Yet Another Anniversary: Kilometer 101

Besides yesterday's anniversaries of El Alamein and the Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, today marks a somewhat different kind of anniversary: one that began a road towards peace: the Kilometer 101 talks.

Thirty-nine years ago today, on October 27, 1973, Egyptian and Israeli generals agreed to meet near the Suez Canal to discuss the stalemate that had developed at the end of the fighting in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Israel, having crossed to the West Bank of the Suez Canal in its counteroffensive, cut off the Egyptian Third Field Army from its sources of supply just as a ceasefire went into effect. Egypt was left with a major part of its Army cut off without supplies, and with an Israeli Army on the road to Cairo. On October 27, the Egyptians agreed to direct negotiations, military to military, at the front to seek a disengagement. The first meeting actually took place after midnight, and thus on October 28. The two sides met at Kilometer 101 on the Cairo-Suez road, thus only 101 kilometers from the Egyptian capital.

UN Checkpoint at Kilometer 101

Though Egypt was forced into the talks by military necessity, one of its goals in the war had been to force negotiations with Israel in order to regain Sinai for Egypt. Ultimately, the talks at Kilometer 101 evolved into Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy (Kissinger had previously ignored the Middle East due to preoccupation with Vietnam, but now became fully engaged), the first and second Sinai Disengagement Agreements, and ultimately Sadat's visit to Jerusalem four years later, and the subsequent Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

It is also easy to forget that Arabs had refusred to negotiate directly with Israelis after the end of the 1948 War and the Rhodes Armistice; talks when they did occur were "proximity" talks with a third-party mediator, and went nowhere. At Kilometer 101, generals met generals on military disengagement issues, but it also met Egyptians and Israelis were talking directly to each other for the first time in years.

One of the Later Meetinvs at Kilometer 101

The Kilometer 101 talks continued until superseded by the Kissinger shuttles; Israel allowed the resupply of the Third Army; Egypt continued to negotiate directly. Kilometer 101 marked the beginning of an Egyptian-Israeli peace process that ultimately led to a peace treaty.

40 Years Since Kilometer 101

Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the 1973 talks between Israel and Egypt at Kilometer 101. (Actually, since the first meeting took place after midnight, we can equally say that today is the anniversary.) The first direct talks between Israel and Egypt after years of "proximity" negotiations, they were aimed at negotiating the relief of the Egyptian Third Field Army, which had been cut off by Israel's advance across the Suez Canal shortly before the ceasefire in the October 1973 war. I have dealt with the talks in more detail here, but the direct talks, though between military commanders about battlefield disengagement, marked the beginning of the peace process that would lead directly to the Kissinger shuttle diplomacy and, eventually, to Sadat's 1977 trip to Jerusalem and the subsequent Arab-Israeli peace treaty.

October 6: "The Crossing" After 40 Years

This Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War (the October War, Yom Kippur War, or Ramadan War). Although Syria also participated in the surprise attack, the date of October 6 has become iconic particularly in Egypt, where "the crossing" (al-‘ubur) of the Suez Canal was the defining moment of Anwar Sadat's Presidency, making possible his later visit to Jerusalem and peace with Israel. This will be the first of several posts on the anniversary of that war.

Sadat had succeeded Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970 and defeated an effort by hardline Nasserites to oust him in 1971 (the "Corrective Revolution"); but he had not fully emerged from the shadow of Nasser, whose standing up to the British, nationalization of the Suez Canal, and role as leader of the Arab World were so influential. But there was one great blot on Nasser's record was the devastating defeat in the 1967 War, which left Egypt without an Air Force, without Sinai, and with the Suez Canal closed. The War of Attrition across the Canal from 1967 to 1970 left the Canal Cities (Port Said, Ismailia, Suez) destroyed and abandoned.

Unlike the heated rhetoric Nasser had used in the 1967 war, in 1973 the war was not presented as aimed at destroying Israel, but at recovering lost territory.

Though by the end of the war Israel had recovered and recrossed the Canal, the shock of the surprise destroyed the myth of Israeli invulnerability, and of the "impenetrable" Bar-Lev line along the Canal. And it led to negotiations, first at Kilometer 101.

Though by the end of the war Israel's Deversoir salient on the west bank of the Canal cut off supply lines to the Egyptian Third Field Army ("Bonjour, al-‘ubur; bonsoir, Deversoir" went a joke of the time), for Egyptians it was a very different result from 1967, and within a decade Israel and Egypt were ay peace and Sinai had been fully returned.

Sadat and the High Command

October 6 became Egypt's military day. Ironically, it was while watching a Military Day parade at Egypt's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,  that Sadat was assassinated, giving the day a double and double-edged significance. (And I first met my future wife at an Egyptian Military Day reception.)

Nor did its role as an iconic symbol die with Sadat; Husni Mubarak had been Air Force Commander during what was essentially a return of Egypt's Air Force from the destruction of 1967. Mubarak's role in 1973 was emphasized throughout his Presidency, to the point where Sadat's was actually downplayed. And the habit of seeing the President as the hero of October 6 carried over to the point where last year, one union magazine actually congratulated "President Muhammad Morsi, Leader of the Great October Victory." (Morsi never served in the military and was still in school in 1973. But old habits die hard.)