The Modern Middle East - A Political History Since World War I (Third Edition)

by Mehran Kamrava

  The War of Attrition formed the backdrop against which Sadat’s diplomacy in the early years took shape. Despite its inconclusiveness, many in the Israeli cabinet considered Israel to have been the real victor in the latest military conflict with Egypt. From a strategic standpoint, although Soviet help to Egypt had reduced Israel’s near dominance of the skies, Egyptian forces had made little or no tangible progress in their costly, eighteen-month confrontation with the IDF. Considering the Jordanian civil war and Nasser’s subsequent death in September 1970, Golda Meir viewed the Arab bargaining position as too weak to merit negotiations. More could be achieved, she reasoned, by a “diplomacy of attrition,” in which Israeli intransigence would eventually lead to the signing of a comprehensive peace treaty with Egypt.53 So early in his career, and with the Sinai still occupied, Sadat was in no position to sign a comprehensive peace treaty with Israel. For now, his immediate goals were to see the Suez Canal opened, thereby restoring to Egypt one of its most vital economic lifelines, and, if only as a symbolic gesture, to station some Egyptian troops on the canal’s east bank. Mistrustful of Sadat’s real motives, Meir and other hard-liners in her cabinet opted instead to strengthen Israel’s hold over the West Bank and Gaza by encouraging the building of more settlements and factories in Palestinian areas.

  Sadat declared in a broadcast to the nation, “1971 will be the Year of Decision, toward war or peace. This is a problem that cannot be postponed any longer. We have prepared ourselves from within, and we ought to be ready for the task lying ahead. . . . Everything depends on us. This is neither America’s nor the Soviets’ war, but our war, deriving from our will and determination.”54 But the “year of decision” came and went with no tangible results. Always with a flair for the dramatic, Sadat had to make good on his rhetoric sooner or later, either through diplomacy or on the battlefront. True to form, the Egyptian president did not disappoint. In July 1972, he abruptly expelled the estimated fifteen thousand Soviet advisers who were helping Egypt rebuild its armed forces after their destruction in 1967. He also broke off relations with Jordan over a relatively minor pretext—a proposal by King Hussein to form a Jordanian federation with sovereignty over Palestinians. Golda Meir and many of the hard-liners in her cabinet interpreted these developments as further signs of the Egyptian president’s weakened strategic and military position. Surely the Egyptians, who had been so decisively routed back in 1967, could not pose a serious threat to Israel now that they had lost their Soviet patrons and Jordanian allies! The reality was quite different, however. Sadat’s expulsion of Soviet military advisers and diplomatic row with Jordan were actually intended to give him a freer hand in waging war on Israel.

  The war came on October 6, 1973, in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish Yom Kippur.55 In a brilliantly coordinated and executed blitz, at 2:00 P.M. Syrian and Egyptian forces attacked and in a few hours overran Israeli defensive positions in the Golan and the east bank of the Suez, respectively. On the Sinai front, the attack featured some seven hundred Egyptian tanks. By nightfall, under a barrage of artillery fire, the Israeli defensive fortification known as the Bar-Lev Line—named after its creator, Lt. Gen. Chaim Bar-Lev—had been breached. Helped by the latest bridge-building technology from the Soviet Union and their own ingenuity and drive, Egyptian personnel and artillery units were ferried over to the east bank of the Suez by the hundreds, and Egyptian commandos were airlifted deep into the Sinai to attack and destroy Israeli command and communications facilities. Israel’s losses on the Syrian front were even more dramatic: by the end of the first day’s fighting, the entire Golan Heights had been recaptured by Syrian forces. In its initial efforts to prevent the Syrians from gaining further ground, the Israeli air force lost some forty aircraft in the first few days of the conflict. An Israeli counter-attack in the Sinai, which resulted in the one of the biggest tank battles since World War II, also failed to dislodge the Egyptians from the Suez. For the first three days, up until October 9, it appeared as if the Syrian and Egyptian forces were assured of victory.

