Al-Jazeera - The War in October (2013)

Forty years on, Al Jazeera examines three weeks of war from which both Arabs and Israelis claimed to emerge victorious.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat once called it the last war. But 40 years after Sadat uttered those words, the Arab-Israeli conflict has no end in sight. The story of the war that Egyptians call the October War and Israelis know as the Yom Kippur War has never been thoroughly explored.

So what happened during those three weeks in October 1973?

To this day, both sides - Arabs and Israelis - claim to be the victors. It was a war that brought the world to the brink of a nuclear confrontation between two global superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union. It also gave the world a fuel crisis and a new entry in the dictionary 'Shuttle Diplomacy', as Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state, flew from country to country in an effort to broker a peace deal.

Egypt's 2011 revolution and the toppling of the old regime has resulted in the discovery and opening of many previously undisclosed files related to the war in October. It has provided us with unprecedented access to participants in it and to the places where they fought.

The War in October draws on rare film archive selected from many sources around the world, along with graphic illustrations, maps, and animated sequences to plot the movements of forces in the many battlefields of the conflict.

The series features interviews with people who planned and fought in the three weeks of battles that took place on both the Egyptian and Syrian front, including characters from other countries that participated in the fighting - Iraqi, Jordanian, Moroccan and Palestinian. The interviewees include experts, diplomats, officials and members of the military from the US, the former Soviet Union and Europe.

Part 1: Week 1: The Crossing

The first part of the series focuses on the build-up to the war and the role of an Egyptian double agent. It examines Egypt and Syria's lightning attack against an unprepared Israel as well as the Israeli response, the mobilisation of reserves and stabilisation of the Syrian thrust into the Golan Heights in a bloody tank battle in what became known as the 'Valley of Tears'. And it looks at the failure of an Israeli counterattack in the Sinai and the Egyptian consolidation of bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.

Al-Jazeera Site

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