IGCSE History

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• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

The War of Yom Kippur

In 1970 Nasser died and was succeeded as President of Egypt by Anwar Sadat. He was a more moderate figure than his predecessor. Sadat wanted to force Israel to return the land that had been occupied in 1967 and then reach an agreement with the Israeli government. Sadat was convinced that a negotiated settlement with Israel was the only way of ensuring permanent peace in the Middle East. But his methods of achieving that end were unusual. Sadat's main aim was to convince Israel that there must be a negotiated peace settlement in the Middle East. He was determined to inflict a military defeat upon Israel to force it to the negotiating table.

 On 6 October 1973 Egypt and Syria suddenly attacked Israel. It became known as the War of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, because the attack took place during the most important religious festival in the Jewish calendar. On this day most Jews spent their time fasting or in prayer. The Israeli’s were so taken by surprise that many men went straight from synagogues to their army barracks.

The Egyptian forces crossed the Suex Canal and advanced across Sinai, but moved too quickly and allowed the Israelis an opportunity to counter-attack. On 15 October the Israelis once again crossed the Suez Canal and encircled the Egyptian Third Army. In the north Syrian forces quickly defeated the Israelis and then took the Golan Heights, but were forced back by Israeli reinforcements. At this point the Soviet Union threatened to intervene and the US government ordered the Israelis to agree to a truce. When the war ended on 24 October, little had changed, but massive casualties and damage had been caused.

The main effect of the war was to convince both sides that peace talks were necessary. Although the Arab forces had not been successful, they had fought well and shown that Israel was not invincible. For the first time the Israeli armed forces had been shaken and their losses had been proportionally much greater than their opponents. Israel had a population at the time of 4,000,000 people, while Egypt’s was 50,000,000. Losses on the scale that Israel had suffered could not be supported for long.

The war also made oil a major factor in world politics for the first time. The Arab states placed an oil embargo on the USA and reduced shipments to the West. Petrol rationing was put into effect in Britain. When the crisis was over, the Arab states raised the price of oil by 600 percent to try to force the West to stop backing Israel.

This was the first real attempt by the Arab states to influence the West. In the past the Arab leaders had steeped back from any policy that would hurt the Europe or the USA, but on this occasion they did not. They soon realised that controlling the price of oil gave them a powerful weapon that could be used to support the Palestinians. The name OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) soon became well known throughout the world. In fact it had been set up in 1960, but only became important in the 1970s and 1980s. It set limits for the production of oil in its member countries and thereby controlled the price of oil on the world market.

The PLO

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