Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1969–1972

As part of a subseries of volumes of the Foreign Relations series that documents the most important issues in the foreign policy of the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, this volume documents U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli Dispute between January 1969 and December 1972. During his first term in office, President Richard Nixon was confronted with the challenges posed by the outcomes of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, most notably Israel’s acquisition of territory from its Arab neighbors in the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank; lingering hostilities between Israeli and Arab forces; the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization under the leadership of Yasser Arafat; and growing Soviet influence in the Arab states. Although this volume primarily traces the administration’s efforts to broker an Egyptian-Israeli peace settlement while seeking to preserve a precarious regional balance of power between the belligerents, it also covers other aspects of U.S. bilateral relations with Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, including nuclear matters and arms sales. Among the salient themes highlighted in the volume include the impact of the shifting bureaucratic balance of power within the Nixon administration’s foreign policy apparatus, from the Department of State to the White House, on the making of policy toward the Arab-Israeli dispute, as well as the influence of the Cold War conflict upon U.S. perceptions of the strategic situation in the Middle East and the prospects for peace.

The editors of this volume sought to present documentation that explains and illuminates the major foreign policy decisions taken by the administration of Richard M. Nixon toward the Arab-Israeli dispute in the months preceding, during, and immediately following the October 1973 War. Documentation in this volume includes memoranda; records of discussions both within the U.S. policy-making community, as well as with foreign officials; cables to and from U.S. diplomatic posts; and papers that set forth policy issues and options, and which show decisions or actions taken. The emphasis is on the process by which U.S. policy developed, and the major repercussions of its implementation rather than the details of policy execution.
 
This volume covers an important period in the history of the U.S. engagement with the Arab-Israeli dispute. The October 1973 War represented not only a renewed clash of Arab and Israeli forces, it ignited an energy crisis brought on by an Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) oil embargo against the United States, and led to the threat of a direct superpower confrontation. The war also prompted the United States to undertake an unprecedented role in the pursuit of a negotiated settlement to the dispute
 
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