Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War (also known as the October War and Ramadan War), was fought from October 6 to October 22/24 1973.
In the early 1970s, the Egyptian president Sadat repeatedly called for a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it had occupied in the Six Days War. However, Israel refused to negotiate. Finally, Egypt and Syria felt forced to regain the territory under Israeli occupation by force. Their armies launched anattack on Israeli forces -- the Syrian forces attacking fortifications in the Golan Heights and the Egyptian forces attacking fortifications around the Suez Canal and on the Sinai Peninsula. The troops inflicted heavy on the Israeli army, known as the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). After three-weeks of fighting, though, and with U.S. air-lifted reinformcements, the IDF pushed the forces back beyond the original lines.
Background
This battle was part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a conflict which has included many battles and wars since 1948. In the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel had occupied the Golan Heights in the north and the Sinai Peninsula in the south, right up to the Suez Canal.
In September 1970, president Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, considered more moderate and pragmatic than Nasser. However to counter internal threats to his power and improve his standing in the Arab world Sadat became determined to fight Israel and win back the territory lost in 1967. From the end of 1972 Egypt began a concentrated effort to build up its forces (receiving MiG-23s, SAM6s, RPG-7s and especially the 'Sagger' ATGM (Anti-tank Guided Missile) from the Soviet Union) and improve its military tactics. The plan to attack Israel in concert with Syria was code-named Operation Badr.
Israel erected lines of fortification in both the Sinai and the Golan Heights. In the year 1971 alone, Israel spent $ 500,000,000 fortifying its positions on the Suez Canal. In spite of the year-and-a-half long War of Attrition with Egypt and several border incidents with Syria, the Israeli leadership still failed to realize that they would not be able to cope with a real offensive effort made by the Arabs.
Blinded by the success of the Six-Day War, the Israeli civilian leadership and military intelligence were unable to treat the possibility of an Arab attack seriously. Several times during 1973, the Arab forces have conducted large-scale exercises that put the Israeli army 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 easily - and now they became growingly convinced that the attack will simply not take place.
In the[Golan Heights, the Syrians attacked the two-brigade strong Israeli defense covered by 11 artillery batteries with five divisions and 188 batteries. In three days of fighting, the 7th Israeli brigade on the North (commanded by Yanush Ben-Gal) managed to hold the rocky hill line defending the northern flank of their headquarters in Nafah.
To the south, however, the brigade nicknamed Barak did not have a natural obstacle to defend from, and was destroyed. At one moment, the only obstacle between the Syrian attackers and Nafah was a single tank (the so called Zvika force). However then the tide turned, as the arriving Israeli reserve forces were able to overpower the Syrian offensive. By October 11, the Syrians were pushed back to the frontier.
In the following days, the Israeli forces pushed into Syria. From there they were able to shell the outskirts of Damascus, only 40 kilometers away, using heavy artillery. A cease-fire was negotiated on October 22 based on a return to pre-war borders.
The Egyptians burst across the Suez Canal and had advanced up to 15km into the Sinai desert, with the combined forces of two army corps. They were opposed by the Israeli "Sinai" division, which they overcame with relative ease and whose counter-attacks they repelled. The Israeli counterattacks in air and on land were unsuccessful because of the new anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles the Arabs had.
However the Egyptians had not planned to develop on their initial success, and their forces were now thinly spread at the Canal, vulnerable to a counter-attack. On October 15, a division led by Ariel Sharon managed to breach the line between the Second and the Third Egyptian armies and to create a bridgehead; on the night of October 16/17, an Israeli bridge was deployed on which passed the divisions of Avraham Eden (Bern) and Sharon. They wrecked havoc on the lines of supply of the Third Army stretching south of them. A cease-fire was the negotiated following pressure from the USSR and the USA.
The cease-fire did not end the sporadic clashes along the cease-fire lines nor did it dissipate military tensions. On March 5, 1974, Israeli forces withdrew from the canal's west bank, and Egypt assumed control. Syria and Israel signed a disengagement agreement on May 31, 1974, and the UN Disengagement and Observer Force (UNDOF) was established as a peacekeeping force in the Golan.
US efforts resulted in an interim agreement between Egypt and Israel in September 1975, which provided for another Israeli withdrawal in the Sinai, a limitation of forces, and three observation stations staffed by U.S. civilians in a UN-maintained buffer zone between Egyptian and Israeli forces.
See also: History -- Military history -- War -- Arab-Israeli conflict
Further information from pro-Israel sources: