1. 1
What are the causes of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War?
“...what makes you somewhat reluctant to listen to us others, if we have ideas to put forward, is the
great trust and confidence which you have in your own constitution and in your own way of life....it is
also, perhaps, responsible for a kind of ignorance which you show when you are dealing with
foreign affairs.”1
Corinthian speech to the Spartans on the eve of war.
This essay will examine the causes of the 1973 War, a conflict with no one definitive origin. The
causes will be shown to be found both in the general context preceding the war, including the
attitude and actions of the engaged parties and in several immediate causes. First the essay will
cover the general causes underlying the conflict, including: belief, actors and the international
system. Second, the essay will analyse the more immediate causes proximate to the conflict,
primarily the outcome of the Six-Day War2
and the policies of Sadat. Last, the essay will refer to the
prime actors’ approach to international relations in the region, evaluate the causes of the 1973 War
and the limitations of a Realist approach to the zero-sum game for land and power in the Levant,
which ultimately resulted in the 1973 War.
The nomenclature of the 1973 Arab-Israeli Conflict is a tale in itself, known variously as; the 1973
War, the Fourth (or Fifth3
) Arab-Israeli War, the October War or the Yom Kippur War. Names which
reflect the bias and relative position of the actors and historians of the region and which are loaded
with the same religious zeal and historical opinion afflicting the conflicts themselves. The 1973 War
does not begin with a crossing of the Rubicon, instead one finds a region predisposed to conflict,
where the failure of Arab states to recognise the change in the balance of power in the region,
heralding from the imposition of the new Jewish state and the failure of Israel to act magnanimously
in victory has led to decades of continuing conflict. To examine the major casus belli of the 1973
War, one must look into the politics of the region itself. It is easy to pick out enduring themes, which
provide the dry tinder for the spark of conflict to ignite: the Jewish belief of a right to a homeland;
Arab revulsion at an illegal settlement-state imposed on them, supported by absent, imperialist
Western powers and the failure of regional leaders to mediate a lasting settlement, without recourse
to arms.
1
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (London: Penguin Classics, 1972), 73.
2
Parker, The Six-Day War, A Retrospective (University of Florida, 1996), 13.
3
Nye, Understanding International Conflicts (Harvard: Pearson Longman, 2007), 191.

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One can argue that from her re-birth in 1948 until 1973 (and to some extent beyond) the aim of
Israel’s belligerent neighbouring Arab states was to impose a Hobbesian natural condition on Israel,
denying her right to be a state and attempting to ensure that her existence was “nasty, brutish and
short”.4
To understand why the Arabs held such an entrenched and non-negotiable position
regarding Israel it is pertinent to recall there had been an absence of a Jewish state in the region for
almost two millennia. This lengthy absence can be traced back to the Roman destruction of the
Second Temple in 70AD and the subsequent levelling of Jerusalem leading to the creation of the
Jewish diaspora.5
These displaced peoples, self-identified as the race of ‘God’s Chosen People’,
were to scatter across the globe but were themselves to remain entrenched in their religious and
political belief of their right to their homeland in the region the Arabs, perhaps not unreasonably
after a period of nearly two thousand years, held to be theirs. This juxtaposition of two such
incompatible views, taken against the backdrop of the prolonged absence of Israel, set the
conditions for the balance of power that existed in the Middle East in the early twentieth century
and, with Israel’s sudden reinstatement, was to surface as one of the principal underlying causes of
conflict.
The long path leading to the reinstatement of Israel in Palestine began, in modern times, with Herzl,
who, in publishing Der Judenstaat in 1896, rekindled the idea that Jews be granted sufficient
territory for their needs.6
Political discourse, shepherded through British political circles by Herzl’s
Zionist successor, Weizmann,7
focused on Palestine and the Jewish homeland or ‘Heimstätte’.
