The Six-Day War, Yom Kippur, and Camp David: The Arab-Israeli Conflict and Its Unresolved Wounds

Now we turn our course to the Middle East, that endlessly bleeding wound, and the Arab-Israeli wars. But before diving into our historical notes, we need to pause and underline a bitter reality. History books often dress these events up with strategies, borders, and names like the “Six-Day War,” detailing who occupied where, but they rarely mention those who paid the real price. Unfortunately, nothing has changed from yesterday to today. I cannot in good conscience write these lines without remembering the innocent Palestinians who have lost their lives in the ruthless genocide that has spanned decades since those days and continues right before the eyes of the world today. Sadly, while great powers play chess for their own interests on the world stage, the innocent always foot the bill. Look at how events unfolded in 1967 and how the foundations of this oppression were laid…

The 1967 Arab-Israeli War (The Six-Day War)

The pressure exerted by Israel on the refugees displaced after the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli War, and the subsequent legitimate struggle initiated by the Palestinians, kept tensions constantly high in the region. The following key events paved the way to the Six-Day War:

The Samu Massacre: On November 13, 1966, an Israeli unit composed of tanks and armored vehicles crossed the Jordanian border, attacking the village of Samu, which had a population of 4,000, causing massive destruction and slaughter.

Aerial Clashes: On April 7, 1967, Syrian planes responded to an Israeli air strike on Syrian artillery units, resulting in 6 Syrian jets being shot down.

The capture of Sinai. 5-6 June 1967

The Course and Results of the War:

June 5, 1967: The war officially began with the offensive of Israeli troops. In the initial phase, Israel maintained a defensive posture against Jordan and Syria while launching a massive attack on Egypt.

Israeli Advance: Following the defeat of Egypt and the capture of the region up to the Suez Canal, the Israeli army turned its focus to Syria and Jordan, seizing the strategically vital Golan Heights from Syria.

Ceasefire: Hostilities ceased following a “ceasefire” call by the United Nations on June 10, 1967. By the end of the war, Israel had expanded its occupation in the region by extending its territories all the way to the Suez Canal.

Following this war, Soviet Russia, which had settled in the Middle East to supply military equipment and train personnel for Arab countries, began establishing naval bases in the Mediterranean. This Soviet manoeuvre affected Mediterranean sovereignty and security, which were of vital importance to NATO and Türkiye.

The capture of Sinai. 7–8 June 1967

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War (Yom Kippur War)

Having pinned their hopes on the UN and US-USSR negotiations after the 1967-1968 War, the Arab states rapidly embarked on rearmament activities when they could not achieve their desired outcomes. United in the belief that the occupied Arab lands could only be liberated through an all-out struggle, Egypt and Syria planned to launch a joint military operation against Israel.

The offensive by the Egyptian and Syrian armies began on October 6, 1973, on the day Israel was celebrating its holy day (Yom Kippur). Israel first concentrated on the Syrian front; after neutralizing the Syrian army, it turned towards Egypt and successfully landed troops west of the Suez Canal.

With the arrival of the UN Peacekeeping Force on October 26, Israel complied with the ceasefire. The USSR’s announcement that it would send troops to the region was highly influential in Israel's decision.

The Yom Kippur War made Israel significantly more dependent on the US in military, diplomatic, and economic spheres than before.

As a result of the “Shuttle Diplomacy” conducted by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the Sinai Agreement was signed on January 18, 1974. With this treaty, Israel withdrew from a portion of the Sinai Peninsula.

Meanwhile, the oil embargo, which began immediately after the war, was spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and targeted Western countries supporting Israel. It lasted until March 1974. As a result of this embargo, oil prices skyrocketed globally, leading to a massive worldwide gasoline and energy shortage (the 1973 Oil Crisis).

The Jordan salient, 5–7 June.

The Camp David Accords (Israel & Egypt) (September 17, 1978)

Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger initiated “shuttle diplomacy” between Egypt and Israel. The product of this prolonged diplomatic traffic was the Camp David Accords, signed on September 17, 1978.

Historical Shift and Key Provisions:

According to the agreement, Israel would withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, which it had occupied during the 1967-1968 wars, and in return, Egypt would officially recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations.

Crucial Note: With this treaty, for the first time, an Arab state (Egypt) officially recognized Israel and legitimized its existence on the occupied territories.

