Yom Kippur War

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Yom Kippur War/October War
Part of the Cold War and Arab–Israeli conflict
Egyptian forces crossing the Suez Canal on October 7
Date October 6–25, 1973 Location Both banks of the Suez Canal, Golan Heights, and surrounding regions Result Israeli tactical victory[8] UN cease-fire after UNSCR 338, 339 and 340. Geneva Conference Sinai Interim Agreement Political and strategic gains for Egypt and Israel. See long-term effects
Belligerents
Egypt  Syria Expeditionary forces: Iraq  Jordan	Israel
Supported by: Soviet Union  Algeria[9]  Cuba[10]  Kuwait[11]  Lebanon[12] Libya[13]  North Korea[14]  Pakistan[15]  Saudi Arabia[11]  Tunisia[16]	Supported by: United States
Commanders and leaders
Anwar Sadat Ahmad Ismail Ali Hafez al-Assad Mustafa Tlass Saad El Shazly Yusuf Shakkour Abdel Ghani el-Gammasy Ali Aslan	Golda Meir Moshe Dayan David Elazar Israel Tal Shmuel Gonen Yitzhak Hofi Binyamin Peled Haim Bar-Lev
Strength
Egypt: 650,000[17]–800,000[18] troops 1,700 tanks (1,020 crossed)[19] 2,400 armored carriers 1,120 artillery units[20] 400 combat aircraft 140 helicopters[21] 104 Navy vessels 150 surface to air missile batteries (62 in the front line)[22] Syria: 150,000[17] troops 1,200 tanks 800–900 armored carriers 600 artillery units[20][23][24] Expeditionary Forces*: 100,000 troops[17] 500–670 tanks[25][26] 700 armored carriers[25] Cuba: 1,500[10]–4,000[27] troops	375,000[17]–415,000 troops, 1,700 tanks,[28] 3,000 armored carriers, 945 artillery units,[20] 440 combat aircraft
Casualties and losses
8,000[29]–18,500[30] dead 18,000[29]–35,000[31] wounded 8,783 captured 2,250[32]–2,300[33] tanks destroyed or captured 341[29]–514[34] aircraft destroyed 19 naval vessels sunk[35]	2,521[36]–2,800[29] dead 7,250[37]–8,800[29] wounded 293 captured 400 tanks destroyed[38] 102 aircraft destroyed[39]
* Not all participated in combat operations

[show] v t e Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War (Hebrew: מלחמת יום הכיפורים‎ Milẖemet Yom HaKipurim or מלחמת יום כיפור Milẖemet Yom Kipur; Arabic: حرب أكتوبر‎ ḥarb ʾUktōbar, or حرب تشرين ḥarb Tišrīn), also known as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War and the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was a war fought by the coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel from October 6 to 25, 1973.
The war began when the coalition launched a joint surprise attack on Israeli positions in the Israeli-occupied territories on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, which occurred that year during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Egyptian and Syrian forces crossed ceasefire lines to enter the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights respectively, which had been captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Both the United States and the Soviet Union initiated massive resupply efforts to their respective allies during the war, and this led to a near-confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers.^[40]
The war began with a massive and successful Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal. After crossing the cease-fire lines, Egyptian forces advanced virtually unopposed into the Sinai Peninsula. After three days, Israel had mobilized most of its forces and managed to halt the Egyptian offensive, settling into a stalemate. The Syrians coordinated their attack on the Golan Heights to coincide with the Egyptian offensive and initially made threatening gains into Israeli-held territory. Within three days, however, Israeli forces had managed to push the Syrians back to the pre-war ceasefire lines. They then launched a four-day counter-offensive deep into Syria. Within a week, Israeli artillery began to shell the outskirts of Damascus. As Egyptian president Anwar Sadat began to worry about the integrity of his major ally, he believed that capturing two strategic passes located deeper in the Sinai would make his position stronger during the negotiations. He therefore ordered the Egyptians to go back on the offensive, but the attack was quickly repulsed. The Israelis then counterattacked at the seam between the two Egyptian armies, crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt, and began slowly advancing southward and westward towards Cairo in over a week of heavy fighting which inflicted heavy casualties on both sides.
On October 22 a United Nations-brokered ceasefire quickly unraveled, with each side blaming the other for the breach. By October 24, the Israelis had improved their positions considerably and completed their encirclement of Egypt's Third Army and the city of Suez. This development led to tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, a second ceasefire was imposed cooperatively on October 25 to end the war. At the conclusion of hostilities, Israeli forces were just 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Damascus and 101 kilometres (63 mi) from Cairo.
The war had far-reaching implications. The Arab World, which had been humiliated by the lopsided rout of the Egyptian–Syrian–Jordanian alliance in the Six-Day War, felt psychologically vindicated by early successes in the conflict. In Israel, despite impressive operational and tactical achievements on the battlefield, the war led to recognition that it could not guarantee always to dominate the Arab states militarily. These changes paved the way for the subsequent peace process. The 1978 Camp David Accords that followed led to the return of the Sinai to Egypt and normalized relations—the first peaceful recognition of Israel by an Arab country. Egypt continued its drift away from the Soviet Union and left the Soviet sphere of influence entirely.

