Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  Then, on November 10, on the Israeli border opposite the West Bank city of Hebron, a paramilitary police vehicle struck a mine. Three policemen were killed, one wounded. Aware and wary of Israel’s wrath, Hussein penned a personal condolence letter to Eshkol, along with a reaffirmation of his commitment to border security. He whisked it to the American embassy in Amman, which then cabled it to Barbour in Tel Aviv. Extremely tall, asthmatic, and portly, a lifelong bachelor with an unabashed affection for Israel—an affection fully reciprocated—Barbour had a reputation as a highly efficient ambassador. But this time he slipped. Instead of forwarding the letter at once to the prime minister’s office, he laid it on his desk. It was Friday, and with no apparent rush, he believed, the message could wait until after the weekend.75

  That weekend, Israel decided to strike. Not a limited attack, but a large-scale reprisal, mounted in broad daylight, with tanks and air cover. “In 1966, we can’t carry out a 1955-style reprisal raid,” averred IDF operations chief Ezer Weizman, arguing in favor of the raid. The usually pacific Abba Eban, now Israel’s foreign minister, agreed, as did the majority of the government’s ministers. Deterrence had to be restored, yet without provoking war. Explaining why the target would be the West Bank and not Syria, Eshkol told his cabinet that “we have reached the decision that responsibility for these acts rests not only on the relevant governments but also on the people providing shelter and aid for these gangs.” He also expressed the hope that there would be no civilian casualties, and no clashes with the Jordanian army.76

  Questions could later be raised whether Eshkol would have made the same decision had he received Hussein’s apology in time, whether all subsequent events might have been averted had not Barbour so tragically procrastinated. Many “ifs” could be posited.

  But the developments of the next six months cannot be traced to any individual person or incident. They arose, rather, from a context that by the end of 1966, had been fully forged. The conflict between the Arab countries and the Israelis, between Arab countries themselves and between the U.S. and the USSR—exacerbated by domestic tensions in each—had created an atmosphere of extreme flammability. In such an atmosphere, it would not take much—a terrorist attack, a reprisal raid—to unleash a process of unbridled escalation, a chain reaction of dare and counterdare, gamble and miscalculation, all leading inexorably to war.

  THE CATALYSTS

  Samu’ to Sinai

  Ten tanks, forty half-tracks, and 400 men—the largest Israeli strike force assembled since the 1956 war—crossed the West Bank border before dawn, November 13, 1966. The operation aimed at punishing Palestinian villages in the Hebron area that had aided and billeted al-Fatah guerrillas. Those villages would then appeal to King Hussein to clamp down on al-Fatah, or so the Israelis assumed. The prodigious display of firepower would also impress upon the Jordanians the degree of retribution they might expect in the future; the Syrians would be warned as well. It was to be a clean attack, in and out, with little resistance expected, and no encounters with the Jordanian army which, reportedly, was nowhere in the area.

  Under the cover of IAF fighters, the Israeli column advanced to Rujm al-Madfa’, ten miles southwest of Hebron, and demolished its police station. The next target was Samu’, a village of 5,000 that Israel held to be a principal staging ground for the terrorists. Most of these residents responded to orders to gather in the town square, whereupon sappers from the 35th paratrooper brigade proceeded to dynamite a large number of houses in and around the village. All was going according to plan when, at 7:30 A.M., the paratroops’ reconnaissance unit reported Jordanian soldiers approaching from the northwest.

  There were roughly 100 of them, members of the Hittin Infantry Brigade under the command of Brig. Gen. Bahjat al-Muhsin, riding in a convoy of twenty vehicles. Al-Muhsin was leading his troops to Yata, another Hebronarea village, where significant enemy activity had been reported. But the winding, rugged road to Yata passed through Samu’ and there lay an Israeli ambush. Three-quarters of the convoy went up in flames; fifteen soldiers were killed and fifty-four wounded. But the Jordanians fought back, wounding ten paratroopers and killing their battalion commander, Col. Yoav Shaham. Jordanian Hunter jets meanwhile scrambled, only to be driven off by the Israelis, with the loss of one aircraft. What had been intended as a swift and surgical strike had devolved into a pitched battle.1

  Israel’s leaders were stunned, and not only by the military losses. Three Arab civilians had also been killed, ninety-six wounded; and, while the IDF reported forty houses destroyed, the UN estimate was over three times that many. Then, instead of appealing to King Hussein for protection, the West Bank Palestinians demanded his overthrow. Riots raged throughout the area, from Hebron to Jerusalem to Nablus in the north, as demonstrators stoned government offices and burned pictures and effigies of the king. At least four Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded as the Jordanians were at last compelled to open fire.