The Issue of Palestine, Gaza, and the West Bank: The agreement failed to bring complete clarity to the core bleeding wound, the fate of the Gaza and West Bank regions (and the Palestinians), essentially kicking the can down the road. It only envisioned the following steps to establish an autonomous administration within 5 years:

Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank would be granted autonomy for a period of 5 years.

During this autonomy period, Israel would reduce its troop levels in these two territories.

Starting from the third year of the autonomy period, negotiations would be held for an agreement to determine the final status of the West Bank and Gaza.

On paper, this agreement was to recognize the “legitimate rights” and “just demands” of the Palestinian people; during this period, peace negotiations between Israel and Jordan, as well as arrangements to ensure Israel’s security, were to be made.

The Battle of Golan Heights, 9–10 June.

The Arab Reaction and the 1979 Peace Treaty

As expected, Arab countries initially reacted strongly against the Camp David Accords and decided to sever bilateral relations with Egypt. Although the “Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty,” framed within the Camp David Accords, could not be signed within the planned timeframe due to various crises, it was ultimately signed in Washington on March 26, 1979. This treaty, which drew the current Israel-Egypt borders based on mutual respect for territorial integrity and independence, guaranteed Israel's security in the south while causing Egypt to completely break away from the Arab world.

The Aftermath and Harsh Realities on the Ground:

When economic aid from Arab countries to Egypt was cut off, the US stepped in and provided substantial economic assistance to Egypt. Israel, complying with the treaty, completely withdrew from the Sinai on April 27, 1982.

These developments fuelled anti-US sentiment in the Middle East to a peak and pushed regional countries like Syria closer to the USSR.

Ultimately, these so-called “peace” agreements failed to achieve their purpose and only served to increase the oppression of Palestinians and tension in the region, as Israel continuously built Jewish settlements in the West Bank (where autonomy had been promised) in defiance of international law, declared Jerusalem its capital, and announced the annexation of the Golan Heights.

With this, we wrap up the Arab-Israeli conflicts in the Middle East and the painful, so-called peace process that began with the Camp David Accords. As we have seen, signatures penned at the negotiation table and borders drawn by great powers for their own interests were not enough to stop the bloodshed on the ground; rather, they further complicated the regional balance of power and the tragedy of the Palestinian people.

Now, we are closing this long block and transitioning to another dark dimension that shaped the fate of the Middle East: the “energy crises and regime wars.” In our next post, we will cover the following crucial topics respectively: OPEC and the 1973 Oil Crisis, which shook the entire world, followed by the Regime Change in Iraq and the rise of the Ba’ath Party, and finally, the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), a relentless conflict that dragged the region into years of devastation.

Black Gold and the Suez Crisis: Oil, Nasser, and the End of British Power in the Middle East

In the previous blog, we looked at the Arab-Israeli conflicts, a struggle rooted one hundred years ago that continues to bleed the Middle East today. Now we turn to the subject that has been behind the greatest imperial interventions and coups of the 20th century: black gold. Oil.

From the early 1900s, the right to extract and process Iranian oil had been held by a massive British monopoly, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), the predecessor of the oil giant now known as BP (British Petroleum). This arrangement was renewed through a new agreement in 1933.

After the Second World War, as Britain lost much of its global empire and its power began to fade, the Iranian people were receiving almost nothing from the enormous wealth flowing out of their own land. The Iranian government initially asked for a revision of the agreement, a modest increase in the share being paid to Iran by the company.

But Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, the visionary leader of the nationalist front in the Iranian parliament, firmly rejected these surface-level compromises. His vision was far more radical: the immediate nationalisation of Iranian oil and the complete removal of foreign monopoly control. Backed by overwhelming public support, Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister of Iran on 28 April 1951, and his very first act was to announce to the world the official nationalisation of Iranian oil. For Britain, this was nothing less than the cutting of its economic lifeline in the Middle East.

25 July 1952 issue of the Tehran Mosavvar: "Iran has won", featuring Mosaddegh and Churchill.

The Suez Crisis

Before we get into the Suez Crisis, I want to share a small personal note. During my undergraduate studies, I read a play about the British Empire and its then Prime Minister Anthony Eden. The Suez Canal crisis and Gamal Abdel Nasser both appeared in that text. At the time, I only had a surface-level understanding of the events. Now, we are about to see the full picture.

