confrontation with Israel — would increase their involvement in the region.24 With the active participation of Moscow and Washington, the 1973 war was the most dangerous event of the Cold War era25 since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, bringing the two superpowers to the brink of direct confrontation.26
The crisis escalated to global proportions by October 24, 1973, after Egypt's Third Army was completely cut off by the IDF. Consequently, Moscow was faced with a perceived intolerable level of defeat for its Arab client. As a result, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev made clear to President Nixon that, if Washington would not agree to cooperate to stop the Israeli violation of the ceasefire, "We should be faced with the necessity urgently to consider the question of taking appropriate steps unilaterally." Israel, Brezhnev added, "cannot be permitted to get away with the violation."27
Soon afterward, seven Soviet airborne divisions were placed on a heightened state of alert, and the Soviet naval presence in the Mediterranean increased.28 As a response, on the night of October 24, the Nixon administration decided to raise the U.S. nuclear alert to Defense Condition 3 (DEFCON3) on the worldwide stage, the first such alert since the Cuban Missile Crisis 11 years earlier,29 in order to deter Soviet intervention to protect Egypt30 and Syria.31 Consequently, the IDF supplied Egypt's Third Army with food and water.32 A day later, on October 26, Washington lifted its alert; the most explosive stage of the crisis was over.33
After the war, Washington was subjected to damaging economic warfare, particularly from the consequences of the oil embargo34 imposed by the Arab producers against the West on October 17, 1973.35 The White House accurately concluded that the status quo would be dangerous. Simultaneously, the new situation that emerged provided an opportunity to increase American influence at Soviet expense. Washington's interests now appeared to be best served by an active effort to promote some progress in negotiations toward a peace deal between Israel and the Arabs, even at the risk of conflict with its closest ally in the region.
Third-party involvement could be a double-edged sword. Outside intervention might help to limit military escalation and end conflicts. At the same time, it could also help reignite it.36 During the war, Israel, the stronger side, was deterred from using military force to crush Egypt — in this case the weaker side. At the same time, however, the U.S. presence also encouraged Cairo to launch the war against Israel in the first place, to obtain superpower support for its strategic goals. In fact, Egypt started the 1973 war against Israel without expecting to prevail militarily. Sadat, however, anticipated achieving a political victory.
Without Sadat's precise assumption that Moscow,37 and the equally committed Washington, would protect Egypt and prevent a colossal defeat in the war, Cairo would never have launched it, considering the shameful 1967 debacle. Following that, Washington did not condemn Egyptian-Syrian aggression against Israel.38 U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, however, feared that Jerusalem would succeed in conquering territory beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines.39 On October 8, he told the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Simcha Dinitz, that the United States opposed any further territorial acquisitions on the part of Israel.40
A DERIVATIVE PRODUCT
The 1973 surprise attack on Israel had wide-ranging military, economic and political effects at both regional and global levels.41 From a military point of view, during the 15 days of war, the losses on both sides were estimated at 555 aircraft, 2,700 tanks and 16 ships. The direct financial cost of the war was $8-10 billion.42
The Arab decision to impose an oil embargo caused wide damage to the global economy.43 The war also triggered Cairo's foreign-policy shift from a pro-Soviet attitude to alignment with Washington.44 However, the most important political outcome was President Sadat's Jerusalem visit in 1978, which was followed by the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. The Camp David agreement certainly would not have been possible without the 1973 war and its humiliation of the IDF during the first phases of the fighting.45
EFFECTS
Israel
At the end of the 1973 war, Israel was militarily victorious and maintained its control over most of the pre-war territory. As opposed to the results of the 1967 war, however, Jerusalem's victory came at a high cost: $7 billion was expended, the equivalent of one year's GNP; 804 tanks and 114 jetfighters and planes were destroyed; more than 2,500 Israelis died and almost 3,000 were wounded.46
One major conclusion was clear: American financial assistance and weapons, and Washington's deterrence of Soviet interference, were now essential to Israel's security. In order to convince Jerusalem to make progress, Washington offered generous support. Aside from the promise of $2-3 billion annually for the next five years and continuous arms benefits, especially the state-of-the-art F-15 jetfighter, Washington also promised Israel access to oil in the event of another war. President Gerald R. Ford also guaranteed Israel U.S. protection in any incident involving Soviet intervention.47
Egypt and the Arabs
Following the limited Egyptian military achievements in the first stages of the war, especially at the Suez Canal crossing, Arab pride was at least partially restored. "The war has retrieved Arab honor," exclaimed Egypt's chief of staff. "Even if we are defeated now, no one can say that the Egyptian soldier is not a superior fighter."48 At the same time, the favorable results of the war for Israel led the Arabs to the conclusion that, even in the best circumstances, the military balance still stood in favor of Israel. Given the support it received from Washington, Jerusalem could not be dislodged by military force alone from the territories it liberated in the 1967 war.49
THE ISRAEL-EGYPT TREATY
The roots of peace often stretch far back into the past. The origins of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979 can be traced back to the June 1967 Six-Day War. Resolution 242, passed by the UN Security Council in November 1967, was only a recommendation.50 Yet Israel, Egypt and Jordan accepted it as the basis for a settlement. Syria accepted it later, in 1974. More than all other factors, however, it was the 1973 war that served as a watershed event in making it possible for Jerusalem and Cairo to achieve peace.
