The United States Middle East Policy: Catalyst for the Outbreak of the Yom Kippur War

Abstract

The article focuses on the part played by the US administration, and especially Nixon’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Henry Kissinger, in the failure to reach an Israeli-Egyptian settlement in 1973, the year the Yom Kippur War broke out. Recent declassified documents in the United States and Israel reveal that the White House’s conduct in the Middle East not only failed to prevent war, but also actually catalyzed its outbreak. Kissinger adopted a ‘stalemate policy’ that undermined any peace initiative that did not satisfy Israel’s position. Under these circumstances, the Egyptian government realized that the United States was not genuinely interested in advancing a peace process. This assessment prompted the Egyptians to abandon the diplomatic track and, with Syria, to attack Israel in October 1973. Both states assumed that such a move would jumpstart White House involvement in a peace process and eventually return to them the lands occupied by Israel since the Six- Day War.