  Operation Shredder—so, aptly, it was named—had clearly backfired. The Security Council unanimously censured Israel for a “violation of the UN Charter and of the General Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan,” and warned of adopting “effective steps…to ensure against the repetition of such acts.”2

  More troubling still for the Israelis was the bitter backlash from the United States, unprecedented in Johnson’s tenure. The Americans were appalled at Israel’s apparent recklessness, its willingness to undermine the only Arab leader with whom it enjoyed a modus vivendi, a pro-Western moderate struggling against a radical sea. Hussein, they pointed out, had agreed to Israel’s demand to keep his newly purchased Patton tanks east of the Jordan, away from the border. But now, with the West Bank afire, he might have to rescind that pledge.

  “You pushed him into a hell of a pot and…made life very difficult for the wrong fellow,” Eban, visiting Washington, heard from Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach, “Now you have to take the consequences of what you did.” Robert W. “Mad Bob” Komer, an old Israel hand at the National Security Council, assailed Eban for “opening up of a new source of disturbance in the Middle East,” and for undermining “the whole [American] balance of power doctrine [that] rests upon the preservation of the status quo in Jordan and [its] insulation from a take-over by Egypt, Syria or the Palestinians.” Why, Komer asked, had Israel attacked Jordan when “the only Government [emphasis in the original] which espoused the use of terrorism…was Syria and, therefore, it would have been understandable had you acted…against Syria.” National Security Advisor Walt W. Rostow took the charge even further, insinuating that Israel

  for some machiavellian reason, wanted a leftist regime on the Left [sic] bank so that it could then have a polarized situation in which the Russians would be backing the Arabs and the U.S. would be backing Israel, and that Israel would not be in an embarrassing position where one of its friends among the Great Powers would also be a friend of an Arab country.3

  Eban’s attempts to explain the Samu’ raid as an “overreaction” to Arab terror or as an “exercise in the controlled use of a limited force” frustrated by “intervening circumstances” failed to arouse any sympathy. Nor did Eshkol’s letter to Johnson in which the prime minister admitted making an error but asked for appreciation of Israel’s predicament. “It is important that friends should understand each other in their difficult hours, and this is a difficult hour for us.” Johnson did not reply. Instead, he wrote Hussein expressing sadness for “lives needlessly destroyed” and support for Jordan’s territorial integrity. The State Department, meanwhile, having failed to convey Hussein’s condolence letter to Eshkol, now refused to pass on Eshkol’s to Hussein.4

  Back at home, Eshkol tried to put the best face on the situation. “After Samu’…the Arab countries will understand that we mean business,” he told the Mapai Secretariat, using the English word. “They’ll know that we meant what we said when we swore that we wouldn’t consent to be killed in this country, not whole-sale and no
t retail, and not without reaction.” Generals rose to assert that the raid had proven the Jordanian army’s vulnerability, restoring Israel’s deterrence power and calling the world’s attention to the dangers of Arab terror.

  Yet many Israelis, officials and government ministers, remained unimpressed with the operation. Among them was Col. Israel Lior, military aide to Eshkol and a shrewd observer of upper-echelon politics. “Obviously we had fallen into a trap of our own making,” he noted in his diary, “We had consistently warned the Syrians, created an atmosphere of an impending response up north—and then struck Jordan.” Rabin, himself, seemed to agree with this assessment, and offered to tender his resignation.5

  Israeli and American interests were no doubt impaired by the Samu’ raid, but none as grievously as Jordan’s. Hussein ibn Talal ibn ’Abdallah, at 31, had survived no less than twelve coup and assassination attempts since assuming the throne as a teenager in 1953. Short, dapper, impishly smiling, the king had a refined demeanor that disguised an inner tenacity, enabling him to weather successive threats from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. The Israelis, he was convinced, had never abandoned their dream of territorial expansion at Jordan’s expense. “They want the West Bank,” he predicted to Findley Burns, Jr., the American ambassador. “They’ve been waiting for a chance to get it, and they’re going to take advantage of us and they’re going to attack.”