During the pre-1973-war period, Washington, and especially Kissinger, failed to bring about an Israeli-Egyptian settlement.51 Actually, the White House not only failed to prevent the war; it also, in one way or another, catalyzed its outbreak. After Sadat realized Washington had no real interest in pressuring Jerusalem to withdraw from Sinai, Cairo abandoned diplomacy and initiated the war. Sadat assumed that such a move would trigger direct U.S. involvement and would help him successfully reclaim the Sinai Peninsula.52
Sadat raised the question of the war's termination and its possible outcomes during its early planning stages. His objectives, as he explained to the Soviet ambassador, were to break the deadlock in negotiations, to "shatter Israel's theory of security' (in which military deterrence and the territorial buffer of the Sinai Peninsula would prevent war and ensure Israel's security), and to restore our self-confidence."53 Describing his own decision-making approach, Sadat wrote in his memoirs: "I always know what I am doing and calculate all the possible consequences of every step I take."54 Long before the war, Sadat had notified his predecessor, Nasser: "If we could recapture even four inches of Sinai territory... and establish ourselves there so firmly that no power on earth could dislodge us, then the whole situation would change — east, west, all over."55 History has fully vindicated Sadat's analysis.
Soon after taking office as the president of Egypt, Sadat came to the conclusion that Cairo should rely on Washington rather than Moscow to achieve its strategic goal of regaining the Sinai Peninsula. In his efforts to increase U.S. support, Sadat was ready to cut the Soviet military presence in Egypt.56 During a visit to Egypt in order to effect an advanced interim agreement on the Suez Canal, U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers was told by Sadat,
If we can work out an interim settlement, I promise you, I give you my personal assurance, that all the Russian ground troops will be out of my country at the end of six months. I will keep Russian pilots to train my pilots because that's the only way my pilots can learn how to fly. But in so far as the bulk of the Russians — the ten or twelve thousand — they will all be out of Egypt within six months if we can make a deal. 57
Leaders who launch major diplomatic initiatives tend also to rely on major military programs.58 President Sadat's approach, relying on both diplomacy and military coercion, was reflected in his strategy for Egypt59 and his efforts to reclaim Sinai.
