The Interim Agreement between Israel and Egypt, commonly called Sinai II, was signed in Geneva on September 4, 1975, with the main text initialed in Jerusalem and Alexandria during Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s second shuttle. It was the deeper of the two post-1973 disengagement agreements, and it carried Egypt and Israel significantly closer to the framework that would become the 1979 peace treaty. The State Department Office of the Historian treats Sinai II as the decisive second step in the Egypt track, the point at which a technical military disengagement began to carry real political weight.
What additional territory Israel gave up
Israel withdrew from the strategically critical Gidi and Mitla mountain passes, the north-south corridors through the central Sinai that had been the focus of some of the heaviest fighting in 1967 and 1973. Israel also withdrew from the Abu Rudeis and Ras Sudar oil fields on the western Sinai coast, which had been producing roughly half of Israel’s domestic oil supply. The return of these fields to Egyptian control was a significant economic concession, forcing Israel to purchase replacement crude on world markets at 1975 prices, and it demonstrated that the Rabin government was willing to accept meaningful material costs in exchange for diplomatic progress. A new line was drawn across the Sinai, with Egypt regaining several thousand additional square kilometers of territory, and an expanded UN buffer zone was placed between the forces.
Security arrangements and monitoring
Sinai II introduced the Sinai Field Mission, an American civilian monitoring operation stationed in the passes to verify compliance with the force limitations. This was the first time American personnel were directly embedded in an Arab-Israeli disengagement as part of the verification architecture, setting a precedent that would later be institutionalized in the Multinational Force and Observers after the 1979 treaty. Egypt accepted defined force limitations on the territory it regained, with limits on armor, artillery, and personnel in designated zones. Both sides committed to resolve the conflict “by peaceful means,” a phrasing that fell short of a formal nonbelligerency pledge but represented a clear political advance over Sinai I.
The political commitments
Egypt committed in Sinai II that the conflict “shall not be resolved by military force but by peaceful means,” permitted the passage of nonmilitary cargoes to and from Israel through the Suez Canal, and agreed to work toward further agreements. Israel committed to the territorial withdrawal, the force limitations, and the verification regime. In parallel, the United States gave both sides significant assurances. American commitments to Egypt included ongoing diplomatic engagement. American commitments to Israel, captured in a separate Memorandum of Agreement, included economic assistance, military supplies, a pledge not to recognize or negotiate with the PLO unless it accepted UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and recognized Israel’s right to exist, and a commitment to consult on any further disengagement steps.
Why Sinai II mattered
Sinai II mattered for three reasons. First, the withdrawal from the passes and the oil fields was a significant territorial and material concession, removing the idea that the Egypt track was limited to cosmetic pullbacks. Second, the language of “peaceful means” and the expanded verification architecture showed that the Egypt-Israel relationship was moving from purely military separation toward something that looked more like a political settlement. Third, the agreement stabilized the post-1973 strategic environment for long enough that President Anwar Sadat could make his dramatic November 1977 visit to Jerusalem, which in turn made the Camp David process possible. The Britannica account of the Sadat era identifies Sinai II as the point at which the Egyptian strategic reorientation became irreversible. Within four years of Sinai II, Egypt and Israel would sign a full peace treaty, and within seven years Israel would have completed its total withdrawal from the Sinai. Sinai II is therefore best understood not as a stand-alone deal but as the critical middle step in the single most successful sequence in the entire “land for peace” record.