ARAB-ISRAELI WARS

major conflicts between Israeli and various Arab forces, most notably in 194849, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. The first war immediately followed the proclamation of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948. Arab forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon occupied the areas in southern and eastern Palestine not apportioned to the Jews, then captured the small Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Israelis, meanwhile, won control of the main road to Jerusalem through the Yehuda Mountains (Judaean Hills) and successfully beat off Arab attacks. By early 1949 the Israelis managed to occupy all of the Negev up to the former Egypt-Palestine frontier, except for the Gaza Strip. Between February and July 1949, as a result of separate armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states, a temporary frontier was fixed where the line had been at the beginning of the negotiations. Tensions mounted again with the rise to power of the nationalist Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser; in October 1956, in the midst of the international crisis caused by Nasser's seizure of the European-owned Suez Canal, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula to destroy Arab military bases there. In five days the Israeli army captured Gaza, Rafah, and Al-'Arishtaking thousands of prisonersand occupied most of the peninsula east of the Suez Canal. The Israelis were then in a position to open sea communications through the Gulf of Aqaba, an added threat to the Egyptians. In December, after a joint Anglo-French intervention, a United Nations (UN) Emergency Force was stationed in the area, and Israeli forces withdrew in March 1957. Arab and Israeli forces clashed for the third time June 510, 1967, in what came to be called the Six-Day War. In early 1967 Syrian bombardments of Israeli villages had been intensified. When the Israeli Air Force shot down six Syrian MiG planes in reprisal, Nasser mobilized his forces near the Sinai border. During this war Israel eliminated the Egyptian air force and established air superiority. The war cost the Arabs the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, the Jordanian territory west of the Jordan River known as the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, on the Israeli-Syrian border. The sporadic fighting that followed the Six-Day War again developed into full-scale war in 1973. On October 6, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur (thus Yom Kippur War), Israel was attacked by Egypt across the Suez Canal and by Syria on the Golan Heights. The Arab armies showed greater aggressiveness and fighting ability than in the previous wars, and the Israeli forces suffered heavy casualties. The Israeli army, however, pushed its way into Syrian territory and encircled the Egyptian Third Army by crossing the Suez Canal and establishing forces on its west bank. Israel and Egypt signed a cease-fire agreement in November and, on Jan. 18, 1974, peace agreements. The accords provided for Israeli withdrawal into the Sinai west of the Mitla and Gidi passes, while Egypt was to reduce the size of its forces on the east bank of the canal. A UN peace-keeping force was established between the two armies. This agreement was supplemented by another signed on Sept. 4, 1975. On May 31, 1974, Israel and Syria signed a cease-fire agreement that also covered separation of their forces by a UN buffer zone and exchange of prisoners of war. On March 26, 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty that formally ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries for 30 years. Under the terms of the Camp David Accords, as the treaty was called, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and, in return, Egypt recognized Israel's right to exist. The two nations subsequently established normal diplomatic relations with each other. On June 5, 1982, less than six weeks after Israel's complete withdrawal from the Sinai, increased tensions between Israelis and Palestinians resulted in the Israeli jet bombings of Beirut and southern Lebanon, where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had a number of strongholds. By June 14 Israel's land forces had invaded Lebanon as far as the outskirts of Beirut, which was encircled; but the Israeli government agreed to halt the advance and begin negotiations with the PLO. After much delay and massive Israeli shelling of West Beirut, the PLO evacuated the city under the supervision of a multinational force. Eventually, Israeli troops withdrew from West Beirut, and the Israeli army had withdrawn entirely from Lebanon by June 1985. Hostility continued, however. On December 9, 1987, rioting broke out among Palestinian Arabs living in the Israeli-occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and in Jerusalem. The Palestinian demonstrations and riots continued in the following years and took on the character of a mass popular rebellion (known as the intifada, or uprising) directed against continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1993 Israel and the PLO reached an agreement that involved mutual recognition and envisaged the gradual implementation of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before a permanent peace settlement. That process began in 1995.