Three months after the expulsion of Soviet forces from Egypt, Sadat ordered his generals to plan a limited military operation to cross the Suez Canal and enter the Sinai Peninsula in order to force Jerusalem to engage in peace talks.60 On October 6, the Egyptians launched a massive attack against the Bar-Lev Line, overwhelming the IDF61 and establishing a foothold on the eastern bank of the canal.62
Although Israel was caught by surprise, and the Egyptian and Syrian armies made significant advances into the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, Jerusalem ultimately succeeded after several days in involving its reserves and launching successful counter-attacks at both the northern and southern borders. Following intense fighting on both fronts, the IDF recovered lost land and advanced even further into Arab territory, launching raids deep into the African subcontinent and also near the Syrian capital of Damascus. However, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union supported an Israeli victory. Washington and Moscow wanted the surrounded Egyptian Third Army to be saved,63 and they both put significant efforts into ending the war.64
Paradoxically, the 1973 war, instead of reducing the influence of Resolution 242, actually increased it. In October 1973, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 338, calling for a ceasefire and for "the parties concerned to start immediately after the ceasefire the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242 in all of its parts." Resolution 338 also stated that, "immediately and concurrently with the ceasefire, negotiations [should] start between the parties concerned under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East."65
After the 1973 war, Kissinger engaged in "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East, seeking to promote peace talks between Israel and the Arabs, as well as to weaken Soviet influence in the region. On November 7, he went to Cairo to discuss with Sadat how to get Israel to withdraw from the positions it had newly occupied in violation of Resolution 338, which ordered a ceasefire on the lines of October 22.66 In December, a peace conference assembled by Washington and Moscow was held in Geneva, attended by representatives of Egypt, Israel and Jordan (Syria was invited but did not attend).67 In January and May 1974, Kissinger brokered the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Syrian disengagement agreements. As a result, the Arabs lifted the oil embargo in March 1974, and Egypt reopened the Suez Canal to international shipping.68
Both Cairo and Amman preferred not to enter into direct negotiations with Jerusalem, addressing their remarks to the U.S. and Soviet co-chairmen of the conference, rather than to the Israeli delegate. However, the 1973 war also marked a shift in the Arab position on the issue of direct negotiations with Israel.69 In September 1975, Jerusalem and Cairo concluded a further interim agreement on disengagement, known as the Sinai II Agreement.70 On November 9, 1977, Sadat delivered a major speech to the People's Assembly and emotionally declared that "he was ready to go anywhere in the world, even to Jerusalem, to deliver a speech and address the Knesset [the Israeli Parliament] if this would help save the blood of his sons."71
Although Sadat had little to offer but the removal of his country from the conflict, it actually would have been impractical for him to accept anything but full Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula.72 Ultimately, as history has shown, Sadat succeeded in achieving the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian hands. One of Sadat's tactics for achieving his strategic goal was to agree to terminate the state of war between Cairo and Jerusalem and establish peace while Israeli forces remained in Sinai. Sadat also agreed to start the process of normalization before Israeli forces left the peninsula.73
After decades of hostility and wars and at the end of 13 days of intensive negotiations, Israel and Egypt, the two most powerful states in the Middle East, agreed to make peace. President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David agreement on September 1978,74 the final product of the long Israeli-Egyptian conflict.75 Following the peace agreement, Jerusalem returned not only the entire Sinai Peninsula but also the Alma oilfields to Cairo, despite the enormous burden of $1 billion per year that this imposed on the Israeli economy. Egypt, for its part, normalized relations with Israel in the face of severe Arab and Muslim opposition.76 Cairo, like Israel, received American economic support. In the fiscal year of 1976, for instance, U.S. economic assistance to Egypt jumped from $371.9 million to $986.6 million.77
CONCLUSIONS
Sadat's principal goals before the 1973 war included trying to recover the Sinai Peninsula and gaining Washington's support. Kissinger's belief prior to the war was that Cairo would finally turn to the United States for help in negotiating a settlement with Jerusalem. Their predictions ultimately proved correct, but at the cost of the October 1973 war. Sadat consciously expected military loses, but the war was fought for a political objective that he shrewdly calculated he would achieve.78 In the end, Sadat was right and Israel returned to Egypt the territory lost in the 1967 war.
The historic significance of the Camp David accords lies in the fact that Egypt, the largest and the most important Arab state, acknowledged Israel's legitimacy.79 In February 1980, Egypt and Israel established normal international relations, an event that deepened both regional and international controversy.80
1 Author's note: I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Roy I. Cohavi, Marc Assaraf, Hadas Kroitoru, and the anonymous reviewers.
2 Besides Egypt and Syria, other Arab countries were involved in the war. On October 12, for instance, the Iraqi soldiers joined the Syrian Army. Michael Eisenstadt and Kenneth M. Pollack, "Armies of Snow and Armies of Sand: The Impact of Soviet Military Doctrine on Arab Militaries," Middle East Journal 55, no. 4 (Autumn 2001): 549.
