The Turning-Point in the Study of the Outbreak of the Yom Kippur War
Keywords:
Yom Kippur War, Henry Kissinger, Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Israeli Intelligence, U.S. Department of State, Egyptian–Israeli Peace, Moshe DayanAbstract
This article deals with the events leading to the Yom Kippur War by integrating and crosschecking material from American and Israeli archives. Some of the recently declassified material (2012) reveals details of the secret channel between Kissinger, Sadat, and Meir that indicate that Israel’s conduct was guided mainly by geopolitical and domestic political considerations. The material also shows the minimum impact that the intelligence failure had on Israel’s decisionmaking.
The first part of the article reviews the new information and reaches the following conclusions:
• The December 1971 understandings between Meir and Kissinger to preserve the political standstill were confirmed by Nixon but kept hidden from the State Department.
• In early 1973 Kissinger changed his position regarding an Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement, based on Sadat’s peace initiative, and tried to jumpstart negotiations, but Meir adamantly rejected his efforts.
The second part of the article discusses the conduct of the main actors in these moves: Kissinger, Sadat, Meir and Dayan.
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