Modern Israel, viewed through the lens of history, reflecting the nation created by King David, was
“created by a desire to return to that land and it must be understood, in Jewish eyes, the nation of
Israel is less a polity or a nation-state, than the fulfilment of a promise made by God”.8
Almost concurrent with the birth of Zionism was the Arab renaissance, commencing in Syria in the
late nineteenth century and continuing with the Arab Revolt, Arab nationalism and the Egyptian
Revolution in 1952.9
Zionism was not responsible for this Arab awakening, but was automatically
focused on as a threat. Two uncompromising, diametrically opposed convictions were always
going to conflict but when these beliefs became encapsulated in states, and states furthermore of a
realist mindset which, inconveniently, occupied the same region, it was perhaps inevitable that
these beliefs would lead to war.
4
Hobbes, The Leviathan (London: Penguin Classics, 2008).
5
The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, “Jewish Virtual Library,” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Romans.html
(accessed November 10 2009).
6
Ovendale, The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars (London: Pearson Longman, 2004), 5.
7
ibid., 8.
8
Guyatt, The Absence of Peace, Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (USA: Zed Books, 1998).
9
Ovendale, The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars, 9-11.

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The right of Israel to exist upon its first re-inception provoked an uncompromising viewpoint for both
Arabs and Israelis. Arab resentment however became further entrenched when Israel formalised
and fortified her borders in 1949. Palestinians, the cause célèbre of many Middle Eastern terrorist
groups, were forced from their homeland by Jewish military operations and “the exclusivist
imperatives of the new Israel”.10
The states then became locked into a zero-sum game for land and
power, in which, from Israel’s re-birth in 1948 until 1973, the Arabs aimed to push Israel into the
Mediterranean Sea. This realist mindset, underpinned by two opposing beliefs, was the foundation
stone for the 1973 War: it showed the inability of two peoples to share one land.11
In terms of strategic location alone, the Middle East has been a causeway for empires for centuries,
from the Romans almost two millennia ago to the Soviets in more recent times, each passing
through in time, and on to their own demise; whilst the regional powers remained focused, more
prosaically, on their immediate interests. This constant interference in the region by absent self-
interested superpower states, is another key underlying factor to the 1973 conflict.
In the twentieth century, the interests of Britain and France in the region were heightened by global
conflict and a requirement to secure allies, loyalty and oil. Selfish realpolitik and Weizmann’s
inveigling within the British establishment led to the Balfour Declaration, reported on by the
Manchester Guardian as follows: “a Jew [can] stand proud and erect, endowed with a national
being in place of being a wanderer in every clime”.12
Perfidious Albion, concerned with her own
interests, turned her back on the Arabs and declared her support for Israel. The British Mandate
period followed, ending in turmoil, with no clearly defined end-state other than an exit for British
troops. Ben-Gurion exploited this turmoil and declared the existence of the state of Israel in May
1948. This unsightly birth, without a colonial sponsor, or an enforceable international agreement
was another cause for conflict that was to remain unresolved by 1973.
France and Britain continued to meddle in the region in the 1950s, seeking an alliance with Israel to
further their own needs and gain control of the Suez Canal, an increasingly important transit route
for oil. The region was again the play of Great-Power politics,13
Israel used the 1956 Suez-Sinai
War to gain land from Egypt, sowing seeds for the Six-Day War. A United Nations peacekeeping
force was deployed as the new superpowers of America and the USSR intervened to ensure peace,
10
Guyatt, The Absence of Peace, Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
11
The Economist.com, “Shlaim: Israel and Palestine”, Podcast, http://audiovideo.economist.com/ (accessed October 14 2009).
12
The Guardian, “The Guardian - from the archive 9 November 1917,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/series/from-the-archive
(accessed November 9, 2009).
13
Ovendale, The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars, 166.

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but was later to prove an ineffective buffer between Egypt and Israel when Nasser commanded it to
leave.
There is a dialectic debate concerning the extent of the superpowers’ influence in the region, but it
is unquestionable they played some part in extenuating or limiting conflict at various stages
following Israel’s re-birth, as suited their needs or their altruistic views of power in the region.
