At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 7, 2023, Mohammed Deif, the head of the Hamas military wing, announced Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Over the span of 20 minutes, Hamas reported that it had launched over 5,000 rockets into Israel. At the same time, almost 3,000 Palestinian militants breached the Gaza envelope by truck, motorcycle, bulldozer, speedboat, and paramotor, killing and kidnapping dozens of Israelis, torching homes, and capturing and destroying military equipment. Hamas infiltrated as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including some as far as 15 miles from the Gaza border, and even seized the headquarters of the Gaza Division. By the time the Israeli Defense Forces regained control two days later, approximately 1,200 Israelis had been killed, 247 taken hostage, and 100–200 were still missing.
Though incredible in its organization and scale, the October 7 attack is not without precedent, at least with its lack of “provocation.” As media outlets were quick to note, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood occurred 50 years and one day after another surprise attack that would remake the Middle East: the Yom Kippur War. A war so named for its occurrence on Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement” and holiest date of the Jewish calendar, this war was fought in 1973 between October 6 and 25. Since their embarrassing defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel’s Arab neighbors had searched for a way to reestablish their sphere of influence in the region and to counter Israel, which they had regarded as an illegitimate state since its founding.
Fighting was localized in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, both of which Israel had occupied since 1967. Accordingly, the first wave of attacks consisted of coordinated Egyptian and Syrian invasions of their respective ceasefire lines with Israel. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israel had invested around $300 million in the Bar Lev Line, a chain of fortifications along the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. The Line consisted of a sand wall stretching the length of the canal, varying between 65 and 80 feet high, supported by concrete walls to prevent the landing of armored or amphibious units from entering from the Egyptian side. Israeli military planners estimated that “the Egyptians would need at least twenty-four, if not a full forty-eight hours, to break through this barrier and establish a sizable bridgehead.”1
In actuality, the Egyptian military overran the Bar Lev Line in less than two hours. Using hundreds of water cannons purchased from Germany and the United Kingdom, the Egyptian army removed over 100 million cubic feet of packed dirt on October 6 alone. Simultaneously, 250 Egyptian Air Force Planes attached targets in the Sinai and 2,000 artillery opened fire at strong points along the Line. In the first minute of the offensive alone, the Egyptians dropped 10,500 bombs, a rate of 175 per second. In a coordinated strike, the Syrians launched their own attack on the Golan Heights, which Israel had also occupied since 1967. Having caught the Israelis off-guard, both the Egyptians and Syrians made significant gains into Israeli territory.
Though it started at a disadvantage, it did not take long for the Israeli war machine to kick into high gear. After three days, Israeli forces had brought the Egyptian offensive to a halt and pushed the Syrians past the pre-war ceasefire lines. Not stopping there, the Israeli military continue to push deep into Syria and within a week was shelling the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital. On the War’s other front, the Egyptians failed to capture two strategic mountain passes deeper within Sinai and the Israeli Defense Forces crossed the Suez Canal and advanced toward Suez City. Two weeks into the War, a United Nations-arranged ceasefire failed to take root.
As the conflict dragged on, the rest of the world watched the unfolding events with increasing alarm. This very hot war of course occurred within the context of the larger Cold War between the US and USSR. Under the sway of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, the US saw the Israel as a key ally that could help counter the rise of Soviet influence in the region. Accordingly, the US had been supplying military aid to Israel since the 1960s. The breakout of fighting prompted both superpowers to conduct massive resupply efforts, and a naval standoff in the Mediterranean Sea that escalated toward the end of the War was one of the closest points the countries came to all-out war with one another. By October 24, the Israelis had encircled the Egyptian Army and found themselves a little more than 60 miles from Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Tensions between the US and USSR appeared close to breaking when a second ceasefire finally held on October 25, officially bringing the Yom Kippur War to an end.
By 1973, Israel had fallen prey to a myth it had begun to tell itself in the wake of its stunning success in the Six-Day War. In the words of US Marine Corps Major Michael C. Jordan, the 1967 victory was “so complete and won so cheaply” that the Israelis came to view “their military forces as invincible, their intelligence service as unmatched, and their Arab foes as inferior and incapable.” Israeli confidence was so pervasive and ingrained at the time that the saying “Damascus is only one hour's drive away, and Cairo perhaps two” became commonplace. Although Israel would “win” the War in a military sense, the Arabs scored a symbolic victory by shattering the illusion of Israeli invincibility. Far more than restoring a sense of honor of its Arab neighbors, the Yom Kippur War demonstrated that despite its strength, Israel could not rely upon a permanent peace on solely its own terms as it had during the First (1948), Second (1956), and Third (1967) Arab–Israeli Wars. In this way, the Yom Kippur War paved the way for the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, a set of negotiations which continue to the present day.
Gawrych, The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, 16.