Nolte had realized what was already clear to many Western diplomats, that any doubts surrounding Egypt’s ability to vanquish Israel had been vitiated by the West’s refusal to defend Israel and the Israelis’ reluctance to defend themselves. “An armed clash between the UAR and Israel is inevitable,” wrote Heikal in al-Abram, and explained how the blockade, by undermining Israel’s deterrence power, would soon force it to fight. “Let Israel begin. Let our second blow then be ready. Let it be a knock-out.”
Egyptian confidence was crescendoing, yet Nasser could not entirely free himself of the fear of military collaboration between the United States and Israel. Confiding to Dr. Fawzi, he described a scenario in which Israel sent a flagship through the Straits with an American escort, and the Egyptians at Sharm al-Sheikh opened fire. While the Arabs were preoccupied fighting the Americans, Israel would conquer Sinai. Fawzi had to admit that such a maneuver was possible. “America’s behavior in the crisis is like an iceberg. Most of it is hidden beneath the surface.”63
It was in grappling with his America dilemma that Nasser saw certain advantages in Dawn. If Johnson sent warships to the Straits, the Egyptian army would proceed with its planned invasion of southern Israel. The operation enabled Nasser to hedge his bets—to maintain a defensive posture while preparing an offensive option; to exhort the Arabs to war while quietly preventing its outbreak. Nasser boasted that the Straits had been mined and that Egypt stood fully behind Palestinian guerrilla raids. In reality, the waterway remained mine-free while Cairo acted strenuously to rein in al-Fatah. Through back channels, Nasser reminded the Americans of his continuing interest in peace. In a conversation with a Mr. Siddiqui of ALCO products on May 26, Nasser said that his only goal was to demonstrate his leadership of the Arab world; he had no intention of fighting anybody. Siddiqui reported to the State Department, “His urgent request is that the United States undertaken no direct military action in the form of landings, shifting of the naval fleet or otherwise.”64
The danger of American intervention was only half of Nasser’s worries, though. The other half was how and whether the Soviet Union would react to that intervention.
Egyptian confidence in Soviet support had been strong, at least at the outset of the crisis. This had followed talks on strategic cooperation with Foreign Minister Gromyko in Cairo in March and then, in April, a state visit by Premier Kosygbin. Some $500 million in Soviet aid had been pledged for “strengthening the common anti-imperialist front” between the USSR and Egypt. ’Amer’s orders to his commanders on May 15 expressed certainty that the “Eastern bloc will not stand detached from events and allow the Western imperialist forces to act wantonly in Arab areas.” The assumption appeared to be substantiated, as both the remilitarization of Sinai and the removal of UNEF were lauded by the Communist press. “Let no one have any doubts about the fact the should anyone try to unleash aggression in the Near East, he would be met not only with the united strength of the Arab countries but also with strong opposition to aggression from the Soviet Union and all peace-loving peoples,” Moscow’s communiqué warned. Promises of economic aid were extended to Egypt, while, in the UN, the Soviet delegation made it clear that no Security Council interference in Sinai would be brooked.65
All that changed with the closure. Though Pojidaev, the Soviet ambassador, was informed of the decision before its announcement, the Kremlin’s views on the blockade had not been canvassed in advance. A curious silence settled over Egyptian-Soviet relations, nearly as complete as that between Cairo and Washington. Diplomatic sources reported that the Soviets were now changing their tune; instead of warning the West not to interfere with Egypt’s actions in Sinai and emphasizing their backing of Nasser, they stressed the need for a negotiated settlement and their willingness to help achieve one. Though Egyptian Ambassador Murad Ghaleb appealed repeatedly for indications of where, precisely, Moscow stood in the event of war, his inquiries remained unanswered.
