| The Yom Kippur War and its aftermath
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In late September and early October 1973, Syrian and Egyptian units were moved to the ceasefire lines and placed on an alert. Both nations announced autumn manoeuvres. On the even of the Jewish New Year the massive concentrations of Syrian soldiers along the Golan Heights ceasefire lines alarmed Israel, and its defence minister ordered the line strengthened. On Yom Kippur Eve, it was evident that the Egyptian and Syrian forces had moved to attack position and partial mobilisation was ordered in Israel. The final warning of an impending war came at 4 am on October 6. A pre-emptive strike, suggested by the chief of staff, was rejected by the prime minister for political reasons. This decision was later approved by the cabinet.
As the emergency session of the cabinet ended, word came that the Syrian and Egyptian forces had launched an attack on the Israeli positions along the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights ceasefire lines. Protected on both fronts by an umbrella of missiles, the Egyptians were able to cross the Suez Canal and establish a number of bridgeheads, while Syrian armour broke into the Golan Heights. Israel ordered general mobilisation and began to move troops and equipment to the frontlines. On the third day of the war, the general staff decided to deal first with the Syrian invaders while holding the Egyptians near the Canal. An Israeli counterattack drove the Syrians back to the ceasefire lines and inflicted heavy casualties on them. By October 10, the IDF had recovered most of the Golan Heights and began to drive across the ceasefire lines on the Kuneitra-Damascus road. A few days later Israel occupied a salient of 320 square kilometres, which brought its forces to a distance of some 28 miles from Damascus.
In the south, after holding the Egyptians in their bridgeheads Israel launched a counterattack and by October 15, an Israeli task force was operating west of the Suez Canal, having crossed this waterway at Dever-Soir. The task force was augmented by additional tanks and infantry and began to drive north and south, while destroying missile batteries. On October 21, the 20,000 strong Egyptian Third Army came under Israeli siege, as the IDF extended its salient inside Egypt.
A massive Soviet air- and sealift was launched shortly after the outbreak of the war. Israel appealed to the United States to supply it with weapons it had lost in the early days of the war. The American airlift began on October 14 and brought to Israel large amounts of sorely needed weapons. During the war, the Israel navy excelled in naval operations, sinking Egyptian and Syrian vessels, shelling Syrian and Egyptian naval bases and protecting the sea-lanes to Israel. Egypt, however, proclaimed a naval blockade on the Straits of Bab al-Mandeb, at the entrance to the Red Sea.
During the first ten days of the war, the Soviets refused to permit the Security Council to call for a ceasefire. In fact, the United Nations was paralysed at the time. But once the tide changed in Israel's favour, the Soviets, at the request of Egypt's President Sadat, sought ways to bring the war to a rapid conclusion. On October 16, Prime Minister Kosygin flew to Cairo where he assessed the situation as being most unfavourable to Egypt. Upon returning to Moscow, Communist Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev asked President Nixon to despatch Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Moscow for urgent consultations. While he was in Moscow, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on a ceasefire formula, which was passed by the Security Council on October 22 (Resolution 338), which also called for immediate peace negotiations.
Both Israel and Egypt accepted the resolution unconditionally. Syria held out for another day. Israel welcomed the paragraph which called for direct negotiations.
But the way did not end at the specified time (1852 local time). Both the Egyptian and the Syrian troops continued to fire and the besieged Third Army attempted to break out of its encirclement. Israeli forces had reached the port of Adabiya on October 23 and completed the encirclement of the city of Suez. The war finally came to and end on October 24. Two days later both the Soviet Union and the United States put their forces on an alert and the danger of a super power confrontation loomed large. Israel was asked by the United States to permit the passage of a supplies convoy to the Third Army, and was warned that failure to do so would mean Soviet military intervention. Israel complied, and a convoy went through the lines, under the supervision of a newly constituted United Nations Emergency Force.
Israel and the United States agreed that the next move in the direction of a settlement should be the stabilisation of the ceasefire, which was being violated regularly on both fronts. American mediation secured the signing of a Six Point Agreement on November 11. It was negotiated directly by senior Israeli and Egyptian officers in a tent on Kilometre 101 of the Cairo-Suez road. In the course oof November, five of the six points specified in the agreement were implemented, including the exchange of prisoners and lifting the naval blockade from the Straits of Bad al-Mandeb. Supply convoys carried food, water and medicine to the Third Army and to the city of Suez under United Nations supervision. But the second paragraph, which called for the return of forces to the lines they held on October 22 "in the framework of agreement on the disengagement and separation of forces" was not implemented, in spite of lengthy negotiations.
An Arab summit conference called for the intensification of an oil embargo imposed in October on the USA and Netherlands, as "friends of Israel" and the withdrawal of Israel from all occupied Arab lands and the recognition of the rights of the Palestinians. The summit proclaimed the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinians in any future negotiations. Israel refused to negotiate with this terrorist group and announced that it would not attend a peace conference if the PLO were to be invited. Israel also declared that it would not attend the conference if Syrian representatives would come before Syria complied with the Geneva Convention, permitted the Red Cross to visit Israeli prisoners of war and gave Israel a list of the prisoners held in Syria.
The Geneva Peace conference opened on December 21, attended by Israel, Egypt and Jordan, with the United States and the Soviet Union as co-chairmen. The meeting was presided over the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The conference set up a machinery called the Geneva Peace Conference. It reached its decisions on the basis of a consensus and its major achievement was to order an Israel-Egypt military working group to continue its efforts to reach a separation of forces agreement on the Egyptian front. Negotiations, however, did not produce any results, and the parties finally invited Dr. Kissinger to help bring them together. In ten days of intensive negotiations, flying between Jerusalem and Aswan, the United States Secretary of State was able to bring about the conclusion of the Separation of Forces agreement, signed on January 18, on Kilometre 101, by the chiefs of staffs of the Israeli and Egyptian armed forces.
Even before the agreement was implemented, preparations were under way to secure and Israel-Syria Separation of Forces Agreement. Talks were held in Washington separately between Dr. Kissinger and Israeli and Syrian envoys. Later, the Secretary came to the Middle East, and after a month of shuttling from Jerusalem to Damascus, an agreement was signed in Geneva on May 21. Before that, Syria had agreed to hand over to Israel the list of the prisoners of war and permit Red Cross visits.
Meanwhile, elections were held in Israel on December 31, 1973. Mrs. Meir reformed her cabinet in early March, but resigned six weeks later. On June 3, Yitzhak Rabin presented his cabinet to the Knesset, and won a vote of confidence based on the Labour Party platform. The new government policy was to try and make peace while safeguarding the security of Israel. Special attention was devoted to the next phase of talks with the Arab states and to strengthening the friendship and understanding with the United States, which was further demonstrated in a visit to Israel of President Nixon in June 1974.
Meron Medzini, 1976
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