The 1974 and 1975 Egyptian-Israeli "Disengagement"

In October 1973, Egypt launched what would be its last, but deadliest, of four wars with Israel. By the time it was over three weeks later, Egypt and its Syrian ally had suffered some 15,000 combat deaths, Israel had suffered 2,688 combat deaths, the largest toll of any of Israel’s conflicts with Arab nations or Palestinians.

Paradoxically, the war was also set the stage for the first steps toward peace between Israel and an Arab neighbor, thanks in large part to Anwar Sadat, the late Egyptian president (1918-1981) and the "shuttle diplomacy" of Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state in the Nixon administration. The disengagement treaties are an almost forgotten part of Arab-Israeli history, but a vital part of that fractious history, too.

On January 18, 1974, Egypt and Israel signed their first “disengagement” agreement separating their military forces along a 20-mile north-south line on the east side of the Suez Canal. Israeli forces withdrew a few miles to the east. Egyptian forces thinned out to the west. A United Nations peacekeeping force filled in the vacated land. It was, in effect, the first land-for-peace agreement between Israel and an Arab neighbor. But Egypt did not regain land itself so much as win an Israeli withdrawal from a very small portion of its land.

What Kissinger achieved was significant, however, only relative to the state of war that had existed between Israel and Egypt since 1948, and only because Sadat was a more willing partner for peace than his Israeli counterparts proved to be. In reality, the achievements of the two “disengagement” treaties that Kissinger got Egypt and Israel to sign were more symbolic than substantial. They were not a peace treaty by any means. That would have to await the Camp David accords of 1979, mediated by President Jimmy Carter.

See my full account of "The 1974 and 1975 Egyptian-Israeli Disengagement Treaties."