Israeli intelligence services and two key generals but did not assign blame to the polit-
ical leadership. On the Arab side, political leaders boasted of their armies’ achieve-
ments. Even so, the war showed once again the difficulty of defeating Israel, eventu-
ally leading Sadat to conclude that Egypt could regain its lost territory only through
negotiation.
Resolution 338, officially ending the war, resulted from intense international
diplomacy that included an unusual degree of cooperation as well as heightened ten-
sions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both superpowers rushed enor-
mous quantities of weapons and equipment to the region in the middle stages of the
war, with Moscow aiding Egypt and the United States assisting Israel at a crucial stage.
Regardless, Resolution 338 was brokered during two days of negotiations in Moscow
between Soviet officials and U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger. The Security
Council adopted it unanimously early on October 22.
The continued fighting between Egypt and Israel after adoption of the cease-fire
resolution resulted in a brief crisis in relations between Washington and Moscow. After
Sadat appealed on October 24 for U.S. and Soviet troops to supervise the cease-fire,
the Soviets hinted that they might intervene on Egypt’s behalf. As a warning to
Moscow, President Richard Nixon on October 25 put U.S. military forces on a world-
wide alert, one of the few times the United States did so during the cold war. All sides
quickly backed away from confrontation, and later that day the Security Council
adopted Resolution 340 establishing an emergency UN force to supervise the cease-
fire. The resolution excluded troops from the five permanent members of the council.
On November 11, Israel and Egypt signed a formal cease-fire—the first major
diplomatic agreement between them since their 1949 armistice. A UN-sponsored peace
conference held in Geneva in December brought together diplomats from Egypt,
Israel, Jordan, the Soviet Union, and the United States but made no clear progress,
in part because Syria boycotted the event.
In January 1974, Kissinger embarked on “shuttle diplomacy,” trips among Mid-
dle Eastern capitals, that produced agreements for disengaging the combatants. The
first agreement, signed by Egypt and Israel on January 18, 1974, obligated Israel to
withdraw its forces from the western bank of the Suez Canal and establish new posi-
tions about twenty miles to the east of the canal. Kissinger returned to the region in
May and brokered an agreement separating Israeli and Syrian forces; under that accord,
signed on May 31, 1974, the two sides exchanged prisoners, and Israel withdrew
behind a buffer zone on the Golan Heights patrolled by a UN monitoring force.
Kissinger resumed Middle East diplomacy during much of 1975, with a renewed
focus on Egypt and Israel. On September 4, 1975, those two countries signed an agree-
ment pledging to resolve their differences “by peaceful means” and establishing new
positions for their respective forces in the Sinai. That agreement helped set the stage
for an ambitious diplomatic initiative by Sadat two years later that led to the first for-
mal, comprehensive peace treaty between Israel and an Arab nation (Camp David
Peace Process, p. 118).
In addition to introducing an element of military balance into the Middle East
conflict, the 1973 war resulted in the Arabs’ first concerted use of oil as a political
weapon. On October 17, just two days after the Nixon administration announced its
military resupply of Israel, ministers of the Organization of the Arab Petroleum Export-
ing Countries (OAPEC) met in Kuwait and agreed to reduce oil production by 5 percent
114 ARABS AND ISRAELIS