  The course of the war shifted dramatically in Israel’s favor thereafter. Before the remainder of the war is examined, a few words need to be said about the reasons behind the Arab armies’ initial stunning victories. Broadly, these can be divided into three sets of developments. By far the most significant was the increasing professionalization of the Egyptian and Syrian armies in the years following the June 1967 War, resulting from the purging of incompetent commanders, a strengthening of discipline through the ranks, and greater familiarity with the available Soviet weaponry.56 Equally important was the overconfidence of the Israelis, who, continuing to perceive Arab military capabilities in 1967 terms, saw the Arabs as overly boastful, incompetent, incapable of handling their sophisticated Soviet weaponry, and easily frightened.57 The chronic political instability in Syria and Sadat’s image problems at home and abroad did little to change the general Israeli view of the Arabs’ predicament. Last were a number of strategic and tactical considerations. The Israelis did not think the Arabs would attack during Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast, and certainly not in broad daylight. Therefore, only a skeletal force was defending the Bar-Lev Line, most others being on leave to celebrate Yom Kippur.58 The Israelis were also unfamiliar with the Egyptians’ new equipment, such as rocket launchers carried in small suitcases, high-powered water pumps to puncture holes in defensive walls, and light ladders for scaling walls. This was an entirely different war from the one seven years earlier.

  Figure 10. Egyptian soldiers celebrating the crossing of the Suez Canal in the 1973 War. Corbis.

  The tide of the war turned for two primary reasons. The first concerned war psychology and its tactical consequences. Apparently both the Syrian and Egyptian forces were stunned by the ease with which they had overrun Israeli forces and had not really planned on what to do once they had recaptured lost territory. Conversely, the Israelis soon overcame the shock of the collapse of their forces and regrouped. One of the most spectacular episodes of the war occurred on the night of October 15, when the IDF’s Major General Ariel Sharon led a small force of Israeli commandos across the Suez and inflicted heavy casualties on Egyptian forces.

  But such daring tactical moves would not have been possible had it not been for a second factor, the massive airlift of military equipment and supplies to Israel by the United States. Everything from tanks to aircraft was rushed to Israel from aircraft carriers belonging to the U.S. Sixth and Seventh Fleets, some directly from military bases in the United States, and the equipment was put to use within hours of delivery.59 According to one military analyst, “In replacing Israel’s downed aircraft, the United States literally stripped some of its own active air force units,” sending forty F-4 jet fighters to Israel and leaving its own air defense system vulnerable for six months.60

  By the third week of October, the Arab position had become untenable. The Syrians had been evicted from the Golan again, and Israel’s campaign to destroy the Syrian economy was having devastating consequences. Syria’s only oil refinery, in Homs, was set ablaze by Israeli jets, and the ports of Banisa, Tartus, and Latakia were heavily damaged. Damascus itself was being threatened by Israeli forces. In the Sinai, meanwhile, Israel’s counterattack was beginning to bear fruit, to the point that by October 17 the Egyptian Third Army was encircled and in serious danger of annihilation. Meanwhile, U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger had embarked on his famous “shuttle diplomacy,” flying from one capital to another in search of a cease-fire agreement. On October 22, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 338, calling for an immediate secession of hostilities, the implementation of Resolution 242 of 1967, and the start of peace negotiations under inter-national auspices. Egypt and Syria readily agreed to the resolution; Israel did not cease hostilities until a further resolution was passed on October 23.

  Conspicuously absent from the October 1973 War was Jordan. By some accounts, Sadat and Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad had delib
erately kept King Hussein in the dark regarding the details of their plans to jointly attack Israel.61 Jordan’s small army and its long border with Israel made the country’s participation in the war very risky for the king. Sadat had informed King Hussein of his military plans as early as spring 1973, but the Jordanian monarch remained skeptical of the chances of success of even a limited attack on Israel. “It is clear today that the Arab nations are preparing for a new war,” the king wrote to his generals in May. “The battle would be premature.”62 Nevertheless, as a token of his support for the Arab cause, the king dispatched an armored brigade to Syria, although there was no military significance to such a move. Iraq’s contribution to the war was somewhat more meaningful, at least in theory, with the participation of a squadron of twelve Iraqi MiG fighters beginning on October 8. Of the twelve fighters, half were mistakenly shot down by Syrian gunners and the other half were destroyed by the Israelis.63

  In military and territorial terms, the 1973 War, unlike the 1967 conflict, did not result in a transfer of large parcels of land or the decisive victory of one side over the other. But the war had deep and lasting consequences for all the parties involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fallout from the war not only influenced the domestic politics of each of the actors in the conflict but had wider regional and international ramifications. Egypt and Israel were the most profoundly affected, but so were the PLO and the larger Arab world. Also, a new factor entered the international political economy of the Middle East and that of the entire world: oil.

