#plo

For How Long Do Palestinians Have To Bleed ?

Artist: Unknown

Palestinian guerrillas stand guard on the outskirts of the south Lebanon coastal city of Tyre as French U.N. peacekeeping move into position regionally, March 24, 1978.

I love getting asks that really call for a book...and then trying to answer them meaningfully in less than 1,000 words. It's ridiculous and fun, even when nuance is sacrificed on the altar of brevity.

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We'll get to 1973 after a little context because you can't understand Sadat without understanding Nasser and you can't understand 1973 without undertanding 1967.

Before 1967, Egypt occupied Gaza, Jordan occupied the West Bank, and the whole Arab world was still pissed off that the military power of five Arab nations had failed to wipe out a tiny nation of dhimmi, Jews who were mostly refugees, in 1948-1949:

In May of 1967, Egypt's President Nasser moved 100,000 troops and nearly 1,000 tanks to Israel's southern border, expelled the UN peacekeeping force that had kept the peace since 1956, and blockaded the Straits of Tiran — Israel's only southern trade route and oil lifeline.

Nasser did all this while publicly declaring, in his own words:

"our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."

Syria and Jordan signed military pacts and massed their own forces on Israel's other borders. Cairo Radio says on May 16, 1967:

"the sole method we shall apply against Israel is a total war which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence."

The blockade of the Straits was itself an act of war under international law, the threats were made, the intent was clear, and troops were amassed on Israel's borders - so Israel struck Egypt's air force on June 5, 1967.

The result was swift and stunning. In six days, Israel captured the entire Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria - it now controlled quadruple the territory.

Here's how things looked after the Six Day War:

That humiliation set the stage for everything that followed in 1973.

What happened between 1967 and 1973?

If defeat had chastened the Arab world, it didn't show. Three months after the war, Arab League leaders met in Khartoum and issued what became known as the Three No's of Khartoum:

No peace with Israel

No recognition of Israel

No negotiations with Israel.

The door to diplomacy was slammed shut - and not by Israel.

Meanwhile the Cold War was reshaping the region.

Egypt and Syria were Soviet clients, armed with Soviet weapons and advised by Soviet generals.

The US, watching Israel's stunning 1967 performance, had come to see Israel as an essential strategic partner in the Middle East. Israel was, after all, democratic, militarily formidable, and reliably anti-Soviet.

Washington's backing of Israel deepened steadily through the late 1960s not out of ancient loyalty, but cold war calculation.**

Three years after Israel's shocking 1967 victory, the Arab world was still living inthe shadow of this defeat. The loss had been swift, total, and humiliating - Egyptians wanted the Sinai (and their pride) back.

This was the context in which Anwar Sadat became Egypt's president in 1970.

Sadat knew, though, that he had no realistic path to getting the Sinai back.

Militarily, Egypt couldn't match Israel. Diplomatically, the Three No's had slammed shut every possible door.

Sadat, though, thought Israel's sense of regional invincibility was actually the obstacle to peace. He reasoned that as long as Israel believed it could hold the Sinai forever at no cost, it would never negotiate. The only way to get to the negotiating table, he thought, was to make holding the Sinai feel expensive.

So Sadat planned a war with a limited objective. He didn't need to destroy Israel and he didn't need to retake the Sinai by force - he needed to bloody Israel badly enough in the opening days of conflict to make it hurt.

Sadat figured he didn't need to win. He needed to not lose so badly that Egypt could be ignored.

Sadat found a willing partner in Syria's Hafez al-Assad, who similarly wanted the Golan Heights back. They planned - this time in secrecy.

They attacked on October 6, 1973 - Yom Kippur.

They figured that on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Israeli soldiers would be fasting and communications would be minimal.

(It also fell during Ramadan, giving the attack a sacred dimension for Arab soldiers.)

At 2pm, Egyptian and Syrian forces launched simultaneous assaults across the Suez Canal and into the Golan Heights. The scale was overwhelming: Egypt crossed with 100,000 troops and 1,600 tanks.

