Why yom kippur war started

He claimed that if supplies were not given, he would have to return to Egypt and tell the Egyptian people Moscow had abandoned them, and then relinquish power to one of his peers who would be able to deal with the Americans. The Americans would then have the upper hand in the region, which Moscow could not permit.

One of Egypt's undeclared objectives of the War of Attrition was to force the Soviet Union to supply Egypt with more advanced arms and war materiel. Egypt felt the only way to convince the Soviet leaders of the deficiencies of most of the aircraft and air defense weaponry supplied to Egypt following was to put the Soviet weapons to the test against the advanced weaponry the United States supplied to Israel.

Nasser's policy following the defeat conflicted with that of the Soviet Union. The Soviets sought to avoid a new conflagration between the Arabs and Israelis so as not to be drawn into a confrontation with the United States. The reality of the situation became apparent when the superpowers met in Oslo and agreed to maintain the status quo. This was unacceptable to Egyptian leaders, and when it was discovered that the Egyptian preparations for crossing the canal were being leaked, it became imperative to expel the Russians from Egypt.

In July Sadat expelled almost all of the 20, Soviet military advisors in the country and reoriented the country's foreign policy to be more favorable to the United States.

The Soviets thought little of Sadat's chances in any war. They warned that any attempt to cross the heavily fortified Suez would incur massive losses.

In a June meeting with U. Brezhnev said that if Israel did not, "we will have difficulty keeping the military situation from flaring up"—an indication that the Soviet Union had been unable to restrain Sadat's plans. In an interview published in Newsweek April 9, , President Sadat again threatened war with Israel. Several times during , Arab forces conducted large-scale exercises that put the Israeli military on the highest level of alert, only to be recalled a few days later.

The Israeli leadership already believed that if an attack took place, the Israeli Air Force would be able to repel it. Almost a full year before the war, in an October 24, , meeting with his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Sadat declared his intention to go to war with Israel even without proper Soviet support.

Planning was done in absolute secrecy—even the upper-echelon commanders were not told of war plans until less than a week prior to the attack, and the soldiers were not told until a few hours beforehand. The plan to attack Israel in concert with Syria was code-named Operation Badr the Arabic word for " full moon " , after the Battle of Badr , in which Muslims under Muhammad defeated the Quraish tribe of Mecca.

Lead up to the surprise attack The IDF's Directorate of Military Intelligence's abbreviated as "Aman" Research Department was responsible for formulating the nation's intelligence estimate. Their assessments on the likelihood of war were based on several assumptions. First, it was assumed correctly that Syria would not go to war with Israel unless Egypt went to war as well. Second, they learned from a high-ranking Egyptian informant who remains confidential to this day, known only as "The Source" that Egypt wanted to regain all of the Sinai, but would not go to war until the Soviets had supplied Egypt with fighter-bombers to neutralize the Israeli Air Force, and Scud missiles to be used against Israeli cities as a deterrent against Israeli attacks on Egyptian infrastructure.

Since the Soviets had not yet supplied the fighter bombers, and the Scud missiles had only arrived in Egypt in late August, and in addition it would take four months to train the Egyptian ground crews, Aman predicted war with Egypt was not imminent.

This assumption about Egypt's strategic plans, known as "the concept," strongly prejudiced their thinking and led them to dismiss other war warnings. So, in May , Kissinger set out on his second round of shuttle diplomacy, this time between Damascus and Tel Aviv. After almost a month of hard talking, Kissenger managed to secure a second breakthrough in the region when, on May 28, Israel approved a disengagement agreement with Syria.

It was signed in Geneva on June 5, bringing the War in October to an official end after days of fighting. Egypt and Syria regained a portion of their territory and UN buffer zones were established between them and Israel.

Both the Arabs and Israel declared victory in the war. The Arab countries managed to salvage their defeats after repeated losses in the , and wars with Israel. Within four years, in , Sadat was in Jerusalem giving a speech of peace to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. The three leaders engaged in secret discussions over 13 days, leading to the signing of the Camp David Accords on September 17, , which laid out conditions for an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and a framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace using Resolution While the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed by March in Washington, DC, the framework never materialised for several reasons, although both sides laid blame on one another.

