1973 - Yom Kippur War

War fought between Israel on one side, and Egypt and Syria on the other, backed by Iraq and Jordan and supported economically by Saudi Arabia.

The war lasted for 3 weeks, and started on October 6, 1973 and ended on October 22 on the Syrian front and on October 26 on the Egyptian front. The war and its outcome represent a watershed in Middle Eastern history. For the first time, vulnerability on Israeli side was evident, both Syria and Egypt proved their new strength, both military and in organization. It also left Israel with loss of territory, even if that was not its own, but occupied territory from the Six Day War.

The names of this conflict stem from the important Jewish festival of Yom Kippur, and the Muslim month of Ramadan, in which the annual fast of Sawm is performed. From a rare moment of flabbiness in Israeli intelligence and in the government, Israel did not expect any attacks from its neighbors just at this point in time. The background for this is that 2 very important religious festivals coincided in both Islam and Judaism, two festivals in which there was a prohibition against warfare.

Egypt and Syria used this laxity to launch a surprise attack on Israel. The goal of the war was to win back lost Arab territory from preceding wars, first in 1947-49, then 1956 and especially in the last, the Six-Day War of 1967. Following these wars there had been no political progress in solving the situation of lost territory and large groups of Palestinian refugees. A deep frustration had come over the entire Arab world, which came to motivate strong sentiments, and new political orientations in the populations. At the eve of the 1973 war, the Arab nations felt that they had every excuse to wage war against Israel.

The total cost off the war was estimated to US$7 billion on both Israeli and Egyptian side, but much of the operations on Arab side were financed by Saudi Arabia.