  All these perils seemed to converge in the Samu’ attack. Cairo Radio, which had accused Hussein of leading a CIA plot to take over Syria and of colluding with Israel against Egypt, now denounced him for having refused to deploy Iraqi and Saudi troops in the West Bank, abandoning it to Israeli aggression. The Syrians were even more direct: Samu’ was the result of the sinister cabal between “the reactionary Jordanian regime and imperialist Zionism.”6

  Hussein, who had seen his grandfather shot by a Palestinian assassin, had no illusions about these dangers. Though fervidly beloved by the East Bank Jordanians, a sizable majority of his subjects were Palestinians who, at best, owed allegiance to Shuqayri, at worst to Nasser, Syria, and al-Fatah. After Samu’, the PLO leader publicly asserted that “Amman of 1948 is the Amman of 1966, nothing has changed,” and his propaganda broadcasts—from Cairo—called on the Jordanian army to overthrow the monarchy. Nor could Hussein afford to underestimate the vicious lengths to which Arab governments would go to unseat him, recalling the deaths of eleven Jordanian officials, including Prime Minister Haza’ al-Majali by an Egyptian bomb in 1960. Now, in the mercurial circumstances of 1966, the king could conceive of several scenarios in which Israel, hungry for land but afraid of Egypt and Syria, would invade the West Bank. The other Arab states would merely stand aside and watch, Hussein anticipated, while the Palestinians rose in revolt.7

  “Hussein’s weakness would be the cornerstone upon which the future Arab alliance [against Israel] will be built,” predicted Gen. Indar Jit Rikhye, commander of UNEF in Sinai, while briefing his officers on the impact of Samu’. Hussein may indeed have been weak, but he refused to remain passive. Already he had given shelter to Salim Hatum and other officers implicated in the recent failed coup in Damascus. He had already closed the PLO office in Amman and now outlawed the organization entirely, declaring martial law. Yet he also made efforts to appear conciliatory. Guns were distributed to the West Bank villagers, and conscription was instituted for Palestinian men. Then, in a starkly dramatic move, he published letters he had written secretly to Nasser after the Casablanca summit. “Should we be a new scapegoat?” he asked the Egyptian leader. “Should accusations be repeated against the country that can be the springboard of action against the enemy? Should we let the 1948 disaster repeat itself? Why not let bygones be bygones and look forward to the future? Put yourself in my place and tell me what you would do.” Hussein even had gestures for Damascus. “If Syria is directly attacked, we must offer all we can to protect our brothers there,” he told the Christian Science Monitor, and proposed that the entirety of defense issues be discussed at another inter-Arab forum.8

  That forum, the Arab League Defense Council, met in Cairo on December 15, 1966, and instantly turned anti-Jordanian. Amman’s representatives found themselves vilified for failing to protect the Palestinians and fulfill their obligations under the United Arab Command. Had Iraqi and Saudi troops been allowed into the West Bank, Samu’ would never have happened, the Syrians and the Egyptians claimed. The reply that Israel viewed the entry of such troops as a casus belli—neither Iraq nor Saudi Arabia had signed the Armistice—and that instead of preventing a war, the move would start one, proved unconvincing. Why didn’t Egypt renew guerrilla attacks from its own territory, the Jordanians countered? Why didn’t they remove UNEF and transfer troops from Yemen to Sinai? And where was the touted Egyptian air force when the Israelis were attacking Samu’—where was Syria’s commitment to Arab defense?9

  These questions—accusations, really—touched Nasser’s rawest nerves. Just over two weeks before, a pair of Egyptian MiG’s had strayed over Israeli territory and were downed by the IAF. The incident followed a highly publicized speech in which Gen. Muhammad Sidqi Mahmud, commander of the Egyptian air force, boasted that “We possess the most powerful air weapon in the Middle East. Our bombers, armed with missiles, our modern fighters—are capable of destroying Israel’s airfields and planes. We have no fear…”

