1973Occupation

The October War and Resolution 338

Egypt and Syria attacked on 6 October 1973 to break the diplomatic deadlock over the occupied territories. The war ended with Security Council resolution 338, which ordered a ceasefire and, for the first time, negotiations 'between the parties concerned' to implement resolution 242.

Six years after 1967, Israel held Sinai, the Golan, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, and saw no reason to trade them. Egypt under Anwar Sadat and Syria under Hafez al-Assad concluded that only a war could restart diplomacy. On 6 October 1973, the tenth of Ramadan and Yom Kippur, Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and Syrian forces attacked on the Golan. The initial Arab gains were substantial; Israel, resupplied by an American airlift, counter-attacked and by the third week had crossed the canal westward and encircled the Egyptian Third Army. The Arab oil-producing states imposed an embargo, and the United States and the Soviet Union came closer to direct confrontation than at any time since 1962.

The Security Council adopted resolution 338 on 22 October 1973. It is three paragraphs long. It calls upon the parties to cease all firing and terminate all military activity within twelve hours; it calls upon them to start immediately after the ceasefire the implementation of resolution 242 in all of its parts; and it decides that, immediately and concurrently with the ceasefire, negotiations shall start between the parties concerned under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East.

That third paragraph was the innovation. Resolution 242 had set out principles; 338 required direct negotiation to apply them, and the pairing “242 and 338” has been the standard formula for the terms of reference of Middle East diplomacy ever since — invoked at the Geneva conference of December 1973, in the disengagement agreements of 1974 and 1975, at Camp David in 1978, at Madrid in 1991 and in the Oslo letters of 1993.

For Palestinians the outcome was double-edged. The war restored Arab political confidence and produced, within a year, the Arab League’s recognition of the PLO at Rabat as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and Yasser Arafat’s appearance at the General Assembly. But the diplomacy that 338 set in motion ran between states: it led to Egypt’s separate peace at Camp David and the return of Sinai, and it left the West Bank and Gaza where they were. The occupation that began in 1967 was not interrupted by the war of 1973; it was, if anything, made more secure by the removal of Egypt from the military equation.

Sources

Cited works

3
  1. docs.un.org — 338(1973)(opens in a new tab)https://docs.un.org/en/S/RES/338(1973)
  2. digitallibrary.un.org(opens in a new tab)https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/93466
  3. un.org — auto insert 184858(opens in a new tab)https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184858/