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Although Egypt andIsrael signed a peace treaty in 1979, hostility between Israeland the rest of its Arab neighbors, complicated by the demandsof Palestinian Arabs, continued into the 1980s.THE FIRST PALESTINE WAR (1947-49)The first war began as a civil conflict between PalestinianJews and Arabs following the United Nations recommendation ofNov. 29, 1947, to partition Palestine, then still underBritish mandate, into an Arab state and a Jewish state.Fighting quickly spread as Arab guerrillas attacked Jewishsettlements and communication links to prevent implementationof the UN plan.Jewish forces prevented seizure of most settlements, but Arabguerrillas, supported by the Transjordanian Arab Legion underthe command of British officers, besieged Jerusalem. By April,Haganah, the principal Jewish military group, seized theoffensive, scoring victories against the Arab Liberation Armyin northern Palestine, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. British militaryforces withdrew to Haifa; although officially neutral, somecommanders assisted one side or the other.After the British had departed and the state of Israel had beenestablished on May 15, 1948, under the premiership of DavidBEN-GURION, the Palestine Arab forces and foreign volunteerswere joined by regular armies of Transjordan (now the kingdomof JORDAN), IRAQ, LEBANON, and SYRIA, with token support fromSAUDI ARABIA. Efforts by the UN to halt the fighting wereunsuccessful until June 11, when a 4-week truce was declared.When the Arab states refused to renew the truce, ten more daysof fighting erupted. In that time Israel greatly extended thearea under its control and broke the siege of Jerusalem.Fighting on a smaller scale continued during the second UNtruce beginning in mid-July, and Israel acquired moreterritory, especially in Galilee and the Negev. By January1949, when the last battles ended, Israel had extended itsfrontiers by about 5,000 sq km (1,930 sq mi) beyond the 15,500sq km (4,983 sq mi) allocated to the Jewish state in the UNpartition resolution. It had also secured its independence.During 1949, armistice agreements were signed under UN auspicesbetween Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Thearmistice frontiers were unofficial boundaries until 1967.SUEZ-SINAI WAR (1956)Border conflicts between Israel and the Arabs continued despiteprovisions in the 1949 armistice agreements for peacenegotiations. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs whohad left Israeli-held territory during the first warconcentrated in refugee camps along Israel's frontiers andbecame a major source of friction when they infiltrated back totheir homes or attacked Israeli border settlements. A majortension point was the Egyptian-controlled GAZA STRIP, which wasused by Arab guerrillas for raids into southern Israel.Egypt's blockade of Israeli shipping in the Suez Canal and Gulfof Aqaba intensified the hostilities.These escalating tensions converged with the SUEZ CRISIS causedby the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian presidentGamal NASSER. Great Britain and France strenuously objected toNasser's policies, and a joint military campaign was plannedagainst Egypt with the understanding that Israel would take theinitiative by seizing the Sinai Peninsula. The war began onOct. 29, 1956, after an announcement that the armies of Egypt,Syria, and Jordan were to be integrated under the Egyptiancommander in chief. Israel's Operation Kadesh, commanded byMoshe DAYAN, lasted less than a week; its forces reached theeastern bank of the Suez Canal in about 100 hours, seizing theGaza Strip and nearly all the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinaioperations were supplemented by an Anglo-French invasion ofEgypt on November 5, giving the allies control of the northernsector of the Suez Canal.The war was halted by a UN General Assembly resolution callingfor an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of all occupyingforces from Egyptian territory. The General Assembly alsoestablished a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to replacethe allied troops on the Egyptian side of the borders in Suez,Sinai, and Gaza. By December 22 the last British and Frenchtroops had left Egypt. Israel, however, delayed withdrawal,insisting that it receive security guarantees against furtherEgyptian attack. After several additional UN resolutionscalling for withdrawal and after pressure from the UnitedStates, Israel's forces left in March 1957.SIX-DAY WAR (1967)Relations between Israel and Egypt remained fairly stable inthe following decade. The Suez Canal remained closed toIsraeli shipping, the Arab boycott of Israel was maintained,and periodic border clashes occurred between Israel, Syria, andJordan. However, UNEF prevented direct military encountersbetween Egypt and Israel.By 1967 the Arab confrontation states--Egypt, Syria, andJordan--became impatient with the status quo, the propagandawar with Israel escalated, and border incidents increaseddangerously. Tensions culminated in May when Egyptian forceswere massed in Sinai, and Cairo ordered the UNEF to leave Sinaiand Gaza. President