On 23 July 1952, a military coup carried out by the Free Officers Movement brought Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser to power in Egypt. Once in office, Nasser worked toward two ambitious goals: the creation of a collective security pact among Arab states, an Arab Union, and the building of a broader solidarity under the umbrella of Islam.

But Nasser’s larger vision went even further. He wanted to form a Third Bloc a new power block positioned between the Eastern and Western blocs of the Cold War. However, the establishment of the Baghdad Pact disrupted his plans entirely.

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at the foundation ceremony of the Aswan High Dam.

When the US and the World Bank refused to fund the Aswan Dam project, Nasser responded by nationalising the Suez Canal. In 1956, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, which was under British-French joint ownership. Following this, America, Britain, and France made numerous attempts to remove Suez from Egyptian control but were unsuccessful.

Upon Nasser's rejection of the proposal to leave the canal under international control, Britain, France, and Israel came together and prepared a plan to seize the canal. (This is the event that was the subject of the theatrical play I mentioned earlier; the play drew its reference from here.) According to this plan, Israel would attack Egypt; Britain and France would then deploy troops to the region under the pretext of ending the war, and subsequently take over the canal. In accordance with this plan, Israel launched an attack against Egypt on October 29, 1956.

Following their ultimatum to the parties to “end the conflict,” Britain and France began deploying troops to the region via the Mediterranean. USSR Premier Nikolai Bulganin sent a message to US President Eisenhower, requesting that the US and the USSR send a joint force to Egypt to stop the war, stating that otherwise, this could lead to World War III. However, the US strongly opposed the joint force proposal and declared that it would take the necessary measures if the Soviets sent troops to Egypt.

The US Government and public did not accept this attack initiated by Britain and France. Indeed, the US reaction was harsh; it issued a stern warning to Britain, France, and Israel, demanding their withdrawal from Egyptian territory. These states were forced to withdraw from Egypt. The Suez Canal was subsequently cleared and reopened to global maritime traffic in March 1957. The most important consequence of the 1956 Suez Crisis was that while the aim was to eliminate Soviet Russia's prestige and influence in the Middle East, it actually increased them even further.

The Birth of Israel and the First Arab-Israeli War: A History of Palestine

To understand the roots of the tragic events unfolding in Palestine today, events that have reached the scale of a genocide, we need to turn the pages of history back almost one hundred years. This is a vast and heavy subject. To make sense of the modern face of the Middle East and its deepest breaking points, we will examine it in three main sections:

Part 1: The Establishment of Israel and the 1948–1949 Arab-Israeli War

Part 2: The Britain-Iran Oil Dispute and the Suez Crisis

Part 3: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Lebanon Crisis

I pray for all those who have lost their lives in this ongoing tragedy. My only wish is for the wars to stop. Peace at home, peace in the world.

Herzl (seated in the middle) with members of the Zionist Organization in Vienna, 1896

The movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, known ideologically as Zionism, took shape in the 1880s, largely as a response to the violent persecution of Jewish communities in Russia, known as pogroms. Facing extreme pressure and violence, large numbers of Russian Jews were forced to migrate to Palestine, marking the first practical steps of this movement. Zionism gained significant political momentum in 1896, when a Budapest-born Jewish journalist, Dr. Theodor Herzl, published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), a work that effectively became the manifesto of the Zionist movement.

Before turning to the international stage, Herzl made a direct approach to Sultan Abdülhamid II of the Ottoman Empire. He visited Istanbul and requested land in Palestine for the establishment of a Jewish state, offering to help manage Ottoman debts in return. The Sultan firmly rejected this proposal. However, the Ottoman side indicated that if Herzl could successfully negotiate with European powers to, reduce the interest on Ottoman debts, they might permit Jewish settlement, but only in what is today northern Iraq, and exclusively for Jewish communities. Herzl was unable to fulfil this condition and left Istanbul without an agreement.

Turning his efforts elsewhere, Herzl founded the World Zionist Organization in 1897, shifting the movement’s strategy toward seeking direct diplomatic recognition for a Jewish state in Palestine. A key turning point came when US President Woodrow Wilson was brought on side with the Zionist cause, a development that pushed Britain to adopt an increasingly sympathetic and supportive stance toward the movement as well.