However the superpowers were also exploited for the gains of nations in the Middle East14
by the
regional leaders. The Middle Eastern states were not puppets of the superpowers, but rather
looked after their own interests, gaining finance, wheat and arms on generally favourable terms
without being mortgaged to the political beliefs of their superpower sponsor.
The period following Israel’s re-birth and leading up to the 1973 War also saw Waltz’s security
dilemma15
being played out in the Middle East. The region remained a melting pot of simmering
tensions, recently salted wounds and unreasonable political ambitions. Israel cast an untrusting
eye over her Arab neighbours viewing any increase in armed forces as a perceived (and realistic)
threat. Conversely, the Arabs used apparent Jewish apartheid as a cri de guerre, citing al Nakba
(the 1948 Palestinian exodus) as a Palestinian holocaust, created by the Jews. The hard Realist
lines pedalled by the protagonists in this period, materially armed by self-interested superpower
states, were further underlying causes that set the stage for the 1973 conflict.
The 1973 War took place during the Cold War, a political rivalry which remained the dominant issue
in global politics for forty years16
but the benefit of comparative analysis afforded to us by history
shows the dynamic of regional power at this time was in fact more important than policy directed
from either Washington or Moscow. Although the international system was an effective talking shop
and did facilitate the deployment of the UNEF, it lacked resolution when enforcing the earlier plan
for Israel and Palestine: UNGAR 181. This failure of the international system effectively left Israel in
an anarchic vacuum, fighting for her survival on her terms. The international system failed not just
the Israelis but also the Arab states through a series of broken promises or unsupported
resolutions, including the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Suez Crisis, British Mandate and UNSCR
242. These failings undermined the international system, excluding any liberal interpretation of the
Middle East’s political problems and hardened the realists’ approach.
The Cold War not only weakened international institutions such as the UN, but also intensified
latent regional rivalries, creating favourable terms for Nasser’s political dominance in the region as
14
Shlaim, Sayigh and, The Cold War and the Middle East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 3.
15
ibid., 175.
16
ibid., 6.

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he rejected what he interpreted as Western imperialistic demands attached to economic loans and
instead looked to Moscow for unfettered assistance.17
The intransigent needs of the superpowers,
in terms of security, allies and oil came ahead of peace in the Middle East and any interest in a
lasting settlement. The international system failed the regional powers and in doing so,
exacerbated the security situation, facilitating further conflict, which was to be realised in 1973.
Having analysed the general causes leading to the 1973 War, this essay will now evaluate the
immediate causes, beginning with the outcome of the Six-Day War.
There is nothing so dreadful as a great victory, except of course, a great defeat.
Marquis d’Argenson
The pre-emptive strike of Israel on her neighbours in 1967 effectively dislocated the Arab response
and although both Egypt and Syria were well stocked materially by their Soviet ally, their fighting
materiel was decimated through the surprise manoeuvre. The outcome of the Six-Day War was not
just an enormous land grab by the then diminutive Israeli state but, crucially resulted in a loss of
honour for the Arab losers. Arab pride, and particularly that of Egypt, was badly damaged and was
stored up as an embarrassment which would, later, need to be expunged. Israel however, naively
thought she had gained peace on her terms by proving she was a nation which could not be
defeated militarily; her leaders however failed to realise the balance of power had tilted too far, and
would need to be reset in another conflict.
The failure of Israel to comprehend the terms of her victory, and Egypt’s requirement to make
peace on terms more favourable to the Arab states were proximate reasons for the 1973 War. The
limited success however also meant the Arabs were unwilling to accept the war’s outcome. If the
Israel flag had been raised in Cairo (as had very nearly been the case), the Arabs would have been
forced to recognise the outcome, instead the diplomatically engineered end to the Six-Day War left
the Arabs clamouring for revenge.18
As soon as the war concluded, the superpowers intervened and the UN passed Security Council
Resolution 242 requiring Israel to withdraw from land occupied at the end of the Six-Day War. The
resolution was left open to interpretation and an impotent UN was unable to enforce its resolution.
17
ibid., 33.
18
Laquer, The Road to War, The Origins and Aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-68 (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1969),
276.