The proposal was vague on the subject of Palestinian refugees , and the key issue — the status of Jerusalem. To the Palestinians, Egypt had placed its own interests first and put the Palestinian cause on the backburner. After normalising relations with Israel, Egypt was expelled from the Arab League, and all Arab countries broke diplomatic relations with Cairo.

Jordan also signed a peace treaty with Israel in , making Egypt and Jordan the only two countries to have normalised relations with Israel, which continues to occupy the West Bank , East Jerusalem, Gaza , and a portion of the Golan Heights to this day. Tel Aviv could use diplomatic capital gained in its approval of Tiran and Sanafir deal for support on Palestinian issue.

Initially, it appeared that Egypt and Syria would emerge victorious from the conflict. Armed with up-to-date Soviet weaponry, the two nations hoped to avenge their humiliating defeat in the Six-Day War of Israel, caught off guard, initially reeled under the two-front attack, but Israeli counterattacks turned the tide, aided by massive amounts of U.

The Syrians were driven back, with Israeli troops seizing the strategically important Golan Heights. Egyptian forces fared even worse: retreating back through the Sinai Desert, thousands of their troops were surrounded and cut off by the Israeli army. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, together with his Soviet counterparts, eventually arranged a shaky cease-fire. When it became clear that Israel would not give up its siege of the Egyptian troops low on food and medicine by this time , the Soviets threatened to take unilateral action to rescue them.

Tempers flared both in Washington and Moscow; U. A second disengagement agreement Sinai II was signed in September , which called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from two strategic passes in the Sinai and some surrounding territory. The Egyptians were not allowed back into this neutral zone. Instead, U. The negotiations with the Syrians were more tortuous. It was not until May that a separation of forces agreement was signed that created a UN—policed buffer zone, a reduction in troop deployment, and the return of the town of Kuneitra to Syria.

And that came only after a renewal of fighting in March. Syria fired artillery at Israeli positions between March and May, during which 37 more Israeli soldiers were killed.

The United States rewarded Syria for the agreement with a modest grant of financial assistance[md]the first in 30 years — in hopes of building a new relationship with the regime of Hafez Assad and encouraging him to negotiate a peace agreement. Rather than join the peace process, Assad became one of the leaders of the Rejectionist Front.

Assad was also determined to impede Israeli-Egyptian negotiations. The fact that the Arabs had succeeded in surprising the IDF and inflicting heavy losses in the early part of the war against the supposedly invincible Israeli army was a traumatic experience for Israel. The Agranat Commission concluded that Israeli intelligence had sufficient warning of the impending attack, but, for a variety of reasons, had failed to interpret the in-formation correctly.

The commission did not assess the role of Prime Minister Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan , but the public viewed them as the officials who were actually responsible for the mistakes that were made. Various reports, both in Israel and abroad, say they were sophisticated listening devices that could record telephone calls by Egyptian army officers.

The public was angered by what many viewed as scapegoating career military officials for the mistakes of their political leaders. This outrage ultimately led Meir to resign. Dayan would have been the logical heir, but his reputation was now in tatters. The alternatives of the dominant Labor Party for a successor came down to a choice between two very different men. The other was Yitzhak Rabin , a native-born Israeli and military leader from the days of the Haganah , who had served as chief of staff during the Six-Day War and later as ambassador to Washington.

In a tight election that fueled a year political rivalry, Rabin was chosen to be prime minister. Although Egypt lost the war, with Israeli troops prepared to march on Cairo and the Third Army saved by the United States from annihilation, Egyptians saw the battle as a victory for them. They had surprised the arrogant Israelis and nearly defeated them. If not for U. Sadat did not seem to have that as his objective.

It was more important for him to erase the humiliation of Sources : Mitchell G. Because the war was fought during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Arabs and Muslims refer to it as the Ramadan War.

We will never know; Marwan fell to his death under mysterious circumstances in Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library. Reference Information. State Department Summary of the War. A Country Study of Egypt in Israeli Intelligence in Operation Nickel Grass. The United States and the Oil Embargo. Middle East Policy.

Important Battles. War Maps. The Golan Heights. The Battle of Latakia. International Response. Soviet Position. United Nations Emergency Force Report.