 

The Balfour Declaration

The most important diplomatic step on the road to the establishment of Israel was taken on 2 November 1917, with the Balfour Declaration. British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour sent an official letter to Lord Rothschild, one of the leaders of the international Zionist movement, formally committing the British Government to supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

But why did Britain agree to this? In the darkest days of the First World War, Britain had two clear goals. First, it wanted to bring the support of the global Jewish diaspora, particularly powerful figures in the United States and Russia, into the war effort. Second, it aimed to create a loyal and strategically placed buffer zone in the heart of the Middle East, one that would help secure the Suez Canal.

Conflicts Under the British Mandate and the UN Process

After the Second World War, British forces in Palestine struggled to stop the large waves of illegal Jewish immigration organised by the underground network known as Haganah. This situation led to violent clashes between British forces and Irgun, a radical Zionist armed group. Having completely lost control of the region, Britain handed the matter over to the United Nations on 2 April 1947.

The UN General Assembly established the UN Palestine Commission to find a solution. After examining the situation on the ground, the commission unanimously agreed on the principle of independence, but was divided on what form it should take:

UN Majority Plan (supported by Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, and others): Palestine should be partitioned into two separate independent states for Arabs and Jews, with Jerusalem placed under full international status.

UN Minority Plan (supported by India, Yugoslavia, and Iran): Palestine should become a single federal state, made up of both Jewish and Arab entities.

On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Majority Plan, the Partition Plan. However, since the plan proposed giving a disproportionate share of the land to the Jewish minority, it was met with widespread outrage across the Arab world. At a meeting in Cairo on 17 December 1947, Arab states made the decision to go to war to prevent the partition from taking place.

Egyptian forces crossing the Suez Canal on 7 October 1973

The Declaration of the State and the First Arab-Israeli War (1948-1949)

Exactly one day before the British withdrawal was finalized, the establishment of the State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948. The very next day, Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq), rejecting the partition plan and Israel's creation, declared war on Israel.

The war rapidly evolved into a multi-front struggle for survival: Egypt in the south, Jordan and Iraq in the east, and Syria and Lebanon in the north. Although Arab armies (particularly Jordan's Arab Legion) made initial advances around Jerusalem in the early weeks, deep mistrust, command crises, and a lack of coordination among the Arab states crippled their progress. Conversely, Israel utilized the UN-brokered ceasefires much more strategically; during these pauses, Israel rapidly modernized and expanded its military with massive Western arms shipments (notably smuggled via Czechoslovakia). Launching fierce, synchronized counter-offensives after the truces, Israel routed the Arab armies, concluding the war with a decisive military victory and expanding its borders through UN armistice agreements (Rhodes, Rasen Nakura, Manahayim).

The Nakba (The Catastrophe)

During and after the war, driven by the violence, systematic terror, and massacres (such as the Deir Yassin massacre) perpetrated by Israeli paramilitary groups, over 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes, villages, and homeland, becoming refugees. This massive ethnic cleansing, during which hundreds of Palestinian villages were wiped off the map and people were uprooted at gunpoint, is seared into Palestinian memory as the “Nakba” (The Catastrophe). While Israel expanded its territory to 75%, this very Nakba remains the crucible of the endless refugee crisis and the genocidal massacres witnessed in Gaza and the West Bank today.

The Consequences of the 1948–1949 Arab-Israeli War

The war left deep and lasting marks on the entire Middle East. Its consequences shaped the political landscape of the region for decades to come. Egypt, widely believed to have the strongest army among the Arab states, suffered one of the heaviest defeats in the war. This humiliation weakened the monarchy of King Farouk and created the conditions for its eventual collapse.

The defeat of five Arab armies at the hands of a small Israeli force had a powerful effect across the Arab world. It strengthened feelings of nationalism and gave significant momentum to a growing Arab Nationalist movement. The absence of a formal peace treaty at the end of the war left the conflict unresolved and laid the groundwork for future Arab-Israeli wars.

The weakening of King Farouk's regime following the war eventually led to the fall of the Egyptian monarchy and the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. Once in office, Nasser sought to position himself as the leader of Arab nationalism across the region.

Finally, on 25 May 1950, the United States, Britain, and France issued a joint declaration stating that they would sell weapons to Arab states and Israel only in quantities necessary for internal security, and only on the condition that those weapons would not be used against another state.

Without slowing down, we move straight into Part 2, and into the subject that lies at the heart of so much of what we see in the Middle East today: oil.

Part 2: The Britain-Iran Oil Dispute