ABSTRACT
During and after the Yom Kippur War, various political circles in Israel and the international community blamed Israel, at least partially, for the outbreak of hostilities. According to this train of thinking, although Egypt and Syria made a ruthless surprise attack on Israel’s holiest day of the year, Israel should be held largely responsible for the war. The main argument in support of this allegation is that despite Israel’s
long-standing advocacy and formal support of peace after the Six Day War, it was not really willing to exhaust all options for a political accommodation with the Arab world in general and Egypt in particular. Its ongoing statements on its quest for peace with the entire Arab world were in fact a ‘lip service’ which lacked sincerity. Israel, it is argued, knew very well that peace or even political accommodation with Arab states could be achieved only if Israel would be willing to withdraw from the territories it had occupied from Arab states in the Six Day War. Israel had no intention of making such a ‘sacrifice’ necessary for transforming a vague peace aspiration into a concrete political option: namely, withdrawal from territories captured in the Six Day War. According to this view, following the Six Day War, a pragmatic vision
gained hold in Egypt, as well as in various other Arab states, regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict and its resolution. In the aftermath of the war, it is claimed, Egypt, as well as other Arab states, felt it was thoroughly worn out by the continuous struggle with Israel over the past two decades. Egypt, thus, came to the conclusion that it had in fact no inherent conflict with Israel. There were no territorial controversies between the states. Furthermore, a big and wide desert (Sinai) separated each state from the other and ensured that neither could easily threaten the other. Consequently, Egypt concluded that its previous wars with Israel, in which Egypt paid a very high price, did not well serve her national interests. Those wars, it became clear to the Egyptians, had not really improved their standing with Israel or the international community. It was doubtful if those wars enhanced the status of the Palestinians, for whose sake they were supposedly carried out.
