Such praise for Egypt’s military did little to persuade Nasser, who constantly reminded his advisers that Egypt would be fighting not only Israel but also the United States. But the key question for him now was no longer whether the army could prevail over Israel but whether his rule could survive another failure to come to Syria’s defense. The toppling of the Ba’th could generate the fall, domino-style, of “progressive” regimes throughout the region—beginning in Iraq and Yemen and ending possibly in Egypt itself. The Egyptian-Syrian defense pact would be proven useless and Egypt’s stature in Soviet eyes vastly diminished. “The Eastern front could collapse,” Nasser told Heikal over the direct, encoded line between their offices, “Egypt could find itself facing Israel alone.” After Samu’, after April 7, Nasser could no longer sit aside and watch.58
But neither could he let ‘Amer take the lead. Tensions between the president and his field marshal remained as high-pitched as ever. Increasingly fearful of sedition, Nasser had attempted to employ retired officers as sources of information on ‘Amer’s influence in the army. ‘Amer checked the move, then rejected Nasser’s offer to appoint him prime minister in exchange for conceding his control over the military. Instead, ‘Amer’s power expanded, to the extent that Defense Minister Shams Badran and Air Force Chief Sidqi Mahmud, both of whom were his protégés, completely neutralized Chief of Staff Fawzi, a Nasser loyalist. Now, with crisis brewing in the north, ‘Amer showed signs of wanting to exploit that situation to elevate his status yet higher, leading the army to a glorious victory.59 Nasser sought to prevent this, to regain his prerogatives at home and the initiative in the region, all the while proving to the Arabs that he—not ‘Amer, not Syria—was their best defense against Israel.
The Egyptian general staff convened at the Supreme Headquarters as planned, at 11:30, under ‘Amer’s aegis. Military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Muhammad Ahmad Sadiq surveyed the information received from Soviet, Syrian, and Lebanese sources regarding the concentration of Israeli forces on the Syrian border and the probability of attack sometime between May 17 and 21. ‘Amer then took control of the meeting, and ordered that all air and frontline troops be put on the highest alert, and the reserves called to active duty. Over the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours, the army would advance into Sinai and take up positions on the three lines of the Conqueror (al-Qahir) plan. The deployment would be defensive, but offensive operations would not be ruled out, ‘Amer said. Gen. Fawzi, meanwhile, was to fly posthaste to Damascus and assure Syrian leaders that Egypt was ready to fight with every resource it had, “to destroy Israel’s air force and occupy its territory.”60
While the general staff deliberated, Nasser was in Tahrir Square, at the office of Dr. Mahmoud Fawzi, his chief adviser for foreign affairs. Like Sadat, Fawzi enjoyed unusual access to the president. The British Foreign Office described him as an éminence gris, “an able negotiator and [a] resourceful diplomat…a past-master at putting on the most moderate terms the policies of his hairier masters.” The subject of their discussion was particularly delicate: the possible eviction of UNEF. Though ‘Amer was adamant about removing the force entirely, Nasser was less categorical. Reluctant to take on the defense of Gaza—in the event of war, Israel’s likeliest target—or to substitute the crisis in Syria with one in Sinai, Nasser was especially loath to return Egyptian troops to Sharm al-Sheikh. Once there, those soldiers could not simply watch as Israeli ships passed under their noses through Tiran. The straits would have to be closed again, and Israel would almost certainly strike back.
Fawzi was ready with a number of briefs affirming that Nasser had the sovereign authority to dismiss UNEF without prior review by either the General Assembly or the Security Council. Fawzi further suggested that Nasser could order UNEF to pull back from the border and to concentrate in Gaza and Sharm al-Sheikh, and that instructions to this effect could be given to Gen. Rikhye rather than to U Thant, thus emphasizing their practical, as opposed to legal, nature. Nasser was impressed with these arguments, and was confident of his chances for success. His previous contacts with India and Yugoslavia, contributors of two of UNEF’s largest contingents, and with U Thant, had indicated that all would accede his request to relocate the force.61
While Fawzi drew up the letter to Rikhye, Nasser reviewed the decisions of the general staff and consulted with several senior officials, among them his vice president, Zakkariya Muhieddin. By mid-afternoon, the plan was in motion. A national emergency was declared; soldiers’ and policemen’s leaves were canceled and student visas revoked. Bridges and public buildings were placed under strict double guard. But these measures, justified by the “tense situation on the Syrian-Israeli armistice line, Israel’s large military concentrations, its threats and its open demands for an attack on Damascus,” were merely a sideshow for the army’s procession through Cairo. Starting at 2:30 P.M., thousands of troops paraded through the city’s center, past the American Embassy, under ‘Amer’s personal review. The field marshal had just issued top-secret instructions urging his commanders “to be vigilant to all developments, political and strategic, in order to determine the proper place and time to initiate successful military actions.”
