Comment by DiogenesKynikos

> The whole airlift took about a month! No denying, ofc US helped Israel caught with their pants down, but making it like US just brought 200 tanks overnight, is laughable. Regardless: Israel turned the war around. Israeli forces were forced to stop on their march to Cairo. What kind of victory is that for Egypt?

Israel would not have been able to turn the war around without the massive US airlift. As I said, the Israelis were literally running out of ammunition by the time the US airlift began. Without the airlift, they would have had to cease offensive operations and conserve ammo. The airlift enabled them to wage an entirely different type of war, without fear of running out of ammunition, tanks, airplanes, etc.

What Egypt proved in the war was that it was a serious military threat to Israel. Six years after the Six-Day War, which was a complete humiliation for the Arab forces, Egypt successfully pulled off a sophisticated crossing of the Suez Canal. It broke through the IDF's fortified line, and then decimated a large Israeli armored counter-attack, knocking out hundreds of Israeli tanks. That was a huge psychological shock to the Israelis.

Even though the Israelis turned the tide of the war, they were acutely aware that they had been caught with their pants down and had needed massive American aid to get through the war. Nobody could guarantee that the next round would end the same way. That was the major motivation to seek peace with the Egyptians.

There were other factors involved as well, like the American moves to woo Egypt away from the USSR, but the key thing that broke the deadlock and convinced the Israelis that they should negotiate with Egypt was the Israeli realization of their own vulnerability.