6. 6
Although the US began the war as a neutral power, she did converse with the USSR who
threatened escalation in order to ensure Israel’s achievements were limited, and acted as a
guarantor of Israel’s survival, if not Israel’s immediate military aims.19
The USSR’s policy of preserving tension in the region by equipping Egypt and Syria sufficiently to
wage war but insufficiently to destroy Israel, led to a period of ‘no war, no peace’ between 1967 and
1973.20
The War of Attrition waged from 1969-70 with a series of border incidents and aircraft
losses along the Egypt-Israel border,21
the PLO was also active in this inter-war period, taking
Israeli athletes hostage in 1972 which resulted in the Munich Olympic Massacre. Fidayeen raids
were conducted into Israel from Jordan, with and without King Hussein’s consent.22
Jordan was
thrown into internal strife and faced a confused Syrian armoured presence within her borders, until
King Hussein called for American assistance, which materialised in the form of Israeli airpower.23
The region was in turmoil. Whilst the USSR did not counsel its Arab allies to attack Israel in 1973,
Syria and Egypt would have been unable to do so were it not for Soviet support: the Soviet policy of
preserving tension clearly set the conditions for the 1973 War.
Replete with victory and of the mindset that their new estates would bring them peace, after the Six-
Day War the Israelis began a period of introspection. Israel’s economy needed boosting, the war
having cost them a billion dollars.24
In 1968 Jewish international bankers and industrialists met to
decide an economic strategy for Israel; whilst Egypt and Syria gained their military aid for free,
Israel had to pay for hers. Focusing on internal matters, Israel took her eye off the pressing matter
of her belligerent neighbours, how to leverage peace using her newly acquired territories and how
to administer them.
Israeli reasons for retaining the occupied territories were largely replaced by ideological arguments
in favour of expansion of the Jewish state. The result of this policy change was the ‘settlement
programme’ which was fundamentally to alter the status of the occupied territories and the
prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.25
It established an unjust Israeli raison d’être in the mind of
its Arab neighbours. However decently Israel behaved, one can argue it is fundamentally wrong to
impose Israeli will, by force, on an Arab population which did not wish to be part of Israel.
Extremists in government: Menahem Begin and Yigan Allon, favoured speedy settlement of Jews in
19
Williams, Shearman and, The Superpowers, Central America and the Middle East (London: Brassey's, 1988), 162.
20
Shlaim, Sayigh and, The Cold War and the Middle East, 67.
21
Nye, Understanding International Conflicts, 191.
22
Laquer, The Road to War, The Origins and Aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-68, 265.
23
Shlaim, Sayigh and, The Cold War and the Middle East, 66.
24
Laquer, The Road to War, The Origins and Aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-68, 275.
25
Guyatt, The Absence of Peace, Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

7. 7
occupied areas whilst Premier Levi Eshkol and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, favoured the
pragmatic approach of maximum security and minimum Arab inclusion.26
A failure to deal with the
‘great victory’ of the Six-Day Was was thus a major cause of the 1973 War.
The build up of Soviet arms to Egypt and Syria was apparent to the Knesset but the Israeli
leadership was of the mindset that the Arabs lacked the capability and opportunity to strike. Israel
maintained that the fruit of victory should be peace, whilst the Arabs continued with their non-
recognition of Israel. Israeli arrogance, not of the will of the Arab political leadership for conflict but
of Israeli martial superiority was a factor which enabled Sadat and Assad to strike with tactical
surprise. It was this arrogance as much as Sadat’s wily military posturing, the use of a double
agent and Egypt’s improved military capability which facilitated the Arab surprise attack in 1973.
Israeli arrogance and introspection are further proximate causes of the 1973 War.
The right of Egypt to act as the leader of the Arab world was executed by Nasser and Sadat. Egypt
was geopolitically important in the region for several reasons: Israel could not be defeated without
Egypt’s assistance, Egypt controlled the Suez Canal and offered its Soviet ally a warm water port
and airbases, for which it received considerable military and economic aid. Both Nasser and Sadat
exploited the Soviet relationship to their advantage but Sadat, a visionary politician, understood that
Israel was here to stay. An outcome of the Six-Day War was that the Arabs had lost land and
power in the zero-sum game in the Middle East but better terms could be instigated.
