BICOM

In the later stages of the Yom Kippur War – after Israel thwarted the Syrian attack on the Golan Heights and established a bridgehead on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal – international efforts to stop the fighting were intensified. US secretary of state Henry Kissinger flew to Moscow on 20 October and, together with the Soviet Union, the United States proposed a ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council. The Security Council met on 21 October, and by 14 votes to none, adopted Resolution 338, which called on the warring parties to cease fighting and resume diplomatic efforts in accordance with Resolution 242. In fact, Eugene Rostow, US undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 and a key player in the production of Resolution 242, has written, ‘Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 rule that the Arab states and Israel must make peace, and that when “a just and lasting peace” is reached in the Middle East, Israel should withdraw from some but not all of the territory it occupied in the course of the 1967 war. The Resolutions leave it to the parties to agree on the terms of peace.’

View UN Security Council Resolution 338