On the afternoon of May 23, a petulant Nasser again summoned Pojidaev to his office, this time to upbraid him: “I want you to tell your bosses in Moscow that the USSR is the main factor influencing everything that is happening now.” Nasser reminded him that it was the Soviet warning about an Israeli attack on Syria that had spurred Egypt into Sinai, the result being that Israeli forces were now massed not in the north,but in the south, against Egypt. The USSR could not leave Egypt in the lurch, but must supply it with additional military equipment—air-to-surface rockets were especially lacking—and political backing against the United States. Pojidaev countered with a standard response: “You and the rest of the Arab world must know that the USSR stands decisively behind the independent Arab states, and if the situation develops into aggression by imperialism and its ‘straw child’ Israel, we will take the necessary measures.” But Nasser was not appeased. “I don’t want you to send a warning to Israel,” he chided. “That gives her a form of recognition that it doesn’t deserve, and allows her to reap the benefits of the weak. Your warnings have to be directed against the imperialist power.”66
The conversation convinced Nasser that irrespective of whether Egypt initiated the war or waited until the U.S. challenged the blockade, the Soviet position had first to be clarified. To this end, a special delegation left for Moscow on May 25. At its head was Defense Minister Shams al-Din Badran, ’Amer’s man, though Nasser made sure to include loyalists of his own as well, including Salah Bassiouny and Ahmad Hassan al-Feki, both of the Foreign Ministry. Billed by the Soviets as an effort “to obtain types of arms the UAR does not now have,” the mission’s real purpose was to ascertain how far Egypt could go and still have the USSR behind it.67
In spite of the disorder of the Egyptian buildup, and the uncertainty of American and Soviet intentions, preparations for Operation Dawn proceeded apace. Strike Force 1, a specially constituted division—9,000 men, 200 tanks and guns—under Gen. Sa’ad al-Din Shazli, along with the 14th Armored Brigade, had been moved up to Rafah, in preparation for invading the northern Negev. Battle orders 1 through 6 were issued specifying targets to be eliminated, including airfields, missile and radar sites, and desalination plants. The families of Egyptian officers were evacuated from Gaza while scores of civilian managers, engineers, and even doctors were transferred there in preparation for occupying the Negev. “I was fully confident of victory,” recalled Amin Tantawi, a 4th Division company commander. “Nasser’s speeches gave me that confidence. I believed that the day of liberation had arrived and that we would attack first and destroy Israel in a matter of hours. I had many ideas about what to do to Israel once we conquered and erased it.”
All was ready by the morning of May 25. That day, Lt. Gen. Salah Muhsin, commander of Egypt’s land forces, gathered his senior infantry officers and informed them that the army was now at full strength, outnumbering the enemy three-to-one in tanks, troops, and artillery. Those forces would begin their attack in two days’ time exactly—fittingly, at first light.68
Every Delay a Gamble
The scope and intensity of Egypt’s buildup, together with the mobilization of virtually every Arab army, was observed with near-panic in Israel. “We had seen photographs of the victims of Egyptian gas attacks in Yemen,” recalled Lt. Yossi Peled, a Holocaust survivor and future general, of his weeks of waiting in the Negev. “We had already started thinking in terms of annihilation, both national and personal.”
Gen. Yariv was now convinced that an Egyptian attack was only hours away. “There is reason to assume that Nasser no longer thinks that he has to wait,” he informed Eshkol, “All evidence indicates that he will soon stage a provocation.” He pointed to the continued advance of the 4th Division and the transfer of four brigades from Yemen to Sinai. Saudi troops were on the move, as were Iraqi forces, prepared to enter Syria. Intercepted communications between Arab embassies referred to a “sudden explosion” about to erupt. Hod, the IAF commander, envisaged a massive aerial assault against Israeli bases and cities, while the Mossad’s Meir Amit
reported on Egyptian designs on the Negev. Intelligence from the field held that the army’s morale was plummeting. “We sit and we wait,” Yoni Netanyahu, a platoon commander in the paratroopers, wrote to his girlfriend back home. “What are we waiting for?” His commanders fully agreed. Noting that each day without battle cost the country an estimated $20 million, while the Egyptians industriously dug in, the general staff determined that “every delay is a gamble with Israel’s survival.”69