  The consequences of the 1973 War appear to have been greatest for the life and politics of Egypt. “The Ramadan War” was Sadat’s war, conceived, coordinated, and carried out under his leadership. By bringing the IDF to the verge of defeat, Sadat had done what Nasser had tried but had miserably failed to accomplish. Sadat had now quieted the skeptics, and had done so with authority. Standing tall shortly after the war, Sadat declared, “The Arab armed forces performed a miracle in the Ramadan War as judged by any military measure. The Arab world can rest assured that it has now both a shield and a sword.”64 Indeed, as three Egyptian generals later wrote triumphantly in The Ramadan War, the twin myths of Israeli invincibility and Arab incompetence were both shattered.65 After all, Israel, which had so decisively obliterated the Arab air forces on the ground in 1967, had now lost a total of 115 aircraft.66 Israel might not have been defeated, but as far as the Egyptians were concerned, victory was theirs. A new pharaoh had emerged, a man who had finally ended the Arabs’ collective shame and humiliation. Sadat could now add a new moniker to his name: “The Hero of the Crossing.”

  On the diplomatic front, the war influenced Sadat in two ways. On the one hand, inebriated with his victory and assuming himself to be the new spokesperson of the Arab world, Sadat now felt powerful enough to pursue solo diplomacy based on what he considered to be prudent for Egypt and for other Arab states. But the conduct of what he proudly called “electric-shock diplomacy” only served to alienate him from his fellow leaders and soon resulted in the isolation of Egypt from the rest of the Arab world.67 The break started in 1974, shortly after Kissinger negotiated a disengagement agreement first between Egypt and Israel and then between Israel and Syria (on January 17 and May 29, respectively). The first Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement became known as Sinai I. This was followed by the signing of Sinai II in 1975, in which Egypt opted to settle on a separate agreement with Israel instead of holding out for a comprehensive peace settlement involving the other Arab parties as well—including the Palestinians—to which Israel was opposed.68

  Sadat’s penchant for “going it alone” was reinforced by a second realization. As the war had dramatically shown, Israel could not be defeated on the battlefront. Even if the Arabs could mount effective attacks on Israel, they could not overcome Israel’s American patronage. The most effective way to reclaim the Sinai, in fact the only way, would be to negotiate with Israel and to do so with American support. On November 19, 1977, to everyone’s shock and surprise, Sadat flew to Jerusalem. His reason, as he wrote in his autobiography, was to prove to the Israelis unequivocally that he was serious about a lasting peace.69 It was only a matter of time before Egypt’s breach with the rest of the Arab world would become complete.

  To his dismay, Sadat’s dramatic gesture failed to yield tangible results. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in March 1978, lasting into the summer, did not help Sadat’s position domestically or in the larger Arab world. In September 1978, U.S. president Jimmy Carter invited Sadat and Israeli prime minister Begin to the Camp David retreat to work on the peace process. The Camp David Accords resulted in an agreement over the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai, but it also led to the near-complete isolation of Egypt from the rest of the Arab world. In March 1979, when the final provisions of the accord were signed, Arab leaders met in Baghdad and agreed on the imposition of economic, diplomatic, and political sanctions on Egypt.70 Egypt, the self-ascribed leader of the Arab world, was now more isolated from its Arab brethren than ever before.

