Part 5: From the 1973 Yom Kippur War to Peace with Egypt

Oct. 4, 2002 -- Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel in October 1973 to regain territories they lost in the Six Day War of 1967.

The shock of the attack -- which came on Yom Kippur, the highest of Jewish holy days -- and the strength of the Arab assault, led to a reassessment of the political and military balance in the Middle East. NPR Diplomatic Correspondent Mike Shuster reports in the fifth part of Morning Edition's series on the history of the Middle East conflict.

"This was one of the great surprises in history, the same as Pearl Harbor," says Benny Morris, author of Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist Arab Conflict. An overconfident Israel "was caught with its pants down on the 6th of October, 1973," Morris says.

Syria attacked Israeli positions on the Golan Heights. Egypt, now led by Anwar Sadat, launched 200 combat aircraft to hit Israeli forces on the eastern side of the Suez Canal. "By the end of the first day of fighting, the Egyptian army was able to cross the canal and seize positions on the Israeli side, something the Israeli army did not believe the Egyptians could do," Shuster reports.

The war, which lasted 19 days, shook Israel. It recovered militarily, but its leaders understood they needed to enter serious negotiations with the Arabs. This was the era of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy and the beginning of a succession of peace processes.

The war brought Menachem Begin and his right-wing Likud Party to power in 1977. "The shock of the '73 war brought about a completely new elite to rule the country for better and for worse," says historian Anita Shapira. "This war made people realize that power is not theirs forever, and that compromise is something that is necessary in order to survive in the long run."

The Palestinians, led by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, understood that they could no longer rely on Arab states like Egypt and Syria to fight for them. But the PLO also began to see that a compromise with Israel was necessary, especially after Egypt's Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. U.S. President Jimmy Carter coaxed Sadat and Begin into an agreement at Camp David in 1978.

But the Palestinians felt left out of the process, says Rashid Khalidi, author of Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. "Most of them were very bitter that Sadat had made a separate deal, had not tried to negotiate with and on behalf of the Palestinians, and in so far as he did so, simply agreed to autonomy with Begin. The Palestinians believed that they had the right to independence, and that the Egyptians had in effect betrayed them."