Should Israel preempt the Egyptian attack and, if so, how? These were the questions on the table at the prime minister’s office on the evening of May 25. Present were Yariv, Amit, Lior, and Weizman, along with the Foreign Ministry’s Levavi and Dr. Ya’akov Herzog, the Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office. But the most significant attendant was Yitzhak Rabin. After an absence of over thirty hours, the chief of staff had returned to active service. “He was not—how shall I say it?—in full form,” another senior officer, Haim Bar-Lev, remembered. “Of course, he was briefed on all developments, but he lacked his usual strength.” Indeed, Rabin’s first act upon entering the room was to tender his resignation. Eshkol merely said, “Forget it,” and waved him off. “Eshkol was a warm, wise man,” Rabin wrote many years later. “Perhaps he had long known—and I had just then been forced to face—the frightening depths of a man’s vulnerability.”70
Vulnerability was, in fact, the topic—not Rabin’s, but Israel’s. Washington had been unwilling to make any commitment to Israeli security, either material or verbal, and was delaying the shipment of military goods already purchased by the IDF. Eshkol listened, already regretting his decision to accept the forty-eight hour delay. He heard proposals for recalling Eban before his meeting with Johnson, so that the Americans would not feel they had been “Pearl Harbored” by a sudden Israeli attack, and for sending an Israeli flagship through the Straits. He rejected them, afraid that they would broadcast Israel’s intentions and so enable the Egyptians to strike first. The prime minister did, however, support calling up the rest of the reserves and positioning a phantom brigade opposite Kuntilla, to deter the Shazli Force. But still no decision could be reached on preemption.
“What would you have me tell the Cabinet?” a despairing Eshkol asked his chief of staff. If not yet recovered, Rabin replied brusquely: “We have reached the point of explosion. The only question is: why and until when should we wait? If the Americans agree to declare that any attack on us is tantamount to an attack on the United States, that could be a reason to wait. If not—no!”
Rabin’s idea was quickly endorsed by most of the participants. Yariv proposed supplying the Americans with Israel’s intelligence estimates, and Levavi suggested telling Johnson that Israel was about to be invaded by a combination of Arab armies. The goal of the letter would be threefold: to preclude American charges of bad faith if Israel launched a first strike; to create, if rejected, a moral basis for Israeli action; to prod the United States into intervening more vigorously in the crisis. To these motives Eshkol added the need to prevent Eban from agreeing to any measures that would tie Israel’s hands. The sole reservation was raised by Dr.Herzog, son of the former chief rabbi of Ireland, considered a genius in foreign affairs. Voice cracking, he cautioned that “the President of the United States cannot issue the kind of declaration you want” because of congressional constraints. Yet, when requested, Herzog drafted the text of a message for Eban to present to American leaders. Rabin concluded the discussion: “I want it to be recorded for history that, before acting, we did everything we could to find a diplomatic solution.”
The Israeli leadership had once more elected to wait, but that choice was again challenged at the next Ministerial Defense Committee meeting. The ministers heard briefings from Rabin and Yariv, who repeated the threats now facing Israel’s security, if not its existence. The reaction, however, was different.
“Since we’ve already lost strategic surprise, what’s so important about who strikes first?” asked Zorach Warhaftig, religious affairs minister, who, like his NRP colleagues, opposed any move toward war. Zalman Aran warned of the “cosmic power” of the Soviet Union, of the “wall of steel and fire” that could decimate Israel’s cities. Haim Moshe Shapira added to this chorus by demanding Ben-Gurion’s return as defense minister.
Eshkol had just begun replying to Shapira—“I won’t form a government and go to war with a man who’s called us liars and cheaters”—when word arrived of yet another overflight of Dimona. Soaring at 55,000 feet, four MiG-21s had passed over and photographed the reactor. Israeli pilots had scrambled and Hawk missiles were fired, but neither could intercept the MiGs.
“Egyptian fighters are flying over Dimona and here we’re arguing over Ben-Gurion!” Eshkol shouted. He stormed out of the meeting to confer with Rabin and Weizman, asking them point-blank: “Am I to understand that you both want to attack today?”
“All the signs indicate that the Egyptians are ready to strike,” Weizman said, “We have no option but to attack at once.”