“Our forces, hastily gathered, marched toward the front,” recalled Muhammad Ahmad Khamis, a communications officer with the 6th Division and decorated veteran of the Yemen War. “We moved without preparation, without the basic precautions for a military maneuver.” Lt. General Anwar al-Qadi, chief of operations on the general staff, testified that “our headquarters knew nothing about the orders issued to the army directly by the senior commander [‘Amer]. Egypt’s political leaders sought to escalate the situation—we knew not why—while continuous and contradictory orders sent entire divisions into Sinai without planning or strategic objectives.”62 Packed onto two narrow roads, soaked by a late spring downpour, those divisions eventually reached the Suez Canal. There, the soldiers commandeered ferryboats used for supplying UNEF, crossed and fanned out into Sinai.
Had Egypt intended to attack Israel immediately, the army’s advance into Sinai would have been conducted as quietly as possible, at night. Instead, by acting conspicuously, Nasser sent a double message to Israel: Egypt had no aggressive designs, but neither would it suffer any Israeli aggression against Syria. But that same message eluded Egyptian commanders, left without instructions as to what they were supposed to do in Sinai. Gen. Fawzi recalled that “our forces pulled out of Cairo and poured into Sinai to concentration areas that were never established. And then the question arose: what’s our mission?” Similar questions were being asked at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, where Mahmoud Riad knew even less than his military counterparts. There were no briefings, no appraisals, only what diplomats had read in the papers.
If aware of this chaos, Nasser seemed untroubled by it. The objective of demonstrating that Egypt, even with over 50,000 men in Yemen, was still a formidable power had been stunningly achieved. “The troops in Yemen were not particularly important,”‘Ali Sabri, a powerful figure in Nasser’s entourage, testified. “Our main armored units were all in Egypt, along with our air force.” That army, marching in broad daylight, would deter the Israelis and restore Egypt’s pride. Nasser would win the propaganda war but would not have to fire a shot.63
All this transpired without the Israelis having a clue. Absorbed in their Independence Day festivities, Eshkol and Rabin barely had time to deal with yet another Soviet claim of threats against Syria. The prime minister met with Chuvakhin and, as in the past, reassured him that the IDF was not planning the conquest of Damascus, and invited him to inspect the northern border himself. If twelve brigades were massing there—40,000 men, 3,000 vehicles—surely the ambassador would see them. The blond, barrel-chested Chuvakhin, bland and humorless, replied simply that his job was to communicate Soviet truths, not test them. The Soviet ambassador would be invited twice more to visit the north, and asked to intervene in restraining Syria, and each time his answer was no. Yet few Israelis sensed
the immensity of the crisis approaching. When Chuvakhin, in a conversation with Arye Levavi, director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, predicted that “you will be punished for your alliance with imperialism, and you will lose your access to the Red Sea,” no alarms were raised in Jerusalem.64
Nor did the Israelis pause to consider whether these same Soviet warnings were reaching Egypt and, if so, whether Nasser would act on them. By all reports Israel received from the Americans, and according to its own intelligence, Nasser had no interest in bloodshed and had not even closed the door to some future peace settlement. Further assumed were the Egyptian leader’s continued support for UNEF and his imperviousness to Arab—Jordanian, especially—propaganda aimed at that support. Israel’s assessment of Egypt’s willingness to fight had brightened since the gloomy days of 1965 and the Arab summit meetings. With the Egyptian economy in a tailspin and Arab unity dashed, Nasser would have to be deranged to take on an Israel backed by France and the U.S. Sixth Fleet. War, according to the Israelis, could only come about if Nasser felt he had complete military superiority over the IDF, if Israel were caught up in a domestic crisis, and, most crucially, was isolated internationally—a most unlikely confluence.65
