Yom Kippur War in the context of "Ariel Sharon"

Muhammad Anwar es-Sadat (25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt, from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad on 6 October 1981. Sadat was a senior member of the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk I in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and a close confidant of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, under whom he served as vice president twice and whom he succeeded as president in 1970. In 1978, Sadat and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, signed a peace treaty in cooperation with United States President Jimmy Carter, for which they were recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize.

In his 11 years as president, he changed Egypt's trajectory, departing from many political and economic tenets of Nasserism, reinstituting a multi-party system, and launching the Infitah economic policy. As President, he led Egypt in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to regain Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967, making him a hero in Egypt and, for a time, the wider Arab world. Afterwards, he engaged in negotiations with Israel, culminating in the Camp David Accords and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty.

The Syrian Arab Army is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. Up until the fall of the Assad regime, the Syrian Arab Army existed as a land force branch of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, which dominated the military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the most senior posts in the armed forces, and had the greatest manpower, approximately 80 percent of the combined services. The Syrian Army originated in local military forces formed by the French after World War I, after France obtained a mandate over the region. It officially came into being in 1945, before Syria obtained full independence the following year and 2 years after official independence.

After 1946, it played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting six military coups: two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, and one each in 1951, 1954, 1963, 1966, and 1970. It fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and 1982 Lebanon War) and one with Jordan ("Black September" in Jordan, 1970). An armored division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 it was the major pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Internally, it played a major part in suppressing the 1979–82 Islamist uprising in Syria, and from 2011 to 2024 was heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian Civil War, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army had taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s.

Before the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War, the Golan Heights comprised 312 inhabited areas, including 2 towns, 163 villages, and 108 farms. In 1966, the Syrian population of the Golan Heights was estimated at 147,613. Israel seized about 70% of the Golan Heights in the closing stages of the Six-Day War. Many of these residents fled during the fighting, or were driven out by the Israeli army, and some were evacuated by the Syrian army. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in 1992 characterized Israel's actions as "ethnic cleansing".

Israel forcibly expelled Syrians from the Golan Heights. There were also instances of Israeli soldiers killing Syrian residents including blowing up their home with people inside.

The Korazim Plateau (Hebrew: רמת כורזים, Ramat Korazim, also spelled Corazim) is a volcanic plateau, located in northern Israel. The plateau is bounded between by the Hula Valley in the north, Sea of Galilee in the south, the mountains of the Galilee to the west and by the Jordan River to the east. It is named after an ancient Jewish settlement also known as "Chorazin". The highest point is Filon Hill, which is 409 meters above sea level.

The plateau is home to a few Israeli communities, including Rosh Pinna, Hatzor HaGlilit and the Bedouin town of Tuba-Zangariyye. The plateau's rural settlements make part of the regional councils of Upper Galilee, Mevo'ot HaHermon and Emek HaYarden. Several important archaeological and historical sites are located on the plateau, including Tel Hazor, Daughters of Jacob Bridge, Mount of Beatitudes and Jubb Yussef. Historically the plateau also served as a transit region for the valleys to the north and south, and the heights to the east and west. Armies passed through the plateau towards the Golan during the Palestine Campaign of World War I in 1918, the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, Six Day War and Yom Kippur War.

Since 1948, conflict has existed between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, rooted in Israel's presence in an area also claimed by Palestinian Arabs. The simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism beginning late in the 19th century marked the beginning of the conflict, despite the long-term coexistence of Arab and Jewish peoples in lands that formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Zionists viewed the land as the Jewish ancestral homeland, while Arabs saw it as Arab Palestinian land and an essential part of the Islamic world.

By 1920, sectarian conflict had begun with the partition of Ottoman Syria in accord with the 1916 Sykes–Picot treaty between Britain and France that became the basis for the Mandate for Palestine and the 1917 promulgation of the Balfour Declaration that expressed British support for a Jewish homeland. The conflict escalated from an internal struggle with the 1948 establishment of Israel, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine. The day after the expiration of Mandatory Palestine and the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the Arab League launched the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that ended with formal partition along the Green Line. More wars followed in 1967 and 1973.

Israeli passage through the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran was restricted by Egypt, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia, for much of the time between the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the 1967 Six-Day War. Since the Egypt–Israel peace treaty of 1979, Israel has enjoyed freedom of navigation through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran.

Egypt was one of the main Arab countries that invaded Israel after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, sparking the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Although the Egyptians were defeated during this conflict, they managed to occupy what would become known as the Gaza Strip and did not recognize Israel as a sovereign state following the 1949 Armistice Agreements. The ceasefire between the two countries was being tested by the Egypt-based Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency, which was prompting Israeli reprisal operations. Egypt had closed the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli vessels in 1949, preventing imports and exports amidst Israel's austerity period. Tensions worsened as the Egyptians gradually strengthened their blockade of Israel, culminating in the Suez Crisis of 1956, during which Israel invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in order to force a re-opening of the blockaded waters, though the Suez Canal was closed until 1957, when Israeli troops withdrew from Egypt. However, in the mid-1960s, Egypt imposed another blockade against Israel, which had declared that any such action would be a casus belli. The Egyptian military subsequently mobilized along Israel's border and expelled the United Nations Emergency Force, leading to the Six-Day War of 1967, which ended in an Egyptian defeat and the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula. Following the outbreak of hostilities in 1967, the Suez Canal was closed until 1975. In 1973, Egypt attempted to retake the Sinai Peninsula by force, triggering the Yom Kippur War; although the initial Egyptian offensive was successful, the conflict ended in an Israeli victory. In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize Israel as part of a bilateral peace treaty, in exchange for which Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. The two countries have remained at peace since 1979, and the overall Egypt–Israel relationship is generally cordial and cooperative.

The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was a military and peacekeeping operation established by the United Nations General Assembly to secure an end to the Suez Crisis of 1956 through the establishment of international peacekeepers on the border between Egypt and Israel. Approved by Resolution 1001 (ES-I) of 7 November 1956, the UNEF was developed in large measure as a result of efforts by UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and a proposal from Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester B. Pearson, who would later win the Nobel Peace Prize for it. UNEF was deployed along Sinai and Gaza until May 1967, when Egypt requested UNEF to withdraw its forces.

The UN General Assembly later established the UN Emergency Force II to supervise the ceasefire between Egyptian and Israeli forces at the end of the Yom Kippur War.

In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel at any point during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began after Egypt and Syria launched a large-scale surprise attack in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the territories that they had lost to Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.

In an effort that was led by Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the initial countries that OAPEC targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This list was later expanded to include Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa.

The 1970s energy crisis occurred when the Western world, particularly the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, faced substantial petroleum shortages as well as elevated prices. The two worst crises of this period were the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 oil crisis, when, respectively, the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution triggered interruptions in Middle Eastern oil exports.

The crisis began to unfold as petroleum production in the United States and some other parts of the world peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s. World oil production per capita began a long-term decline after 1979. The oil crises prompted the first shift towards energy-saving (in particular, fossil fuel-saving) technologies.