The second immediate cause of the 1973 War was the policy of Sadat, a leader who had to
reconcile the losses of the Six-Day War and accept the change in the balance of power in the
region. If Nasser brought Egypt to the Egyptians, Sadat was to bring Egypt to the world. Israel
failed to understand both the new man at the head of the most populous Muslim Arab nation and
the strategic shift in policy he brought about. Sadat, a man of humble origins, was not known by
many in the region and little was expected of him. In the meantime, in Egypt, hope for an Egyptian
revival based on the destruction of Israel fluttered in Egyptian hearts.
After the Six-Day War, Egypt’s economy was in ruins, dependant on tourism, the Suez Canal and
oil from the Sinai, Nasser must have reflected on his shocking defeat with utter contempt. The
USSR came to his aid, replacing: “300 of the 365 jet fighters, 50 of the 65 bombers, 450 of the 550
tanks lost in battle and new ground-to-ground missiles were donated to Egypt”.27
Under Nasser
26
Bawly, Kimche and, The Sandstorm (London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, 1968), 72.
27
Laquer, The Road to War, The Origins and Aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-68, 272.

8. 8
Egypt fulfilled a regionally interventionist and globally activist role28
but Egypt’s economy remained
in dire straits; however with Soviet aid, complete economic meltdown was avoided. Soviets made
good Egyptian materiel losses, desiring not only to encourage friendship with Egypt but also the
tangible goal of access to a warm water port in the Mediterranean.29
Soviet support for Egypt
facilitated Egypt’s assault on Israel a few years later and whilst the USSR did not desire war in the
region, the 1973 War could not have occurred without the materiel it supplied.
Sadat’s strategy was that land could be won as a trading bloc, to then use as political leverage.
Egypt and Syria could lose the war on the ground but win it politically, an option neither open to nor
conceived of by the Israelis.30
The inception of the 1973 War as one of limited aims was not one
Sadat shared with his Arab allies but this cunning politician realised that a new strategy was
required, a volte-face which would free Egypt of its Soviet shackles and align itself with the
economic might of the West. Sadat’s brilliance as a statesman is in direct contrast with the Israeli
naïve realpolitik and Sadat’s policy to adjust the balance of power to terms reasonable for both
sides was the major proximate cause of the 1973 War.
One can assess the four major actors in the Middle East conflict of 1973 as: Israel, the Palestinians,
Egypt and the superpowers. All four dealt with the international system in a realist manner,
engaging with their own goals despite declarations and resolutions by supranational organisations.
Israel’s strategic inflexibility but tactical flexibility was in stark contrast to the Palestinians’ strategic
flexibility and tactical inflexibility.31
Egypt showed an emergent strategy, through Nasser who
desired Israel’s annihilation, to Sadat who recognised the change in the balance of power and, as a
realist, recognised the limited aims of the 1973 War as being in Egypt’s best interests. The
superpowers, first France and Britain, then the USA and the USSR’s involvement in the region was
for their own self interest, during a bloody century of two global wars and one cold one.
The chief cause of the 1973 War was Sadat’s ambition to recalibrate the balance of power, but this
desire would not have been created were it not for the outcome of the 1967 Six-Day War, the
second main cause. The backdrop to the Six-Day War is the third cause of the 1973 War, namely a
cast of belligerent and perfidious actors whose policies were underpinned by diametrically opposed
beliefs. This setting, entangled with the limitations of a realist approach to a zero-sum game
concerning land and power in the Middle East were the major causes of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
28
Shlaim, Sayigh and, The Cold War and the Middle East, 29.
29
Laquer, The Road to War, The Origins and Aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-68, 273.
30
Freedman, War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 346.
31
The Economist.com, “Shlaim: Israel and Palestine”, Podcast, http://audiovideo.economist.com/ (accessed October 14 2009).

9. 9
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