nt. Sadat consolidated war preparations in secret agreements with President Hafez al-ASSAD of Syria for a joint attack and with King FAISAL of Saudi Arabia to finance the operations. Egypt and Syria attacked on Oct. 6, 1973, pushing Israeli forces several miles behind the 1967 cease-fire lines. Israel was thrown off guard, partly because the attack came on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the most sacred Jewish religious day (coinciding with the Muslim fast of Ramadan). Although Israel recovered from the initial setback, it failed to regain all the territory lost in the first days of fighting. In counterattacks on the Egyptian front, Israel seized a major bridgehead behind the Egyptian lines on the west bank of the canal. In the north, Israel drove a wedge into the Syrian lines, giving it a foothold a few miles west of Damascus. After 18 days of fighting in the longest Arab-Israeli war since 1948, hostilities were again halted by the UN. The costs were the greatest in any battles fought since World War II. The Arabs lost some 2,000 tanks and more than 500 planes; the Israelis, 804 tanks and 114 planes. The 3-week war cost Egypt and Israel about $7 billion each, in material and losses from declining industrial production or damage. The political phase of the 1973 war ended with disengagement agreements accepted by Israel, Egypt, and Syria after negotiations in 1974 and 1975 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. KISSINGER. The agreements provided for Egyptian reoccupation of a strip of land in Sinai along the east bank of the Suez Canal and for Syrian control of a small area around the Golan Heights town of Kuneitra. UN forces were stationed on both fronts to oversee observance of the agreements, which reestablished a political balance between Israel and the Arab confrontation states. Under the terms of an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed on Mar. 26, 1979, Israel returned the Sinai peninsula to Egypt. Hopes for an expansion of the pea...
