The decline of Labour dominance

The Yom Kippur War

On October 6, 1973—the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur—Egyptian and Syrian forces staged a surprise attack on Israeli forces situated on the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights. Israeli confidence in its early warning systems and air superiority was misplaced, and Egyptian missiles were soon taking a heavy toll of Israeli warplanes. The intensity of the Egyptian and Syrian assault, so unlike the situation in 1967, rapidly began to exhaust Israel’s reserve stocks of munitions.

With Israel threatened by catastrophe, Prime Minister Meir turned to the United States for aid, while the Israeli general staff hastily improvised a battle strategy. Washington’s reluctance to help Israel changed rapidly when the Soviet Union launched its own resupply effort to Egypt and Syria. President Nixon countered by establishing an emergency supply line to Israel, even though the Arab nations imposed a costly oil embargo, and various American allies refused to facilitate the arms shipments.

With reinforcements on the way, the IDF rapidly turned the tide. A daring Israeli helicopter assault disabled portions of the Egyptian air defenses, which allowed Israeli forces commanded by General Ariel Sharon to cross the Suez Canal and threaten to destroy the Egyptian Third Army. On the Golan, Israeli troops, at heavy cost, repulsed the Syrians and advanced to the edge of the Golan plateau on the road to Damascus. At this point, the United States, alarmed by Soviet threats of direct military intervention and on nuclear alert, secured a cease-fire in place.

Political and social repercussions of the war

Egyptian President Sadat persuaded U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that his country was ready to abandon both its Soviet and Syrian allies for a fresh start with the United States; only Washington, in Sadat’s view, could effectively influence Israel to return the Sinai without further bloodshed. Kissinger, supported by Nixon, successfully pressured Israel to end the war short of a complete Egyptian military defeat and then, through intensive travel between the various capitals—what soon was being called shuttle diplomacy—achieved disengagement agreements on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts during 1974. This became known as the “step by step” process, which was intended to fulfill the intent of Security Council Resolution 242 that territory be exchanged for peace.

Golda Meir’s government resigned in April 1974, exhausted and discredited by the war. Still, the Labour Party won a narrow election victory in June by selecting Yitzhak Rabin, hero of the 1967 war and former Israeli ambassador to Washington, to lead its list. The first native-born Israeli to become prime minister, Rabin predicted a period of “seven lean years” until the West, including the United States, would end its heavy dependence on Arab oil. He argued that Israel therefore needed to trade space for time, to coordinate closely with Washington, and to encourage Egypt’s new pro-American policy.

Rabin reached a second disengagement agreement with Egypt in September 1975, but little progress was made with Syria. On what had been the “quiet” front—the West Bank and Gaza—the Labour government’s preferred strategy of negotiations with the more amenable King Hussein of Jordan (the so-called “Jordanian option”) was threatened in October 1974, when an Arab summit conference in Rabat, Morocco, declared Arafat’s PLO to be the sole representative of the Palestinians. A year later, Rabin obtained secret assurances from Kissinger that the United States would not recognize the PLO as an entity representing the Palestinians unless that organization first ceased terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Meanwhile, the Gush Emunim movement on the West Bank gathered force after the Yom Kippur War and between 1974 and 1987 planted small communities near large Arab populations, greatly complicating Israeli policy and arousing international opposition. The secular Israeli government opposed such efforts but rarely used force to dislodge the settlers, who invoked Zionist rights to the homeland in their defense. Still, they numbered fewer than 4,000 when the opposition Likud government of Menachem Begin came to power in 1977.

Diplomatic impasse

The Yom Kippur War left the country in bad economic shape. An accelerating rate of inflation just before the conflict was suddenly combined with a stagnant economy; prices continued to rise even as demand and production fell. The international recession reduced demand for Israeli exports, and, for the first time in years, unemployment became a problem. On top of this, Israel became heavily indebted by arms purchases—partially offset by U.S. aid—and the country’s international status suffered. One by one, most of Israel’s carefully cultivated African friends broke relations under the threat of Arab oil sanctions, leaving the Jewish state alone with an equally isolated South Africa. Further complicating the situation for Israel, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 in 1975, which equated Zionism with racism, and the PLO gained increasing European and Asian support. Meanwhile, Rabin was losing political ground at home, harmed by infighting and corruption. Even the remarkable success of Israel’s July 1976 raid at the Entebbe, Uganda, airport—in which commandos rescued the Israeli passengers of an Air France plane hijacked by German and Palestinian terrorists—was of little help. The former general, new to politics, found it difficult to dominate a cabinet in which his chief rival, Shimon Peres, was defense minister, and few others owed him any political allegiance.

A further blow to Rabin fell when he visited Washington in March 1977 to meet with the new American president, Jimmy Carter, who advocated a "comprehensive approach" to Middle East peace instead of the Kissinger step-by-step plan. Carter sought an international conference to resolve all the major issues between Israel and the Arabs and advocated a “homeland” for the Palestinians. For Israelis, this notion (and its similarity to the wording of the Balfour Declaration) was a code word for a Palestinian state, and they hotly opposed it—not least because it also implied a leadership role for the PLO. Rabin, facing a major quarrel with the United States and beset by a personal scandal (his wife had maintained an illegal bank account in Washington from his days as ambassador), resigned in April, and Shimon Peres became Labour’s new party leader.