ABSTRACT
Kissinger acted quickly, visiting the Middle East in November 1973, and securing, on November 11, a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Egypt that resulted in a return to the ceasefire lines of October 22 and the relief of the Egyptian Third Army. Anwar Sadat used the 1973 war to try to end the struggle with Israel within the broad context of lessening Egyptian dependence upon the Soviet Union. Jimmy Carter adopted a Soviet suggestion that the United States and the Soviets jointly reconvene the Geneva Peace Conference. In January 1974, on another round of shuttle diplomacy, Kissinger persuaded Egypt and Israel to sign a disengagement accord, whereby Israel withdrew from the western bank of the Suez Canal, to about twenty miles from the east bank of the canal. President Hafez al-Assad, too, felt that Sadat had left Syria out in the cold, especially after the second Egyptian–Israeli disengagement agreement in 1975.
