The October War, 50 years later

On October 6, 1973, the leaders of Egypt and Syria launched a joint military operation aimed at liberating those portions of their national territories —respectively, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights —that Israel had held under military occupation since 1967. The war they launched caught Israel's leaders almost wholly by surprise and dented the aura of "invincibility" that Israel's military had enjoyed since 1967.

The fighting continued nearly three weeks. Some 10,000 - 15,000 Arabs and 3,000 Israelis were killed, and roughly twice that number  wounded on both sides, with the vast majority of casualties being military men. The war had many ramifications on the politics and diplomacy of West Asia—aka, the "Middle East". It also had a great impact on the global balance. Indeed, in its closing hours, U.S. national security advisor (and newly minted Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger even placed the U.S. nuclear forces worldwide onto a "Defcon 3" alert.

Kissinger's principal Middle East staff person during the war was William B. Quandt, a political scientist who later wrote several near-definitive books and articles about the U.S. decisionmaking during and after the war. Then, some 38 years later, the Israeli historian Yigal Kipnis discovered in Israel's state archives some key documents that revealed the extent to which, during the months leading up to October 1973, Pres. Sadat had been pushing Kissinger and Israeli PM Golda Meir to join a negotiation that would end Israel's occupation of Sinai in return for far-reaching Egyptian concessions. PM Meir, however, refused to join such a negotiation, and Kissinger did not push her to.

In 2013, Kipnis published his findings in Hebrew and English. The English version of his findings, 1973: The Road to War, was published by Just World Books and contained a Foreword by Dr. Quandt.

More recently, Dr. Kipnis and other Israeli researchers have discovered more documents on this matter in the Israeli archives. Their findings—and a new essay by Dr. Quandt—will all be included a new edited volume, The 1973 Arab-Israeli War released in late September 2023 by Rowman & Littlefield.

On September 25, 2023, Just World Ed's president, Helena Cobban, held a conversation with Drs. Quandt and Kipnis about the current state of scholarship and analysis of the causes and effects of the 1973 war. The present multimedia portal contains the video of that conversation along with a lightly edited version of its transcript and other related materials.