Arabs and Jews, however, are but two of the elements at work in the political arena of the Middle East. President Nasser was armed by the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union had a hand in bringing on the Six Day War. The Israeli victory, which completely transformed Israel’s strategic position, opened prospects for dialogue with the Arab world: a population of over a million Palestinian Arabs came under Israeli control, and the ‘open bridges’ policy, which allowed freedom of movement between Jordan and the West Bank, created prospects of an understanding between Israel and the Arab world. However, the Soviet Union dissuaded any tendency by the Arabs to move towards negotiation with Israel. Ten days after the War, the Israeli Cabinet voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace and demilitarization. It was the Soviet Union who blocked this move. Her subsequent actions and policy encouraged the Arab Summit Conference held at Khartoum in September 1967 to reject the Israeli overtures with ‘the “three noes” resolution’ - no negotiation with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel. Once again, the stage was set for renewed conflict in the Middle East. In the years that followed, the Soviet Union was afforded the opportunity to test much of the strategy and theory of modern air defence; Soviet strength in Egypt grew to some 20,000 troops, and her air force assumed responsibility for part of the air defence of Egypt. However, when President Sadat came to power in 1970, while deciding that he must go to war in order to break the political log-jam with Israel, he also decided to change Egypt’s orientation from a pro-Soviet one to one supporting the Americans. In a move characteristic of the imagination and decisiveness of Sadat, he ordered the Russians out of Egypt in July 1972 - and then prepared for war against Israel with Russian support and possibly connivance.
The United States for its part exerted considerable efforts to bridge the gap between the Israeli and the Arab positions on the basis of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was adopted on 22 November 1967. This resolution called, inter alia, for ‘withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict’ as well as the
Right of ‘every State in the area... to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force’. Parallel to a policy of maintaining Israel’s defensive capability in the face of the growth of Soviet military supplies to Arab countries, the United States initiated moves designed to break the impasse in the area. US Secretary of State William Rogers produced unsuccessfully the so-called ‘Rogers Plan’ in 1970, while he successfully negotiated the Cease-Fire along the Suez Canal in August 1970. US efforts were directed principally to containing Soviet-backed moves such as the Syrian invasion of Jordan in 1970, to maintaining Israel’s deterrent posture and to seeking a political solution by means of negotiations.
Both superpowers were involved in the Yom Kippur War: major resupply operations were mounted by the Soviet Union in favour of the Egyptian and Syrian armies and by the United States in favour of the Israeli forces. Sadat’s decision to ask for a cease-fire was greatly influenced by the effectiveness of the American resupply operation, as he pointed out both in his address to the Egyptian parliament and in a letter to President Assad of Syria. It was the United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who negotiated a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt, including Israeli military concessions that involved opening a supply line to the beleaguered Egyptian Third Army. From this point, the United States developed a central position in all the negotiations, as President Sadat moved towards a completely pro-American orientation. The role of the United Nation’s peace-keeping forces in implementing agreements reached in the negotiations in respect of Sinai, the Golan Heights and at a later date of Lebanon, became an increasingly important one.
World History