The early days of the Yom Kippur War were the worst Israel had experienced since its founding.

Egyptian forces punched through Israeli defenses in the Sinai. Syrian tanks nearly broke through to the Israeli heartland in the north. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the same legendary one-eyed general who had seemed unshakeable in 1967, reportedly told Prime Minister Golda Meir that Israel faced "the destruction of the Third Temple."

Washington watched the early days of the war with alarm and began a massive airlift of military supplies to Israel.

This came with an immediate price. On October 17, with the war still raging, Arab oil-producing states announced an embargo against any nation supporting Israel, targeting the US and its allies. The message was unambiguous: back Israel and your economy suffers.

Oil prices nearly quadrupled almost overnight. Gas station lines stretched for miles across the US. Rationing was imposed. Speed limits were lowered. Daylight saving time was extended to save energy.

For the first time in the post-war era, ordinary Americans felt the Middle East in their daily lives not as a foreign policy abstraction, but at the pump.

That embargo lasted only until March 1974 and the actual reduction in US oil supply was around 7%. But the psychological impact was permanent. The West had discovered its oil-based vulnerability.

(@short-wooloo may well have asked this question with the Strait of Hormuz in mind, hm?)

Resupplied by the US and regrouped by leadership, Israel's counterattack pushed Syria back beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines and, in one of the war's most dramatic turns, an Israeli armored force under Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt itself, encircling an entire Egyptian army.

A UN ceasefire took hold on October 25.

Israel had survived, but the world had changed.

What Changed?

OPEC became a geopolitical force. Before 1973, global oil prices were largely controlled by Western oil companies. After 1973, that power shifted decisively to oil-producing states. The era of cheap, reliable Middle Eastern energy as a Western entitlement was over.*

The US got serious about the Arab-Israeli conflict as a direct national interest. Before the embargo, US support for Israel was real...but sorta' abstract. After sitting in gas lines, Americans understood that what happened between Israel and its neighbors had consequences at home. This drove Henry Kissinger's intensive diplomacy and ultimately contributed to the 1978 Camp David Accords, in which Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize Israel's right to exist and got the Sinai back. That deal was unthinkable before 1973.

The war (paradoxically) made peace possible. Sadat's gamble worked, but not quite how he planned. Egypt didn't win militarily, but it fought well enough to restore Arab dignity. That restored dignity gave Sadat the political standing at home to do what no Arab leader had done: fly to Jerusalem, address the Israeli Knesset, and make peace. He was assassinated for it in 1981 by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, but the Egypt-Israel peace treaty he signed in 1979 has held for over four decades.

The 1973 war established a template that still governs Middle Eastern geopolitics.

What about the people of Gaza or The West Bank?

Egypt and Syria didn't go to war in 1973 for the Palestinians. Sadat wanted the Sinai. Assad wanted the Golan Heights. The Palestinians were not at the table, not in the planning, not in the goals, and not in the outcome.

Egypt got its land back and made a separate peace. Syria got bupkis and went home. The people living in the West Bank and Gaza were, to both Egypt and Syria, irrelevant.

This matters because the story we often hear (that the Arab world's conflict with Israel is fundamentally about Palestinian liberation) doesn't survive contact with any knowledge of 1973. The leaders who came closest to destroying Israel were fighting for their own territory, their own dignity, and their own place in the Cold War chessboard. The Palestinian question wasn't sidelined by accident. It was never the point to begin with.

Palestinians noticed this, too.

Lessons learned:

Gulf states (including Iran) learned that oil is a weapon.

The West learned that energy dependence is a strategic liability.

Israel learned that military dominance doesn't guarantee security.

The Palestinians stopped waiting for Arab armies to save them. At the 1974 Arab League summit, every Arab state unanimously recognized the PLO - a Palestinian organization committed to fighting its own war - as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people...but within five years, Egypt had its land back and the Palestinians had been excluded from the negotiations that delivered it.

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*Note how some freaked out when the UAE left OPEC in late April 2026...?

Stamp from the Soviet Union (1983)