Nasser also announced that the Gulf ofAqaba would be closed again to Israeli shipping. At the end ofMay, Egypt and Jordan signed a new defense pact placingJordan's armed forces under Egyptian command. Efforts tode-escalate the crisis were of no avail. Israeli and Egyptianleaders visited the United States, but President LyndonJohnson's attempts to persuade Western powers to guarantee freepassage through the Gulf failed.Believing that war was inevitable, Israeli Premier Levi ESHKOL,Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, and Army Chief of StaffYitzhak RABIN approved preemptive Israeli strikes at Egyptian,Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi airfields on June 5, 1967. By theevening of June 6, Israel had destroyed the combateffectiveness of the major Arab air forces, destroying morethan 400 planes and losing only 26 of its own. Israel alsoswept into Sinai, reaching the Suez Canal and occupying most ofthe peninsula in less than four days.King HUSSEIN of Jordon rejected an offer of neutrality andopened fire on Israeli forces in Jerusalem on June 5. But alightning Israeli campaign placed all of Arab Jerusalem and theJordanian West Bank in Israeli hands by June 8. As the warended on the Jordanian and Egyptian fronts, Israel opened anattack on Syria in the north. In a little more than two daysof fierce fighting, Syrian forces were driven from the GolanHeights, from which they had shelled Jewish settlements acrossthe border. The Six-Day War ended on June 10 when the UNnegotiated cease-fire agreements on all fronts.The Six-Day War increased severalfold the area under Israel'scontrol. Through the occupation of Sinai, Gaza, ArabJerusalem, the West Bank, and Golan Heights, Israel shortenedits land frontiers with Egypt and Jordan, removed the mostheavily populated Jewish areas from direct Arab artilleryrange, and temporarily increased its strategic advantages.OCTOBER WAR (1973)Israel was the dominant military power in the region for thenext six years. Led by Golda MEIR from 1969, it was generallysatisfied with the status quo, but Arab impatience mounted.Between 1967 and 1973, Arab leaders repeatedly warned that theywould not accept continued Israeli occupation of the lands lostin 1967.After Anwar al-SADAT succeeded Nasser as president of Egypt in1970, threats about "the year of decision" were more frequent,as was periodic massing of troops along the Suez Canal.Egyptian and Syrian forces underwent massive rearmament withthe most sophisticated Soviet equipment. Sadat consolidatedwar preparations in secret agreements with President Hafezal-ASSAD of Syria for a joint attack and with King FAISAL ofSaudi Arabia to finance the operations.Egypt and Syria attacked on Oct. 6, 1973, pushing Israeliforces several miles behind the 1967 cease-fire lines. Israelwas thrown off guard, partly because the attack came on YomKippur (the Day of Atonement), the most sacred Jewish religiousday (coinciding with the Muslim fast of Ramadan). AlthoughIsrael recovered from the initial setback, it failed to regainall the territory lost in the first days of fighting. Incounterattacks on the Egyptian front, Israel seized a majorbridgehead behind the Egyptian lines on the west bank of thecanal. In the north, Israel drove a wedge into the Syrianlines, giving it a foothold a few miles west of Damascus.After 18 days of fighting in the longest Arab-Israeli war since1948, hostilities were again halted by the UN. The costs werethe greatest in any battles fought since World War II. TheArabs lost some 2,000 tanks and more than 500 planes; theIsraelis, 804 tanks and 114 planes. The 3-week war cost Egyptand Israel about $7 billion each, in material and losses fromdeclining industrial production or damage.The political phase of the 1973 war ended with disengagementagreements accepted by Israel, Egypt, and Syria afternegotiations in 1974 and 1975 by U.S. Secretary of State HenryA. KISSINGER. The agreements provided for Egyptianreoccupation of a strip of land in Sinai along the east bank ofthe Suez Canal and for Syrian control of a small area aroundthe Golan Heights town of Kuneitra. UN forces were stationedon both fronts to oversee observance of the agreements, whichreestablished a political balance between Israel and the Arabconfrontation states.Under the terms of an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed onMar. 26, 1979, Israel returned the Sinai peninsula to Egypt.Hopes for an expansion of the peace process to include otherArab nations waned, however, when Egypt and Israel weresubsequently unable to agree on a formula for Palestinianself-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the 1980sregional tensions were increased by the activities of militantPalestinians and other Arab extremists and by several Israeliactions. The latter included the formal proclamation of theentire city of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital (1980), theannexation of the Golan Heights (1981), the invasion ofsouthern Lebanon (1982), and the continued expansion of Israelisettlement in the occupied West Bank. Bibliography: ljfdlsjaf lkdsjflajsd ksajdf;lsjflk Word Count: 1484
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