War of Attrition (1969-1970)
The War of Attrition was a conflict between Egypt and Israel that occurred from 1969 to 1970, primarily focusing on the contested Sinai Peninsula. This conflict was rooted in the unresolved territorial disputes from the Six-Day War of 1967, where Israel captured significant territories from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser aimed to reclaim lost land through a strategy of attrition, characterized by sustained military pressure and artillery bombardments against Israeli defenses along the Suez Canal. The war saw intense fighting, with both sides engaging in artillery exchanges, aerial combat, and commando operations, resulting in significant casualties and displacement.
Despite the ongoing hostilities, both nations ended up retaining the same territorial claims they held prior to the conflict. Efforts for peace included U.S.-led initiatives like the Rogers Plan, which sought a ceasefire and negotiations, but these were complicated by violations and mutual distrust. Ultimately, the War of Attrition did not produce a lasting resolution and set the stage for further conflicts, including the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The war is significant in the broader context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, illustrating the deep-rooted tensions and the challenges of achieving peace in the region.
War of Attrition (1969-1970)
The War of Attrition was a violent conflict fought by Egypt and Israel from 1969 to 1970 over control of the Sinai Peninsula, the large desert area between the two countries. The war principally involved heavy Egyptian artillery shelling of Israel's defensive positions along the Suez Canal, the strategic waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea along the northwest corner of Sinai. President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser believed that only this kind of intensive warfare could wear down the Israeli military and economy and force Israel out of Sinai.
The War of Attrition resulted from the unresolved land disputes of 1967's Six-Day War, fought between Israel and a coalition of its Arab enemies, including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In that war, Israel violently captured from all of these countries various territories it believed were rightfully Israeli. The War of Attrition begun by Egypt in early 1969 represented one of the country's attempts to reclaim the territory lost to Israel in 1967.
Background
The War of Attrition of 1969 to 1970 was one of many territorial conflicts fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors after the founding of the nation of Israel in 1948. The war, waged on Israel by Egypt and some of its allies, was a consequence of the Six-Day War of 1967. That event was a particularly defining moment in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.
The lead-up to the Six-Day War began principally with the heightening of tensions between Israel and Syria near the Israeli-Syrian border. Syria had been shelling Israeli settlements just across the border. This prompted Israel to respond by shooting down several Syrian fighter planes in April of 1967. That May, Egypt allied itself with its Arab partner Syria before closing the Straits of Tiran, the narrow waterways between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas, to Israeli ships. Later that month, Jordan joined the Arab coalition of Egypt and Syria to thwart possible Israeli invasions into Arab territories.
Sensing that a large-scale assault by these Arab nations was imminent, the Israeli government authorized preemptive attacks on its enemies. Hostilities began on June 5, 1967, with Israel's bombing of its enemies' air forces, many of which were still grounded on air bases. Israel's ground forces also easily overwhelmed those of the Arab countries, and over six days, Israel successfully invaded and claimed territories from the three primary countries of the Arab coalition, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.
From Egypt, to its south, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the expansive Sinai Peninsula up to the Suez Canal in the west; in Jordan, to the east, Israel claimed the region of the West Bank, which included East Jerusalem; and in Syria, in the north, Israel annexed the Golan Heights. The hostilities of the Six-Day War ended on June 10, and a cease-fire brokered by the United Nations became active the next day.
Israel, which had more than doubled its size since the start of the war, proclaimed that it would return all conquered territories if the members of the Arab coalition recognized its right to exist as a sovereign nation and vowed not to attack it again. The leaders of the Arab nations refused to negotiate with Israel, and they continued to maintain hostile attitudes toward the country in the years that followed.
Impact
Egypt almost immediately began attempting to drive Israeli forces from Sinai. In early July of 1967, the Egyptian military started shelling Israel's defensive positions near the Suez Canal. Egypt sank an Israeli destroyer a few months later and resumed shelling Israeli forces near the canal in 1968. These continued attacks, along with Egypt's acceptance of weapons from the Soviet Union, convinced Israel that Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's president, had no intention of negotiating peace with Israel. In late 1968, Israeli forces near Sinai's Suez Canal constructed a defensive line called the Bar-Lev Line, a network of thirty-five forts along the more than one-hundred-mile-long canal.
In early 1969, Nasser declared to his government that he planned to wage a war of attrition on Israeli forces in Sinai. A war of attrition involves the gradual wearing down of an enemy with attacks waged over a prolonged period. Nasser believed that continual Egyptian assaults on the Bar-Lev Line would eventually weaken the Israeli forces there and harm the Israeli economy, since the government would be forced to pay for personnel and supplies to remain in Sinai.
Egypt's war of attrition against Israel officially began on March 8, 1969, with intense Egyptian artillery bombardment of the Bar-Lev Line. The Israeli forces responded similarly, with their return fire quickly killing the Egyptian general Abdul Munim Riad. Egypt continued shelling the Bar-Lev Line over the next several months, and Israel responded with its own fire and with raids into Egypt. The War of Attrition soon escalated to include the use of aircraft, missiles, and commando attacks.
The Israeli air force's unrestricted bombing of Egyptian civilian settlements near the Suez Canal turned hundreds of thousands of Egyptian people into refugees and made Nasser desperate for a quick solution to the conflict. He had already requested that the United States try to broker an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that would favor Egypt, but while fighting continued, he turned to the Soviet Union for military aid. In January of 1970, the Soviet Union supplied Egypt with rockets, surface-to-air missiles, fighter planes, and fifteen thousand Soviet troops, including pilots. Israeli and Soviet fighter planes met in battle in April of 1970. Israeli planes shot down five Soviet planes that July.
By mid-1970, the United States had devised the Rogers Plan, which called for a cease-fire between Egypt and Israel, Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, Egyptian recognition of the nation of Israel, and a solution to Egypt's refugee crisis. Egypt and Israel agreed to the cease-fire on August 7, 1970, though Egypt violated the treaty that same day by building new missile-launching sites near the Suez Canal. In response, Israel refused to discuss the previously agreed-upon peace conditions with Egypt.
The War of Attrition left Egypt and Israel with the same territories they had held before the conflict began, with no permanent Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty forthcoming. The territorial disputes between Israel and its Arab neighbors became violent once again in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
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