On the afternoon of 10 June 1967, a ceasefire imposed by the United Nations brought an end to the Arab-Israeli Six Day War. The ceasefire found the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) triumphant on the Suez Canal, on the Jordan River, and on the Golan Heights, some 26km (16 miles) east of the old frontier with Syria. The entire Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the troublesome Golan Heights were now in Israeli hands. In less than a week the IDF conquered an area three and a half times that of Israel itself, as well as over 1,000,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In six days the geopolitical balance in the Middle East was radically altered. Three sovereign Arab states, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, were utterly humiliated. Early in August 1967, Arab leaders met in Khartoum where they rejected any form of negotiation with Israel and resolved to reclaim the lost lands through force of arms. (See Campaign 126 The Yom Kippur War 1973 (2) The Sinai for the political background to the conflict.)
President Hafaz al Assad of Syria. Born in 1924 of the Alawite clan, Assad joined the ruling Ba’ath Party in 1958 and rose to become the commander of the Syrian Air Force. He was subsequently the Minister of Defence during the Six Day War. He seized supreme power in October 1970 and began to rebuild the Syrian Armed Forces for the coming battle with Israel that erupted in October 1973.
With the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in September 1970, his successor, President Anwar Sadat, carefully reconstructed the Egyptian armed forces over the following years. At the same time he persuaded President Hafaz al Assad of Syria to adopt his strategy of a military campaign with achievable aims. The aim would be to win a substantial lodgement across the Suez Canal in the Sinai Desert and the recapture of the Golan Heights prior to a United Nations ceasefire that would break the diplomatic logjam and focus the world’s attention on the Middle East once more. Both countries conducted a brilliant deception plan, codenamed Operation Spark, to lull the Israelis into a false sense of security prior to their joint offensive on two fronts.