The October War… the Last War?

By Bakr Oweida

That was the October 6, 1973 war, known in Egypt as the “War of the Crossing” and referred to in Syria by the month “Tishreen.” The Israelis tied it to their holiest day, Yom Kippur, which Jews around the world observed last Thursday, and on that same day Manchester in Britain witnessed a terrorist attack carried out by a British youth of Syrian origin who stormed a synagogue as worshippers were gathering to mark the occasion… As for President Anwar Sadat, who was the architect of the political strategy of the war and then the one who made the military decision, and thus earned the epithet “Hero of the Crossing,” as he came to be described, he framed it with a documentary clause he seemed intent on having recorded: he declared it to be “the last war” between Egypt and Israel. It indeed proved to be so, after Sadat completed the process by first visiting the Knesset and then signing the Camp David Accords, on the basis that the primary aim was “to move the situation” — intended to break the stalemate of a “no war, no peace” phase, as Henry Kissinger acknowledged.

In the same context, one can say that the October war was, historically, Syria’s last war against Israel; there have been no direct ground clashes between them since the signing of the Disengagement Agreement that followed the ceasefire. Although President Hafez al-Assad angrily refused to join his war partner, Anwar Sadat, in moving toward peace, some attribute to the late Syrian president a saying he would repeat in private councils admitting that, as one of the “first to agree” he would accept a just peace with Israel that returned all of Syria’s occupied land in the Golan Heights, while insisting that Damascus would be “the last signatory” to any peace agreement involving all parties to the Arab – Israeli conflict. Thus Hafez al-Assad, the father, continued rhetorically to wage war against Israel through factions, parties and movements under Syrian influence in the region, and after him his son, Bashar al-Assad (the deposed president), resumed the same course until his regime collapsed in December of last year.

On a personal level, I do not know whether the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, deliberately chose October 7 two years ago as the date for the “Al-Aqsa Flood” assault that breached the security fence of the “Gaza envelope,” as Israel calls the buffer zone between it and the Strip, as a historical coincidence with the day after the 50th anniversary of the “War of the Crossing,” or whether it was intentional. In any case, the stark difference between the outcomes of the two crossings is clear to all… In the first crossing the Egyptians regained all occupied Egyptian land, and Egypt began the process of rebuilding its own capabilities and achieved tangible successes in several fields despite many hardships. In the second crossing, it is equally clear how heavy the toll has been from Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal war on all Gazans. The Egyptian crossing recovered the land and restarted the country’s recovery. Hamas’s crossing scattered the people’s cohesion and aborted what had been built. So could the war caused by the latest crossing be the last war for this generation of Gaza’s young men and women? Perhaps yes, but most likely no. Why the hesitation? That is a matter that requires a dedicated article.