Contents

• 1 Background
  • 1.1 Events leading up to the war
  • 1.2 Lead-up to the surprise attack
    • 1.2.1 Egyptian and Syrian military exercises
  • 1.3 Lack of Israeli pre-emptive attack
• 2 Combat operations
  • 2.1 In the Sinai
    • 2.1.1 Egyptian attack
    • 2.1.2 Israeli counter-attack
    • 2.1.3 Israeli breakthrough
    • 2.1.4 Israeli forces across the Suez
    • 2.1.5 Egypt's trapped Third Army
  • 2.2 The final situation on the Egyptian front
  • 2.3 On the Golan Heights
    • 2.3.1 Syrian attack
    • 2.3.2 Israeli advance
    • 2.3.3 Northern front de-escalation
    • 2.3.4 Jordanian Participation
  • 2.4 At sea
• 3 Atrocities against Israeli prisoners
  • 3.1 Syrian atrocities
  • 3.2 Egyptian atrocities
• 4 Soviet threat of intervention
• 5 Participation by other states
  • 5.1 Failure of the US Intelligence community
  • 5.2 Aid to Israel
  • 5.3 Aid to Egypt and Syria
    • 5.3.1 Soviet Aid
    • 5.3.2 Other countries
• 6 Weapons
• 7 Home front during the war
• 8 Post-ceasefire negotiations
  • 8.1 Kissinger pushes for peace
  • 8.2 From disengagement to peace
• 9 Casualties
• 10 Long-term effects
  • 10.1 Response in Israel
  • 10.2 Response in Egypt and Syria
  • 10.3 Camp David Accords
  • 10.4 Oil embargo
  • 10.5 Commemorations
• 11 See also
• 12 References
  • 12.1 Notes
  • 12.2 Bibliography
• 13 External links

Background

The war was part of the Arab–Israeli conflict, an ongoing dispute which included many battles and wars since 1948, when the state of Israel was formed. During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel had captured Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and roughly half of Syria's Golan Heights.
According to Chaim Herzog:

On June 19, 1967, the National Unity Government of Israel voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace agreements. The Golan would have to be demilitarized and special arrangement would be negotiated for the Straits of Tiran. The government also resolved to open negotiations with King Hussein of Jordan regarding the Eastern border.^[41]

The Israeli decision was to be conveyed to the Arab states by the U.S. government. The U.S. was informed of the decision, but not that it was to transmit it. There is no evidence it was conveyed to Egypt or Syria. The decision was kept a closely guarded secret within Israeli government circles and the offer was withdrawn in October 1967.^[42]
Egypt and Syria both desired a return of the land lost in the Six-Day War. In September 1967, the Khartoum Arab Summit issued the "three no's", resolving that there would be "no peace, no recognition and no negotiation with Israel". In the years following the war, Israel erected lines of fortification in both the Sinai and the Golan Heights. In 1971, Israel spent $500 million fortifying its positions on the Suez Canal, a chain of fortifications and gigantic earthworks known as the Bar Lev Line, named after Israeli General Chaim Bar-Lev.
President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt died in September 1970 and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. In 1971, Sadat, in response to an initiative by UN intermediary Gunnar Jarring, declared that if Israel committed itself to "withdrawal of its armed forces from Sinai and the Gaza Strip", to "achievement of a just settlement for the refugee problem", to "the withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from all the territories occupied since June 5, 1967", and to implementation of other provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 242 as requested by Jarring, Egypt would then "be ready to enter into a peace agreement with Israel." Israel responded that it would not withdraw to the pre-June 5, 1967 lines.^[43]
Sadat hoped that by inflicting even a limited defeat on the Israelis, the status quo could be altered. Hafez al-Assad, the leader of Syria, had a different view. He had little interest in negotiation and felt the retaking of the Golan Heights would be a purely military option. After the Six-Day War, Assad had launched a massive military buildup and hoped to make Syria the dominant military power of the Arab states. With the aid of Egypt, Assad felt that his new army could win convincingly against Israel and thus secure Syria's role in the region. Assad only saw negotiations beginning once the Golan Heights had been retaken by force, which would induce Israel to give up the West Bank and Gaza, and make other concessions.
Sadat also had important domestic concerns in wanting war. "The three years since Sadat had taken office... were the most demoralized in Egyptian history.... A desiccated economy added to the nation's despondency. War was a desperate option."^[44] In his biography of Sadat, Raphael Israeli argued that Sadat felt the root of the problem was in the great shame over the Six-Day War, and before any reforms could be introduced he felt that shame had to be overcome. Egypt's economy was in shambles, but Sadat knew that the deep reforms that he felt were needed would be deeply unpopular among parts of the population. A military victory would give him the popularity he needed to make changes. A portion of the Egyptian population, most prominently university students who launched wide protests, strongly desired a war to reclaim the Sinai and was highly upset that Sadat had not launched one in his first three years in office.
The other Arab states showed much more reluctance to fully commit to a new war. King Hussein of Jordan feared another major loss of territory as had occurred in the Six-Day War, in which Jordan lost all of the West Bank, territory it had conquered and annexed in 1948–49 which had doubled its population. Sadat was also backing the claim of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the West Bank and Gaza and in the event of a victory promised Yasser Arafat that he would be given control of them. Hussein still saw the West Bank as part of Jordan and wanted it restored to his kingdom. Moreover, during the Black September crisis of 1970, a near civil war had broken out between the PLO and the Jordanian government. In that war, Syria had intervened militarily on the side of the PLO, estranging Hussein.
Iraq and Syria also had strained relations, and the Iraqis refused to join the initial offensive. Lebanon, which shared a border with Israel, was not expected to join the Arab war effort because of its small army and already evident instability. The months before the war saw Sadat engage in a diplomatic offensive to try to win support for the war. By the fall of 1973, he claimed the backing of more than a hundred states. These were most of the countries of the Arab League, Non-Aligned Movement, and Organization of African Unity. Sadat had also worked to curry favour in Europe and had some success before the war. Britain and France for the first time sided with the Arab powers against Israel on the United Nations Security Council.