Salim Nazzal

In the Arab orient they call it Tichreen war, in Egypt they call it October war, in other parts of the Arab world they call it Ramadan war, in Israel they call Yom Kippur war, in other parts of the world they call it the 1973 war, all these names are to name the war that took place 37 years ago between Arabs and Israel. The question is how to place this war in the Arab history.

In the view of most Arab historians, the importance of this war lies in two major points; the first is that this war was initiated by Arabs to free their land for the first time after three repetitive defeats in 1948, 1956, 1967.

These defeats have led to great frustration among the Arab masses which pressurized its governments to continue the struggle against Israel. That period too witnessed large waves of Arab self critique which appeared in three major trends, the first trend was the Marxist trend expressed in Sadeq al Azm book, “criticizing the religious thinking” which explained the Arab defeat in the exsistance of the metaphysical thinking calling for replacing it with the scientific thinking, this trend continued and developed with the late Muhammad arkoun who focused on rereading the Islamic history through using the deconstruction theory with the aim to free the mythical thinking in Islam.

The second trend was expressed by the democratic reform trend through the writings of Yasin Al Hafiz which focused its critique on the one man, and one party system, considering that the absence of democracy in the Arab countries is the reason behind the Arab defeat. The third trend is the religious trend which explained the Arab defeat in the absence of religion in the Arab politics and society, this trend has to grow stronger to develop what has become known as the political Islam with its various trends.

However the initial successful of the Egyptian and Syrian offense left Israel paralyzed as recent Israeli document emphasize. And the war has generated a huge inter Arab solidarity which probably has not been that strong since the beginning of the conflict with the Zionist state.

The October war was important to the Arabs to restore their self confidence after the huge Israeli propaganda about its “undefeatable army” which the October war proved beyond doubt that it was no more than psychological war fare to influence the Arab moral to hinder them from thinking to free their occupied land. Furthermore the daily Israeli humiliation of Palestinians in the occupied Palestine and the Israeli degrading of the Arab and the Islamic culture have multiplied the storage of anger towards Israel which made the question of defeating Israel undoubtedly the strongest aspect in the Arab collective mind.

The Arab success in this war has proved that it is possible to defeat Israel in conventional war in contrast to the theories which appeared in the after math of the defeat of 1967 war which argued that Arab armies are technologically backward compared to the American backed Israeli modern army and suggested a form of Vietcong form of guerilla warfare as an alternative.

But for the majority of Arabs the political results of this war was catastrophic because it resulted in the withdrawal of Egypt, the biggest Arab force from the conflict following the Camp David accord which ended the conflict between Egypt and Israel, and which established the first diplomatic relationship between an Arab country and the state of Israel. This step has resulted in huge anti Egyptian sentiments in the Arab world which viewed the Egyptian president step as a betrayal to the Arab cause. The withdrawal of Egypt has revived the idea that it is possible to continue the struggle against Israel through the guerilla war fare as long as the Arab states are unable or unwilling to do the struggle. These developments which might explain the change which took place later when the resistance movements replaced the Arab states in resisting Israel.

The second point is that this war has greatly shaken the Israeli illusion of the coexistence between peace and occupation. It has become now obvious to the whole world that the continuation of the Israeli occupation is the major cause for the conflict in the Middle East. Nevertheless, after 37 years, there is no evidence that Israel has learned the simple law that peace and occupation cannot meet.

This is crystal clear these days in today’s Israel governed by the Jewish fundamentalist ideology which rejects any political compromise. This will likely to contribute in creating a situation not far from the situation which was on the eve of the 1973 war. In the absence of a serious international pressure on Israel, and in the continual of the Israeli policy which repetitively defies the international laws, it is not difficult to predict that this situation will contribute in the consolidation of the culture of militarization which might expose the region to further military confrontations.

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Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region. - snazzal@ymail.com