  In fact, not just the air force but the entire Egyptian army was in deplorable shape, drained by Yemen and by serious cutbacks in defense spending. The latter was necessitated by the country’s economic crisis, so acute now that Nasser was forced to default on $1 billion in foreign loans. A campaign to “free Egypt from the taint of feudalism,” turning over Egypt’s fledgling industries to the workers, had failed miserably. The 5,000 employees of the El Nasr Automotive plant were now producing all of two vehicles per week. As public dissatisfaction in Egypt escalated, Western diplomats began to predict the regime’s imminent demise—or worse. One representative, Britain’s R. M. Tesh, observing that the “UAR policy adds up to the road to ruin,” warned of a situation in which the military would try to restore Egypt’s pride by plunging the region into war. “The scent of blood and distant noise of battle may start some hot-heads wanting to fight—and damn the civilians.”10

  Such admonitions were all but muffled by the crescendo of militant rhetoric in the Arab world. Prime Minister al-Tall in Amman said he would “rather die” than allow UN troops on Jordanian territory, or engage in a “gentleman’s agreement,” as Nasser had with Ben-Gurion in 1956. UAC Commander Gen. ’Ali ’Ali ’Amer in turn claimed that al-Tall had waited four hours, long after Israeli troops had already withdrawn from Samu’, to even call him. Next, the Egyptian press accused Hussein of embezzling Jordan’s UAC defense allocation, and then headlined an interview with a Jordanian army defector, a Capt. Rashid al-Hamarsha, who confessed to masterminding subversion in Syria. Jordan dismissed al-Hamarsha as a Zionist spy, “in liaison with an Israeli belly dancer named Aurora Galili or Furora Jelli,” and then produced its own deserter—Riyad Hajjaj, of Egyptian intelligence—revealing plots against the Lebanese and Saudi governments. The climax came in a speech of February 22, 1967, in which Nasser, punning on the Arabic word for king (’ahil), called Hussein the “whore (’ahir) of Jordan.”11

  Relations between Hussein and Nasser had, according to one British memorandum, “reached the point of no return.” Bristling from Nasser’s speech, Hussein recalled his ambassador from Cairo, and for good measure, banished the Syrian consul from East Jerusalem as well. When the Arab League Defense Council next met on March 14, the Jordanian delegate walked out rather than sit with Shuqayri, “the spiller of military secrets and the spreader of lies.” The meeting degenerated into a free-for-all, with the Egyptians and the Syrians accusing Hussein of collaborating with Israel’s Jordan River diversion scheme and its purchase of U.S. arms. The Jordanians, along with the Saudis, the Tunisians, and the Moroccans, determined to boycott future sessions of the council.12


  Hussein was furious, bitter, defamed, but above all disappointed. The tacit Egyptian-Jordanian alliance achieved during the period of the summit conferences, the implicit pact based on common opposition to making war on Israel before the Arabs were ready, had utterly collapsed. At fault were the Syrians, who, the king believed, had successfully lured Egypt into a trap in which war—and Egypt’s defeat, Nasser’s downfall—was inevitable. But Hussein reserved his deepest resentment for Nasser himself. “Every time he attacks us I hear people ask why we do not reply,” he admitted to a Jericho gathering. “The answer is simple. If we have any feelings toward this person it is only pain because he did at one time have a unique opportunity to serve our nation.”13

  Athanasius Contra Mundum

  “That person” had his own sources of pain—the economy, as we have seen, the Syrians, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Underlying these, though, was the enervating sense that the Free Officers revolution fifteen years earlier, the dream of Egypt’s emergence from servitude to world ascendancy, had run out of steam. Gamal Abdel Nasser, al-Ra’is (president), al-Za’im (leader), had come to power at thirty-four, a determined and energetic figure. Dashingly handsome, possessed of a keen if unrefined intelligence, Nasser could enrapture audiences with his eloquence, his hypnotic blend of classical and colloquial Arabic. In just under five years, this son of an itinerant postal worker, scarred veteran of the Palestine war, had overthrown King Faruq and Gen. Naguib and become the first native-born Egyptian leader in 150 years. Within two years of taking power, he was legendary throughout the Middle East as the liberator of Egypt and the Arabs’ defender against an ever-rapacious West—a modern-day Salah al-Din.