Sinai: The Arab-Israeli Wars

The decade between Israel's War of Independence and the 1956 campaign was marked by rising tensions along the Egyptian-Israeli frontier. Egypt blocked Israeli ships from the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran, restricting Israel's access to the Red Sea and affecting trade with Asia.[7] Simultaneously, Palestinian Arab fedayeen — terrorist raiders recruited and equipped by Egypt — conducted cross-border attacks into Israeli territory. In 1955 alone, 260 Israeli citizens were killed or wounded by fedayeen attacks.[7][8]

Between 1949 and 1956, Israel established Unit 101 in 1953 specifically to strike infiltrator camps in the Gaza Strip and Jordan; the unit was later merged with the Paratroopers Brigade.[9] Israel also faced a shortage of modern military equipment during this period, and its defense ties with France began to strengthen in early 1956.[9] When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, he set in motion a convergence of Israeli, British, and French interests that would produce the year's war.[7]

The 1956 Sinai Campaign — officially designated Operation Kadesh, after the biblical site of Kadesh-Barnea near the Israeli-Egyptian frontier — was an Israeli campaign against Egypt from October 29 to November 5, 1956, partly overlapping with the Anglo-French Suez Campaign.[10][1] The terms "Sinai Campaign" and "Sinai War" came into use gradually afterward and are still used interchangeably.[10]

Israeli, French, and British representatives had negotiated the secret Sèvres Protocol in October 1956.[8] Under the arrangement, Israel would attack Egyptian forces in Sinai and threaten the Suez Canal, giving Britain and France a pretext to intervene in the Canal Zone; the stated public rationale was to separate the combatants and protect the canal, while the intended aim was to take control of the zone and reverse Egypt's nationalization.[8] Israel's objectives, as set out in its October 28 operational order, were to threaten the Suez Canal by capturing nearby objectives, occupy the Tiran Straits, and destroy the Egyptian military presence in northern Sinai.[8]

The campaign opened on October 29, 1956, when the 890th Paratroop Battalion parachuted near the eastern approaches to the Mitla Pass, a strategic defile in western Sinai approximately 35 kilometers from the Suez Canal.[11] The parachute action served as much as a political trigger as a tactical objective, providing the pretext for a British-French ultimatum to Israel and Egypt issued on October 30.[12] The ensuing ground offensive unfolded along northern, central, and southern axes. Israeli forces advanced through al-Kuntilla, Thamad, Nakhl, and al-Quseima, outflanked Egyptian positions at Abu Aweigila, and captured the Rafah-El Arish corridor in the north.[1] More than 100,000 Israeli soldiers were mobilized in less than 72 hours, and the air force was fully operational within 43 hours.[13]

Among the notable early actions was the Battle of Mitla Pass, in which a patrol entered the pass on October 31 and came under ambush fire roughly 20 minutes later. The ensuing battle lasted into November 1 and cost 38 soldiers' lives.[11] The operation's purpose was later disputed: former chief-of-staff bureau chief Mordechai Bar-On described it as "the most purposeless" battle of the campaign, and Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan criticized the paratroopers' command; a later assessment, however, held that the paratroopers' presence deterred Egyptian forces from advancing eastward.[11]

In the campaign's final phase, Israeli armored spearheads halted near Ismailiya and Qantara in compliance with the Anglo-French ultimatum, while Israeli reservists stormed Sharm el-Sheikh on November 5 — described as the final act of the Sinai Campaign.[1] A reserve brigade using requisitioned civilian buses crossed difficult desert terrain to capture Sharm el-Sheikh at the southern tip of Sinai.[12] Israeli forces also seized the Gaza Strip, including Gaza, Khan Yunis, and Beit Hanun.[1] In what Chief of Staff Dayan described as a 100-hour operation, the IDF took virtually the entire Sinai.[13] Britain and France joined the fighting on October 31, and campaign operations ended on November 5.[7]

Casualty figures vary between sources. The Jewish Virtual Library reports 231 Israeli soldiers killed, while Encyclopedia.com reports 171 Israeli dead, several hundred wounded, and four Israelis taken prisoner. Encyclopedia.com also estimates several thousand Egyptian dead and wounded and 6,000 Egyptians captured, along with large quantities of seized military equipment.[1][13] The campaign confirmed the growing importance of armor and the air force in Israeli warfare, though identified air-force deficiencies prompted further development.[12]