3 For the Israeli-Syrian front during the war, see Shmuel Tzabag, "Termination of the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Syria: Positions, Decisions and Constraints at Israel's Ministerial Level," Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 4 (October 2001): 182-205.
4 Throughout this article I will refer to it as the 1973 War or the October 1973 War.
5 Ofer Israeli, Circuitous Relations between Military Results and Political Outcomes: The October 1973 War (forthcoming). For Egypt's foreign policy shift after President Gamal Abd al-Nasser's sudden death on September 28, 1970, and Sadat's position on this change, see Ibrahim A. Karawan, "Sadat and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Revisited," International Journal of Middle East Studies 26, no. 2 (May 1994): 249-266.
6 Fred J. Khouri, The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, 3rd ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 372. Jerusalem was for many years unwilling to pull out to the pre-1967 war lines, since the post-1967 ceasefire lines were much easier to defend than the 1949 armistice lines. Michael Akehurst, "The Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel," International Relations 1, no. 7 (1981): 1043-1044.
7 Israeli, Circuitous Relations between Military Results & Political Outcomes.
8 Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, "The Bar-Lev Line Revisited," Journal of Strategic Studies 11, no. 2 (1988): 149-176.
9 For the question of whether the main source of Israel's military defeat in the first stage of the 1973 war, which represented the worst military defeat in Israel's history, was a strategic surprise or inherited deficiencies in the IDF's preparation for the war, see Uri Bar-Joseph, "Strategic Surprise or Fundamental Flaws? The Sources of Israel's Military Defeat at the Beginning of the 1973 War," Journal of Military History 72, no. 2 (April 2008): 509-530.
10 Only in February 2013, for instance, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Cairo on the first trip by an Iranian president to Egypt since the 1979 Islamic revolution. "Iran's Ahmadinejad in Egypt on Historic Visit," Reuters, February 5, 2013.
11 Israeli, Circuitous Relations between Military Results and Political Outcomes; and Ofer Israeli, The Relation between Military Results and Political Outcomes (Unpublished M.A. dissertation: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2002) [Hebrew].
12 For the Israeli intelligence failure before the 1973 Arab attack, see Uri Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2005).
13 Israel lost 2,687 soldiers in the war and the Arabs lost 15,000-16,000 soldiers. Geraint Hughes, "Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973," Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 3.
14 Charles S. Liebman, "The Myth of Defeat: The Memory of the Yom Kippur War in Israeli Society," Middle Eastern Studies 29, no. 3 (July 1993): 399-418.
15 Until October 6 the Israelis and many American officials were convinced that the Arabs would not attack Israel. Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War (New York: Schocken Books, 2004), 51-55; and Edgar O'Ballance, No Victor, No Vanquished: The Yom Kippur War (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1979), 51-52.
16 Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991), 223. "Third Temple" is a symbolic reference to the modern Jewish State of Israel. The first two temples were destroyed by the invading Babylonians around 586 BC, and by the Romans in 70 AD.
17 Liebman, "The Myth of Defeat," 413.
18 Yoav Gelber, "The Collapse of the Israeli Intelligence's Conception: Apologetics, Memory and History of the Israeli Response to Egypt's Alleged Intention to Open War in May 1973," Intelligence and National Security (2012), 1-27, at 2, 3. At least within the Egyptian army ranks, general thinking about preparing for another war with Israel started right at the end of the 1967 defeat. Mohamed H. Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (New York: Quadrangle Press, 1975), 2. According to the Egyptian official history of the war, as early as March 21, 1973, D-Day was determined as October 6, the day the war actually broke out. El-Hassan Badri et al., The Ramadan War (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1978), 25.
19 Timothy Walton, Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 175-181.
20 The Israeli Military Intelligence conception included two assumptions that guided AMAN's assessments of the probability of war against the Arabs before the Yom Kippur War. First, Cairo would not start again a war against Jerusalem before receiving Soviet jetfighters capable of targeting Israeli cities and receiving ground-to-ground missiles. Second, although Damascus was capable of hitting targets in the depth of Israel, it would not go to war without its strongest Arab ally, Egypt. Gelber, "The Collapse of the Israeli Intelligence's Conception," 9.