And yet Eshkol, for one, remained unsure. He was wary of the context of inter-Arab and superpower rivalries surrounding Israel, and reacted to it with that same blend of bravura and fear, temerity and timorousness, that had helped make that context explosive. Thus, in his speech on Israel’s Memorial Day, May 13, he vaunted that “firm and persistent stand…[that] has strengthened the awareness among our neighbors that they will not be able to prevail against us in open combat. They recoil today from any frontal clash…and postpone the date of such a confrontation to the remote future.” But then, in an address to the Mapai leadership, the same Eshkol could also warn: “We are surrounded by a serious encirclement of hostility and that which doesn’t succeed today could well succeed tomorrow or the day after. We know that the Arab world is now divided in half…but things can always change.”66
THE CRISIS
Two Weeks in May
In the face of Arab and UN Condemnations and boycotts by Western ambassadors, Israel marked its independence. The parade had been pared down to a mere twenty-six minutes, 1,600 soldiers and a few vehicles—“a boy scouts march,” Colonel Lior derided it. Eshkol’s decision to put the lowest possible profile on the celebrations elicited bitter criticism from his opponents, most vocally Ben-Gurion, who accused him of kowtowing to international pressure. And yet some 200,000 spectators turned out for the event, gathering under an illuminated Star of David that shimmered from the top of Mt. Scopus. Few of the celebrants were aware, however, of a more ominous presence gathering in the south, as thousands of Egyptian troops streamed into Sinai.
Reports of the buildup, culled from Western news agencies, had reached Rabin the previous evening at the prime minister’s office, while he and Eshkol and their wives were preparing to attend a rally at the nearby Hebrew University stadium. Eshkol’s initial reaction was restrained. He reminded Rabin that Nasser was fond of exhibitions and that, at worst, this was a repeat of Operation Retama, Egypt’s surprise remilitarization of Sinai in 1960. Rabin agreed, and gave orders to prevent all potentially provocative movements along the northern border, and to step up reconnaissance patrols in the south. The matter was then dropped. Rabin and Eshkol departed for the stadium, there to hear the censored poem by Natan Alterman and a new song by composer Naomi Shemer, “Jerusalem of Gold,” soon to become an anthem.
But for all his outward composure, the prime minister was concerned. Dispatches on the situation in the south continued to arrive throughout the evening, at a reception at the home of Venezuelan millionaire Miles Sherover. Egyptian forces were taking up positions according to the Conqueror plan, well known to the Israelis, and Gen. Fawzi had flown to Damascus. Though the IDF was deployed along the lines of Anvil, ready to stem Arab invasion from any front, the plan presupposed a prior warning of forty-eight hours—a period that Eshkol could not be sure he had. Asked by his wife, Miriam, why he seemed so preoccupied, Eshkol snapped, “Don’t you realize that there’s going to be a war?”
His anxieties would mount higher the following day. While waiting inside the King David Hotel for the parade to begin, Eshkol listened as Rabin recommended beefing up Israel’s small armored units in the Negev, mining the border area, and calling up a brigade or two of reserves.
Rabin was aware of the situation’s delicacy, and exceedingly wary of Nasser. He had actually met the man once, at the end of the 1948 war when Rabin helped negotiate the withdrawal of besieged Egyptian soldiers from the Negev. The future Egyptian president had told him, “Our main enemy is the British…We should be fighting the colonial power rather than you,” and had impressed the young Israeli officer. Since achieving power, though, Nasser had proved himself an implacable and unpredictable opponent. Rabin had to prepare for the worst.
“Had we failed to react—giving the Egyptians the impression that we were either unaware of their moves or complacent about them—we might be inviting attack on grounds of vulnerability,” Rabin later recorded. “On the other hand, an overreaction on our part might nourish the Arabs’ fears that we had aggressive intentions and thus provoke a totally unwanted war.” The latter scenario seemed the more treacherous, Eshkol felt. While he approved a first-level alert for the army, and the transfer of several tank companies southward, he refused to mobilize reserves.