The United States opposed the attack and pressured the parties to withdraw.[7] Israel evacuated Sinai and the Gaza Strip by March 1957 under combined American and Soviet pressure.[1] The withdrawal was staged from November 1956 through March 1957 following the decision to establish the United Nations Emergency Force and assurances concerning navigation in the Gulf of Eilat.[12] UNEF troops were posted on the Egyptian side of the frontier and at Sharm el-Sheikh to guarantee free passage of Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran.[1] The campaign temporarily ended fedayeen activity, and the Straits remained open until May 23, 1967.[13][1]

The decade of relative quiet in Sinai that followed the 1957 Israeli withdrawal was shattered in May 1967 by a rapid Egyptian escalation. Following a Soviet warning to Syria and Egypt — which the Jewish Virtual Library states was false — that Israel had massed troops on Syria's border, Nasser moved large formations into Sinai.[14] By May 22, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol assessed Egyptian forces in eastern Sinai at approximately 80,000 troops, comprising nearly four divisions with substantial artillery.[15]

Egypt demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force from Sinai and the Gaza Strip on May 16, 1967; after UNEF withdrew, Nasser announced the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli-flagged ships and ships carrying strategic cargo.[14][2] The closure cut Israel's main shipping route to Asia and other major trading partners through Eilat.[16] American diplomatic efforts to form an international maritime coalition to reopen the Straits failed to gain sufficient backing.[2]

Israel's government decided to go to war on June 4, and the war began June 5, 1967.[17] The Israeli Air Force opened operations with a surprise attack on Egyptian airfields that lasted approximately three hours, destroying most of Egypt's air force — 284 of 419 Egyptian aircraft — while it was on the ground and giving Israel immediate air superiority.[18][19] Israeli ground forces operating in Sinai and Gaza under Southern Command chief Yeshayahu Gavish included divisions commanded by Israel Tal, Ariel Sharon, and Avraham Joffe.[19] The subsequent ground offensive into Sinai lasted four days and devastated the Egyptian army.[18]

By June 9, 1967, the IDF held all of Sinai up to the Gulf of Suez.[19] The war lasted from June 5 to June 10, ending with Israel having defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.[2] The UN Security Council subsequently adopted Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories recently occupied and acknowledgment by Arab states of Israel's right to live in peace within secure borders.[20]

Following the war, the Israeli government authorized Jewish settlement in southern Sinai and later in the Rafah area.[21] American officials sought a ceasefire during the war and, after it, did not demand an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.[2] In a secret session on June 19, Israel's cabinet resolved that Israel would agree to withdraw from all of Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt and demilitarization of the peninsula; historians have debated whether this decision was ever communicated to Cairo and Damascus.[18]

After the Six-Day War, Egypt launched a War of Attrition intended to wear down Israel's willingness to remain in Sinai. The campaign's formal start date is contested among scholars: the Israeli government and IDF identify its beginning as March 8, 1969, when Nasser publicly declared it, while INSS analysis notes that some accounts place its start within two weeks of the Six-Day War's end, others no earlier than September–October 1968, and some describe a period of escalation before open hostilities.[3]

Egyptian tactics included heavy artillery strikes on Israeli forts along the east bank of the Suez Canal and commando raids against those forts and their supply roads.[22] Egyptian artillery superiority caused serious Israeli casualties almost daily.[22] Egyptian attacks also extended to sea: Egyptian forces sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat, causing 34 fatalities, and two major shelling attacks in September and October 1968 killed 25 soldiers.[3]

In response, Israel constructed approximately 30 fortified positions — subsequently known as the Bar-Lev Line — along 160 kilometers of the Suez Canal.[3] The positions provided cover from artillery but had limited ability to defend against either a small or large Egyptian crossing; Israel also positioned mobile armored forces between the strongholds and placed artillery farther back.[3] In summer 1969, the Israeli Air Force attacked Egyptian artillery and frontline positions on the canal's west bank.[22] When the artillery had not been silenced by year's end, Israel sent aircraft and commandos against bases and missile sites deeper inside Egypt beginning in January 1970.[22]

The air campaign killed or wounded thousands of Egyptian soldiers and military construction workers.[22] The war ended after Soviet personnel arrived to man Egyptian missile batteries and fighter squadrons, raising the stakes of continued Israeli deep-penetration raids.[22] One notable engagement saw Israeli Phantoms shoot down five Soviet-piloted MiG-21s in air combat.[22] An American-mediated ceasefire ended the fighting on August 8, 1970, without changing Israeli or Egyptian ground deployments.[3] Egypt immediately violated the agreed freeze on force deployments by moving surface-to-air missile batteries forward — a development that the INSS account links to the erosion of Israel's air superiority in the 1973 war.[3]

The conflict as a whole caused 968 fatalities and 3,730 wounded, including 260 combatants in the Suez Canal arena.[3] Britannica characterizes the War of Attrition as producing no territorial exchange and leaving the underlying disputes unresolved.[23] The INSS characterizes it as the link between the 1967 and 1973 wars, while noting that Israel and Egypt understood its place in the sequence differently.[3]

At 14:00 on October 6, 1973 — Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a coordinated surprise attack on Israel.[24] The Israeli military had misread the Egyptian buildup along the canal as exercises rather than attack preparations, and Israel's leadership was caught off guard.[24][25] Egypt's strategic aim, as the AJC describes it, was a limited war: rather than seeking to liberate all of Sinai militarily, Egypt intended to end the territorial and political status quo and initiate a political process that would lead to Israel's full withdrawal from the peninsula.[4]

Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal with greater ease than anticipated, overcoming the lightly manned Israeli Bar-Lev Line positions.[25] During the first 24 hours, Egyptian troops established themselves along the eastern bank's entire length, occupying a strip approximately 15 kilometers wide.[4] Egypt's anti-aircraft batteries, strengthened by the forward deployment that had violated the 1970 ceasefire terms, severely constrained Israel's air power over the canal zone.[3][4] An Israeli counterattack on October 8 failed with heavy IDF casualties.[4] A Foreign Ministry account states that, of 265 Israeli tanks in the first echelon, only 100 survived.[26]

The Israeli counteroffensive gathered momentum over the following week. On October 16, forces under Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal to its western bank, seized the initiative, encircled the Egyptian Third Army, and advanced to within 101 kilometers of Cairo.[4][27] By the closing days of the war, Israeli forces had surrounded the Third Army; a ceasefire took effect on October 25.[25] UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions were adopted on October 22, 23, and 25, and the AJC account says the ceasefire prevented the Egyptian Third Army's total defeat.[4]

Israeli losses in the war were severe: the IDF Archive's Agranat Commission page reports 2,689 Israeli dead, 7,251 wounded, 301 prisoners of war, and 16 missing, while a separate IDF Archive timeline records 2,297 killed and 7,250 injured.[24][28] The AJC reports 2,656 Israeli soldiers killed, 12,000 injured, and nearly 300 taken prisoner, later exchanged for Egyptian and Syrian prisoners.[28] These figures cover the war as a whole, not the Sinai front alone. An estimated 8,500 Arab soldiers were killed over 18 days of fighting.[25]

The Foreign Ministry characterized the Yom Kippur War as a qualified failure for Israel despite its military recovery, citing the surprise, heavy losses, intelligence failures, and vulnerability of tanks to antitank weapons.[26] The war was simultaneously a major psychological blow to Israel's image of military invincibility and, in the AJC's framing, a political success for Egypt: it ended the territorial and political status quo and began the process that ultimately returned Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty.[25][28] Both Israel and Arab countries claimed some form of victory.[25] One historical assessment argues that the outcome enabled Egypt to negotiate peace without humiliation.[29]

The 1973 war initiated a diplomatic sequence that transformed the Egyptian-Israeli relationship. Direct talks between Israeli and Egyptian officers produced a disengagement agreement on January 18, 1974, under which Israeli forces withdrew into Sinai west of the Mitla and Gidi passes, Egypt reduced its forces on the eastern bank of the canal, and a UN peacekeeping force established a buffer zone between the armies.[27] A further agreement on September 4, 1975, included an additional Israeli withdrawal and an expansion of the buffer zone.[27]

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977 accelerated the diplomatic process.[5] On September 17, 1978, Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed the Camp David Accords, which provided for Israel to withdraw from all of Sinai within three years, for the dismantling of Israeli air bases near the Gulf of Aqaba and the town of Yamit, and for Egypt to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel and allow Israeli passage through the Suez Canal, Straits of Tiran, and Gulf of Aqaba.[5]

Egypt and Israel signed their peace treaty on March 26, 1979 — the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab state.[5] The treaty required Israel to withdraw all its armed forces and civilians from Sinai behind the international boundary, after which Egypt would resume full sovereignty.[30] The withdrawal schedule set an interim withdrawal deadline of nine months and a final withdrawal to be completed within three years of the exchange of ratification instruments.[30] The permanent boundary was defined in Article II as the recognized international boundary between Egypt and the former Mandated Territory of Palestine — a line first established in 1906 as an administrative boundary between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, which later served as the Egypt-Palestine boundary under the British Mandate and as the Israel-Egypt armistice line from 1949 to 1967.[31]

The treaty annex divided Sinai into security zones: Zone A, nearest the Suez Canal, permitted one Egyptian mechanized infantry division; Zone B permitted four battalions of lightly armed Egyptian border units; and Zone C, nearest Israel, was limited to Egyptian civil police armed with light weapons.[30] These arrangements were designed in part to build confidence between two countries that had fought four wars in a generation.[32] The U.S. State Department credits the 1973 war and subsequent diplomacy, including Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy, with paving the way for the peace treaty.[33] Under the treaty, Israel exchanged ceasefire lines for mutually recognized international boundaries.[34]

Israel's withdrawal from Sinai proceeded in stages through the early 1980s. The first stage involved withdrawal from western Sinai to the El-Arish–Ras Mohammed line, a process encompassing oil fields, military bases, and forces.[35] As the final deadline of April 26, 1982 approached, opponents of the withdrawal resisted evacuation in Yamit and northern Sinai, prompting the government to increase the proposed compensation for evacuees.[6] Israeli forces removed the remaining resisters, and Yamit was subsequently demolished after the evacuation; the contemporary BJPA account says no official explanation was given for the destruction.[6]

At midnight on April 25, 1982, sovereignty over Sinai reverted to Egypt.[6] The handover was not marked by joint ceremonies.[6] The return represented the third Israeli withdrawal from Sinai or parts of it: after the 1949 withdrawal following the War of Independence, after the 1957 withdrawal following the Sinai Campaign, and in 1982 under the 1979 peace treaty.[6] The transfer followed the staged withdrawal required by the treaty and was completed after the evacuation of Sinai's Israeli settlements, including Yamit.[30][35]

The successive Sinai conflicts shaped Israeli military doctrine, regional geopolitics, and the architecture of the Egyptian-Israeli peace order. The 1956 campaign confirmed the importance of armor and airpower while exposing air-force deficiencies that prompted further development.[12] The Six-Day War's lightning air and ground offensive established the IDF's reputation as a formidable conventional force and extended Israel's strategic depth to the Suez Canal.[19] The War of Attrition demonstrated the limits of static defensive lines and the dangers of Soviet-backed air defenses, lessons whose full cost was paid in October 1973.[3]

The Yom Kippur War was the most consequential of the Sinai engagements. Egypt's surprise crossing of the canal shattered assumptions about Israeli military invincibility and forced a fundamental reassessment of intelligence, doctrine, and political risk.[26] At the same time, Israel's counteroffensive — the canal crossing, encirclement of the Third Army, and advance toward Cairo — demonstrated its capacity for military recovery under adverse conditions.[4] The war's outcome created diplomatic space for peace: Egypt recovered Sinai, while Israel secured formal recognition from its largest neighbor and a mutually recognized international frontier.[28][30]

The 1979 peace treaty removed Egypt, the largest Arab state, from active military confrontation with Israel and established full diplomatic relations, permanent boundaries, and regulated security arrangements in Sinai.[5][30] It also demonstrated that territorial withdrawal and direct negotiation could produce a formal Arab-Israeli peace agreement. The U.S. State Department identifies the 1973 war and the diplomacy that followed it as the sequence that ultimately made the treaty possible.[33]

Several aspects of the Sinai conflicts remain subjects of historical and political debate. Accounts of the 1956 campaign differ substantially in emphasis: some sources characterize Operation Kadesh primarily as an Israeli preemptive strike against fedayeen bases and Egyptian military preparations, while others stress the secret Sèvres Protocol arrangement in which Israel's attack served as the trigger for a British and French plan to seize the Suez Canal.[8][1] Israeli fatality figures for 1956 also diverge, with Encyclopedia.com reporting 171 dead and the Jewish Virtual Library reporting 231 Israeli soldiers killed.[1][13]

The start date and character of the War of Attrition remain contested in the scholarly literature. The INSS notes dates ranging from shortly after the Six-Day War to September–October 1968 or the formal March 1969 declaration, reflecting uncertainty about whether the conflict began with isolated incidents or coordinated policy.[3] The extent and intent of Israel's 1967 occupation of all of Sinai is also an interpretive matter: the INSS characterizes it as reflecting an expansionist IDF approach operating without government direction, while other accounts treat it as a straightforward military result of the June war.[3]

The 1973 war's outcome is assessed differently depending on the lens applied. The AJC characterizes it as a costly Israeli military victory and an Egyptian political success, while another account characterizes its conclusion as a stalemate without a clear victor despite Israel's dramatic counteroffensive.[28][29] Israeli casualty figures from the IDF's own archive sources also differ, with the Agranat Commission page reporting 2,689 dead and 7,251 wounded and the archive's timeline recording 2,297 dead and 7,250 injured.[24][25] The two archive pages do not reconcile the discrepancy.