  In addition to diplomatic initiatives, after the 1973 War Sadat embarked on a major economic reform program that came to be known as the infitah, or open-door policy. The main premise of the infitah was to liberalize the economy by attracting foreign investments and rolling back some of the state’s functions in relation to the economy. Talk of such economic reforms had circulated among the ruling elite since the beginning of Sadat’s presidency, but only after 1973 did the regime feel secure enough to actually enact laws aimed at reforming the economy.71 Moreover, the statist policies of the Nasser era had failed to turn the Egyptian economy around, and the diplomacy of détente that in the mid-1970s informed Egypt’s foreign policy further supported the liberalization thrust. Increasingly confident in his domestic base, Sadat further dismantled the Nasserist state by fostering the demise of the Arab Socialist Union in 1976–77. After briefly flirting with limited political liberalization, in 1978 Sadat oversaw the reestablishment of another corporatist party, this time called the National Democratic Party.72

  In the end, neither the “victory” of the 1973 War nor the infitah, nor even the corporatism of the National Democratic Party, could save Sadat from his own vanity and the wrath of his people. By the end of the 1970s he had become increasingly authoritarian and intolerant of dissent. In 1979, residents of Cairo staged a number of demonstrations protesting the country’s deteriorating economy. Tensions rose throughout 1980 as the peace process went nowhere and as Egypt’s isolation from the rest of the Arab world grew deeper. In the opening weeks of 1981, following bloody sectarian violence between Muslims and Copts, some 1,500 Islamic activists were rounded up and arrested. Finally, on October 6, 1981, while reviewing a military march celebrating the anniversary of the 1973 War, Sadat was assassinated. The “Hero of the Crossing,” Nasser’s triumphant heir, was dead.

  The war had equally profound consequences for Israeli politics. It demonstrated to the Israelis that they had succumbed to the same type of complacency that had characterized the Arabs before 1967. The “pulverizing Syrian offensive” and the ease with which the Bar-Lev Line had fallen drove home for many Israelis the inherent vulnerability of Israel as a sovereign state. Moreover, just as had occurred in Egypt and Syria after 1967, the 1973 War set in motion a nationwide process of soul-searching.73 Many Israelis started to rethink their priorities, in relation to both their political leaders and the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Insofar as political leaders were concerned, the old generation of founding fathers—that of Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and Golda Meir—was increasingly pushed to the sidelines, and a younger generation of leaders, best represented by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres, came to the fore.74 Not surprisingly, the average age of ministers in Rabin’s cabinet was lower than that of any previous cabinets, and only seven of the nineteen ministers had served in previous administrations.75

  The shock of the war did not bring about a meeting o
f the minds among the Israeli public over the questions of Palestine and the Occupied Territories. In fact, the previous rift between Israel’s “hawks” and “doves” became a chasm, and a new center-right political party, named the Likud (Unity), was formed. At the same time, many Israelis (three-fourths of those surveyed) thought that the idea of peaceful coexistence with the Arabs and the exchange of land for peace should at least be discussed publicly.76

  Israel’s signing of the Sinai I and II treaties with Egypt was part of a larger formula aimed at strengthening the Israeli government’s hand in dealing with Syria. Prime Minister Rabin calculated that peace with Egypt would militarily neutralize Syria’s most powerful ally. Israel could then deal with Syria on its own terms, through either negotiations or confrontation.77 Rabin also firmly believed that Israel’s long-term security would be best served by relinquishing control over the Occupied Territories. But he was unwilling to engage in the necessary negotiations in the shadow of the 1973 War, since, he reasoned, the Arabs might take this as a sign of Israeli weakness.78 Not until 1993, exactly two decades after the 1973 War, did Rabin finally negotiate with the PLO over the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. By then, Israel’s position within the Occupied Territories and throughout the Middle East had become supremely powerful.

  Ironically, the war also led to a hardening of the attitudes of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The post-1967 mood of resignation and despair was replaced by a newfound confidence and sense of the self. There was a gradual rise in passive, and at times even active, resistance to the authorities following the war, and the local atmosphere in the Occupied Territories changed noticeably.79 These trends culminated in and were reinforced by the establishment of a Palestine National Front in August 1973, intended to act as a liaison between the PLO and the “national forces” in the West Bank and Gaza.80 The Israeli response was decisive and draconian, in turn fueling the vicious circle of violence and bloodshed that by the mid-1970s had become a feature of the Palestinian movement.