The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from 6 to 25 October 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. The majority of combat between the two sides took place in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights—both of which had been occupied by Israel in 1967—with some fighting in African Egypt and northern Israel. Egypt's initial objective in the war was to seize a foothold on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and subsequently leverage these gains to negotiate the return of the rest of the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
Upon learning of the impending attack, Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir made the controversial decision not to launch a pre-emptive strike.
Egyptian forces crossing the Suez Canal
Wreckage from an Egyptian Sukhoi Su-7 shot down over the Sinai on 6 October, on display at the Israeli Air Force Museum
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, the Red Sea to the south, Egypt to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Palestinian territories – the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest. Tel Aviv is the country's financial, economic, and technological center. Israel’s governmental seat is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is of limited international recognition.
The Merneptah Stele (13th century BCE). The majority of biblical archeologists translate a set of hieroglyphs as Israel, the first instance of the name in the record.
3rd-century Kfar Bar'am synagogue in the Galilee
Jews at the Western Wall in the 1870s
The First Zionist Congress (1897) in Basel, Switzerland