21 For the strategic surprise of the 1973 war, see Avi Shlaim, "Failures in National Intelligence Estimates: The Case of the Yom Kippur War," World Politics 28, no. 3 (April 1976): 348-380. The discussions on the military success achieved by the Egyptian armed forces in crossing the Suez Canal on October 6, 1973, mostly focus on the element of surprise achieved by the Egyptians and the failure of Israeli military intelligence. For a different perspective, focusing on the connection between the way the Egyptians solved their high-command problems in the aftermath of the 1967 war and the positive results of the 1973 war in Cairo's eyes, see George W. Gawrych, "The Egyptian High Command in the 1973 War," Armed Forces and Society 13, no. 4 (Summer 1987): 535-559. For another study dealing with the question of why Egypt performed so poorly in the 1967 war and improved so significantly in the 1973 war, see Risa Brooks, "An Autocracy at War: Explaining Egypt's Military Effectiveness, 1967 and 1973," Security Studies 15, no. 3 (2006): 396-430.
22 One of the main reasons for the Israeli Military Intelligence failure was the groupthink attitude prevalent amongst IDF analysts and commanders. On groupthink theory, see Irving Janis, Groupthink, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982). Following the Yom Kippur intelligence mehdal, and in order to minimize future potential failures resulting from a groupthink attitude, AMAN built a new and unique division called Ipcha Mistabra, which refers to an Aramaic phrase used in the Talmud — the central text of Rabbinic Judaism considered second only to the Torah, which is mistakenly known as the Bible — that states that the opposite reasoning could make more sense and thus should also be presented.
23 To trick both the Israelis and the outside world, both the Egyptian position toward the Canal and the Syrian buildup along the Golan were camouflaged as exercises. Moscow was not informed until October 3. The following day, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad informed the Soviet ambassador in Damascus that the attack would begin on October 6. Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 8-28; and Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (London: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 595-597.
24 For the American engagement in the Middle East since the late eighteenth century, see Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007). For the unsuccessful and successful U.S. efforts to foster reconciliation between Israel and the Arabs, see Aaron D. Miller, The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (New York: Bantam Books, 2008).
25 For the military dimension of the 1973 war and its effects on the Cold War, see Ahron Bregman, Israel's Wars, 1947-93 (London: Routledge, 2000); Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1982); and Walter Laquer, Confrontation: The Middle East and World Politics (London: Sphere, 1974).
26 For the nearly suicidal Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, see Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 1971). For a criticism of Allison's model, see J. Bendor and T.H. Hammond, "Rethinking Allison's Models," American Political Science Review 86, no. 2 (June 1992): 301-322.
27 New York Times, April 10, 1974. Quoted in Karen Dawisha, "Soviet Decision-Making in the Middle East: The 1973 October War and the 1980 Gulf War," International Affairs 57, no. 1 (Winter 1980-1981): 52 fn. 27. For a detailed description of Soviet military moves prior to the alert crisis, see Jon D. Glassman, Arms for the Arabs: The Soviet Union and War in the Middle East (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), Chapter 5.
28 William B. Quandt, "Soviet Policy in the October Middle East War, II," International Affairs 53, no. 4 (October 1977): 587-603.
29 Following the alert, American conventional and nuclear forces — approximately 2.2 million soldiers worldwide — put under Defense Condition 3 alert, which is the middle status of the five-step American military alert system. Defense Condition 1 is the highest military alert stage, when attack is imminent. Def-Con 5 is the normal condition, when there is no threat of attack. Scott D. Sagan, "Lessons of the Yom Kippur Alert," Foreign Policy 36 (Autumn, 1979): 160, 169.
30 Frank C. Zagare, "A Game-Theoretic Evaluation of the Cease-Fire Alert Decision of 1973," Journal of Peace Research 20, no. 1 (1983): 73-86.
31 At this time, intelligence on Soviet military preparations led some American analysts to believe that Moscow might intervene in Syria. Recent documents, however, teach us that the Soviets were not preparing to intervene. Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1994), 420-433; and Richard N. Lebow and Janice G. Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 226-260.
