Deflating ‘draw’ marked the transition from old Israel to the new

Remembered today for Israel’s under-preparedness and massive loss of life, the war was a watershed in the decline of the Left and rise of the Right.

Fifty years ago, at exactly 14.00 hours on October 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian forces advanced in a coordinated attack on the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), stationed on the east bank of the Suez Canal and on the Golan Heights. For the Jews, the 19-day conflict has passed into history as the Yom Kippur War. For the Arabs, it is known as the Ramadan War. For everyone else, it was simply the October war — another episode in the tortuous Middle East conflict.

In Syria, the war started on the birthday of its president Hafez al-Asad and ended with the bombing of Damascus, a huge loss of Syrian military personnel and a $US3.5 billion bill in damage. For Egypt, the war concluded with the Israeli encirclement of its Third Army and within striking distance of Cairo some 100 km away. Israel had occupied some 1600 km² of Egyptian territory. It was a conclusion to the conflict that both superpowers, the USA and the USSR, had forged in freezing a situation in a war which was going in Israel's favour — in the hope that negotiations would produce a peace agreement.

For Israelis, 2,656 soldiers were killed and another 8,000 injured. The belief that the IDF was invincible and unchallengeable after the victory of the Six Day War in 1967 was shattered. For the Egyptians, despite the huge military losses and the near defeat of its armed forces, it restored a modicum of pride following the rout and humiliation of 1967. It allowed Anwar Sadat to visit Israel in 1977 and to initiate the Camp David Accord of 1979, which has maintained peaceful relations ever since.

The war was also a pan-Arab war. The Saudis supplied 3,000 personnel while radical states such as Muammar Gaddafi's Libya and Saddam Hussein's Iraq joyously participated. Some 20 North Korean pilots and 500 Cubans assisted the Syrians. Fidel Castro's previous refusal to align Cuba with the hostile attitude of the Soviet Union towards Israel underwent a U-turn.