Rabin revealed that strange radio signals had been sent by the MiG’s, perhaps to strategic bombers. The dangers were manifest, he said, but the diplomatic possibilities had yet to be exhausted. “We wait until after Eban’s meeting with Johnson.”71
Eban Abroad
To many outside observers, Israel’s fate could not have been in better hands than those of its foreign minister. Cambridge-educated, polyglot, a prolix author and orator, Abba Eban was closely associated with the drama surrounding Israel’s birth—at the UN, where he served as Israel’s representative from 1947 to 1949, and in Washington, where he doubled as ambassador from 1950. Many bons mots, for example on the Arabs’ post-1948 support for Partition (“Like the child who, after killing his parents, pleads for mercy as an orphan”) or the demise of UNEF (“What is the use of a fire brigade which vanishes from the scene as soon as the first smoke and flames appear?”), were ascribed to him. In the United States, he was celebrated by public officials, widely quoted by the press, an icon for American Jewry. Returning to Israel in 1959, he ran for the Knesset, won, and almost immediately became a minister, first of education under Ben-Gurion and then deputy prime minister to Eshkol. Though only a year and a half into his term as foreign minister, his experience in international diplomacy was highly regarded, if not revered—again, outside of Israel.
For many within the country, though, he remained the ungainly Aubrey Solomon of Capetown, a foreigner hopelessly out of step with Israeli ways and mentality, long-winded and dull. “He doesn’t live in reality,” Eshkol once sniped; “he never gives the right solution, only the right speech.” Privately, the prime minister referred to him, in Yiddish, as “der gelernter naar”—“the learned fool.” But in addition to deriding him, Eban’s detractors also distrusted him. Many believed that he had misled the government in 1956 by exaggerating the guarantees the U.S. and the UN were willing to give Israel in return for exiting Sharm al-Sheikh and Gaza. Now that the true frailty of those promises had been revealed, critics argued, and with the country’s survival at stake, Eban was the last man to rely upon. Several Mapai ministers, among them Eshkol himself, preferred to send Golda Meir, the party’s general secretary, to Washington—and would have, had not Meir taken ill.72
Eban chose a circuitous route to Washington, stopping first in Paris on the morning of May 24. Relations with the French had greatly compounded Israel’s worries. Requests for reaffirmations of France’s commitment to Israel’s security, for intercession with the Soviets and a condemnation of Nasser’s stance, had not even merited a response. While French munitions continued to reach the IDF—apparently without the government’s knowledge—French diplomacy was pursuing a course directly inimical to Israel’s.73
“Do not make war,” de Gaulle instructed Eban after a perfunctory handshake. “Do not be the first to shoot.” Taken aback by this curtness, as well as by the president’s drawn and aged veneer, Eban rallied and stated that Nasser had in effect already fired the firs
t shot by blockading the Straits, a blatant act of war. He further reminded his host that it was largely on the strength of French commitments to free passage that Israel had agreed to withdraw from Sharm al-Sheikh in 1957. “That was 1957,” de Gaulle retorted. “This is 1967.”
However tautological, the remark conveyed a clear message to Eban: France would no longer honor those commitments. At the height of his power, freed of colonial burdens, de Gaulle was at that juncture repositioning France as the mediator between East and West, communism and capitalism. He was also proud of the bridges he had built with the Arab world, and was not about to jeopardize them “merely because public opinion felt some superficial sympathy for Israel as a small country with an unhappy history.” Rather, he would bring American, British, and Soviet leaders together to resolve the Straits issue “as in the Dardanelles.” Eban recalled, “He spoke as if this were an institutional reality that I ought to know about.”
Eban expressed doubt whether the Soviets would cooperate with the Four-Power proposal, or whether Israel would wait for an indefinite period of diplomacy. In carefully articulated French, he said, “If the choice lies between surrender and resistance, then we will resist. The decision has been taken…I do not believe that Israel will accept the new situation created by Nasser for any serious length of time.”74
The conversation ended much as it began, with de Gaulle admonishing Eban, “Ne faites pas la guerre.” Later, alone with his foreign minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, de Gaulle predicted that Israel would, after all, go to war. Later still, he told the press that “if Israel is attacked we shall not let her be destroyed, but if you [Israel] attack, we shall condemn your initiative.” A spokesman for the president went a step further: Israel did not have to shoot first to be labeled the aggressor, but merely send a ship through Tiran.75
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