32 Dawisha, "Soviet Decision-Making in the Middle East," 53.
33 Quandt, "Soviet Policy in the October Middle East War, II," 590, 598.
34 After Israel was attacked and the U.S. pledged to resupply its military, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) responded by raising the price of crude oil by 70 percent. The embargo ended in March 1974. Douglas Martin, "James E. Akins, Envoy to Saudi Arabia, Dies at 83," New York Times, July, 24, 2010. Also see Ibrahim F.I. Shihata, The Case for the Arab Oil Embargo: A Legal Analysis of Arab Oil Measures with the Full Text of Relevant Resolutions and Communiqués (Beirut: The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1975); and Rajeev K. Goel and Mathew J. Morey, "Effect of the 1973 Oil Price Embargo: A Non-Parametric Analysis," Energy Economics 15, no. 1 (1993): 39-48. For a study that traces the origin of the oil crisis well before the beginning of the 1973 war, see Giuliano Garavini, "Completing Decolonization: The 1973 'Oil Shock' and the Struggle for Economic Rights," International History Review 33, no. 3 (September 2011): 473-487. For the Arab oil embargo of 1956, which was specifically aimed at Britain and France as a result of their collaboration with Israel during the Suez War, and the Arab oil embargo of 1967, which was a reaction to the Six-Day War, see Arthur J. Klinghoffer, "The Soviet Union and the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74," International Relations 5, no. 3 (1976): 1011-1023.
35 Hughes, "Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973," 1.
36 Steve Chan, "Major-Power Intervention and War Initiation by the Weak," International Politics 47, no. 2 (2010), 164.
37 The Soviets were not informed of the Egyptian-Syrian plan to attack Israel until October 3 and were not told of the date of the attack until October 4. Interview with Sadat in Al-Nahar, March 1, 1974, in Dawisha, "Soviet Decision-Making in the Middle East," 51 fn. 22. For Arab-Soviet relations between the 1967 war and 1973 war, see Yury Polsky, "Arab and Soviet Perceptions between the Six-Day War of June 1967 and the October War of 1973," Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 26, no. 3 (1999): 181-222.
38 William B. Quandt, Decade of Decisions: American Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967-1976 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1977), 170.
39 Avraham Greenbaum, "The U.S. Airlift to Israel in 1973 and Its Origins," Israel Affairs 13, no. 1 (January 2007): 131.
40 Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 490.
41 For the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, see, among many others, Simon Dunstan, The Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973 (Oxford: Osprey Publication, 2007).
42 SIPRI YEARBOOK 1974: 5-9, 151, 152. Quoted in Bahgat Korany, "The Glory That Was? The Pan-Arab, Pan Islamic Alliance Decisions, October 1973," International Political Science Review 5, no. 1 (1984): 47-48.
43 On October 17, the Arab oil producers decided to cut output by 5 percent. Three days later, the Saudis encouraged other Gulf States to impose a 10-percent reduction across the board. William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), 437-438.
44 Korany, "The Glory That Was?" 47-48.
45 Israeli, "Circuitous Relations between Military Results and Political Outcomes"; and Israeli, The Relation between Military Results and Political Outcomes. Also see Elizabeth Stephens, "Caught on the Hop: The Yom Kippur War," History Today 58, no. 10 (October 2008): 44-50.
46 John Orme, "The Unexpected Origins of Peace: Three Case Studies," Political Science Quarterly 111, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 121.
47 Orme, "The Unexpected Origins of Peace," 122-123.
48 Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel (New York: Knopf, 1979), 763.
49 Orme, "The Unexpected Origins of Peace," 121.
50 For the UN Security Council Resolution 242, see 22 U.N. SCOR (1382d mtg.) 8, U.N. Doc. S/INF/22/REv. 2 (1967). For the U.N. Security Council Resolution 338, see 28 U.N. SCOR (1747th mtg.) 10, U.N. Doc. S/INF/29 (1973).
51 Israeli, "Circuitous Relations between Military Results and Political Outcomes."
52 Boaz Vanetik and Zaki Shalom, "The White House Middle East Policy in 1973 as a Catalyst for the Outbreak of the Yom Kippur War," Israel Studies 16, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 53.