Throughout the rest of that day, during a national Bible quiz and an Israel Air Force ball, news from Sinai continued to filter in. Two Egyptian divisions had moved into fortified areas of Jabal Libni and Bir Hasana, Rabin informed Eshkol; the advance was well planned and organized. The only good news was that the 4th Armored Division, Nasser’s best, had yet to leave Cairo. Rabin was sure that Egypt’s maneuvering was merely for show—Washington confirmed the assessment—and counseled caution. Eshkol agreed, but remained anxious. What if Nasser’s action encouraged the Syrians to release more terrorists? he wondered. What if the Syrians pushed Nasser to close the Straits of Tiran?1
The prime minister pondered these questions while Israeli diplomats went into action. The State Department, the British Foreign Office—any channel to Nasser, even U Thant—was utilized in assuring Nasser that Israel had no warlike intentions and warning him of Syrian chicanery. Chief UN observer Odd Bull was invited to tour the north and verify the absence of IDF concentrations while, abroad, Israeli emissaries were instructed to impress upon their host governments the seriousness of Egypt’s moves. Mossad head Meir Amit tried to renew communications with Gen. ‘Azm al-Din Mahmud Khalil, his one-time Egyptian liaison. The Lebanese were also secretly contacted and told of the terrible explosion liable to erupt if the terrorist attacks continued.2
Yet none of these responses could substitute for activating at least some reserves, Rabin explained. As Egyptian infantry advanced in rapidly increasing numbers, Cairo Radio exulted, “our forces are in a complete state of readiness for war.” Nasser, in a statement released on Palestine Day—a day of mourning throughout the Arab world, lamenting Israel’s independence—exhorted, “Brothers, it is our duty to prepare for the final battle in Palestine.” While Rabin did not believe that Nasser wanted war, a momentum was gathering that could seriously erode Israel’s deterrence power, to the point where the Arabs felt free to attack.3
That danger seemed to skyrocket between the nights of May 15 and 16. Initial IDF estimates had put the size of the Egyptian buildup at one division, the 5th—this in addition to the 30,000 troops already stationed in Sinai and the 10,000 man Palestine Liberation Army division maintained in Gaza. But then the numbers jumped threefold. The 2nd and 7th Infantry Divisions had also crossed the Canal, and the 6th Armored was not far behind. Significantly, the 4th Division under the command of Maj. Gen. Sidqi al-Ghul had crossed the Canal and dug in at Bir al-Thamada. Each of these units comprised 15,000 men, close to 100 T-54 and T-55 tanks, 150 armored
personnel carriers, and a range of Soviet artillery: howitzers, heavy mortars, Katyusha rockets, SU-100 anti-tank guns. Along with these forces came vast amounts of ammunition, MiG-17 and 21 fighters, and—IDF intelligence believed—canisters of poison gas.4
Rabin was baffled. The Egyptian deployment, though still defensive, with tanks and troops digging in, had surpassed the dimensions of a mere power display. With the 4th Division on the move and heavy bombers transferred to the forward base at Bir al-Thamada, the enemy could be preparing to invade the Negev or to bomb the Dimona reactor. Cairo’s tenor was bellicose—“If Israel now tries to set the region on fire, then Israel itself will be completely destroyed in this fire, thus bringing about the end of this aggressive racist base”—and was duly echoed by Damascus: “The war of liberation will not end except by Israel’s abolition.” Syrian troops were also reportedly advancing, though Israel could not match their buildup without then justifying Egypt’s. The IDF’s hands were tied; al-Fatah could attack at will.
“Israel faces a new situation,” Rabin told the general staff on May 17. “Nasser never initiates anything—he only reacts and then he gets himself into trouble as he did in Yemen.” There was a need to transfer troops to the southern border, to bolster the air defenses around Dimona, but to do so quietly, under darkness if possible. Later, locating Eshkol at a reception for a visiting African dignitary, Rabin requested the call-up of at least two brigades, as many as 18,000 men. Eshkol agreed, reluctantly, and advised Rabin to refrain from provocative rhetoric. “This week has had its fill of threats and warnings,” he said. For Col. Lior, writing in his diary, the moment was decisive. “It was clear to all of us that we had reached the point of no return,” he recorded, “The lot had been cast.”5
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