53 Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity (New York: Harper and Raw, 1978), 244, 246, 254.
54 Ibid., 290.
55 Ibid., 244.
56 For Sadat's decision to remove the Soviet military presence from Egypt during the summer of 1972, see Craig A. Daigle, "The Russians Are Going: Sadat, Nixon and the Soviet Presence in Egypt, 1970-1971," Middle East Review of International Affairs 8, no. 1 (March 2004): 1-15.
57 Recording of a conversation between Richard Nixon and William Rogers, May 19, 1971, Oval Office, Conversation 501-4, NA, NPMS, WHT. Quoted in Daigle, "The Russians Are Going," 6 fn. 39.
58 Michael I. Handel, The Diplomacy of Surprise: Hitler, Nixon, Sadat (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
59 Zeev Maoz, "Peace by Empire? Conflict Outcomes and International Stability, 1816-1976," Journal of Peace Research 21, no. 3 (September 1984): 227.
60 To successfully achieve his purpose, Sadat needed military and financial support from his Arab counterparts. Egyptian and Syrian planners met in Cairo on August 22-23, 1973, to prepare Operation Badr, the coordinated attack on the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Sadat also flew to the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, to persuade King Faisal to organize oil sanctions against the West. Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Jordan, Morocco, and Sudan also gave their military assistance. Hughes, "Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973," 17, 19.
61 On Israel's underestimating Egypt's capabilities before the 1973 war, see Michael I. Handel, Perception, Deception and Surprise: The Case of the Yom Kippur War (Jerusalem Post Press, 1976), 45-46.
62 Hughes, "Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973," 19.
63 Sagan, "Lessons of the Yom Kippur Alert," 161.
64 For the negotiations between U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev on ending the 1973 war, see Victor Israelyan, "The October 1973 War: Kissinger in Moscow," Middle East Journal 49, No. 2 (Spring 1995), 248-268. For the evaluation of the bargaining behavior of Arabs and Israelis during the 1973 war, see Shibley Telhami, "Evaluating Bargaining Performance: The Case of Camp David," Political Science Quarterly 107, no. 4 (Winter 1992-1993): 629-653. For the political behavior of the 1973 Arab war coalition, see Avraham Sela, "The 1973 Arab War Coalition: Aims, Coherence, and Gain-Distribution," Israel Affairs 6, no. 1 (1999), 36-69.
65 Akehurst, "The Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel," 1036.
66 Adel Safty, "Sadat's Negotiations with the United States and Israel: From Sinai to Camp David," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 50, no. 3 (July 1991): 287.
67 For the secret talks between Jerusalem and Amman that began in 1963 and continued until the two countries signed the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty in 1994, see Moshe Shemesh, "On Two Parallel Tracks — The Secret Jordanian-Israeli Talks (July 1967-September 1973)," Israel Studies 15, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 87-120.
68 Hughes, "Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973," 36.
69 Akehurst, "The Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel," 1037-1038.
70 Hughes, "Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973," 36.
71 Fahmy Ismail, Negotiating for Peace in the Middle East (London: Groom Helm, 1983), 265.
72 Safty, "Sadat's Negotiations with the United States and Israel," 474.
73 The "Article H" of the Israeli-Egyptian agreement of January 18, 1974, for instance, argues that "This agreement is not a peace agreement. It is a step toward a just and durable peace." Quoted in Gary S. Schiff, "Beyond Disengagement: Conflict Resolution in the Middle East since the 1973 War," World Affairs 137, no. 3 (Winter 1974-1975): 195.
74 "The Camp David Agreements for Middle East Peace," Journal of Palestine Studies 8, no. 2 (Winter 1979): 205-214.
75 Hughes, "Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973," 36.
76 Sol M. Linowitz, "The Prospects for the Camp David Peace Process," SAIS Review 2 (Summer 1981): 95.
77 Ismail, Negotiating for Peace in the Middle East, 282.
78 John L. Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (Penguin Press, 2005), 204.
79 Shlomo Avineri, "Beyond Camp David," Foreign Policy, no. 46 (Spring 1982): 19.
80 Mohamed H. Heikal, "Egyptian Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 56, no. 4 (1978): 714-727.
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