Within two days of joining the government, Dayan had seized control over much of Israel’s decision making, guiding it ineluctably toward war. The defense minister was mistaken, though, if he thought that the Cabinet would rubberstamp his conclusions. Gathering at 8:15 on Sunday morning, the ministers first heard a drawn-out analysis of the diplomatic situation from Abba Eban. This noted the softening of Johnson’s opposition to a military solution, but also stressed the president’s insistence that Nasser fire the first shot, preferably at an Israeli boat. Absent that, the administration was pressing forward with the convoy project, in spite of disappointing reactions from congressmen and the maritime states.
Eban had scarcely finished his survey of American policy when another letter arrived from Johnson. This, too, underscored America’s commitment to Israel’s security and to freedom of the seas—problems with the convoy notwithstanding. He noted that “We have completely and fully exchanged views with Gen. Amit,” intimating an openness to preemptive action. But that impression was quickly erased by Johnson’s conclusion: “I must emphasize the necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities. Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone. We cannot imagine that it will make this decision.”
It fell to Yariv, then, to convince the ministers that Israel had to act and act at once, in spite of Johnson’s cautions. The picture he painted of Israel’s security situation was the most lurid and terrifying yet: Jordanian forces poised at Jerusalem and at Israel’s wasplike waist; Egyptian formations deployed to take Eilat, massively fortified at Rafah, and now stationed in the West Bank as well; the Syrians dug in on the Heights and actively preparing to descent them. Troops and tanks and planes from around the Arab world were converging for a united assault against Israel’s existence, secure in Soviet support.
Dayan spoke next, emphasizing the need to move at once, before the combined Arab forces grew stronger yet, while there was still a semblance of surprise. “Nasser must fulfill the process he started,” he stated, “We must do what he wants us to do.” He predicted the destruction of hundreds of enemy planes—“It’s our only chance to win, to wage this war our way”—followed by a bitter diplomatic battle.
Then came Eshkol’s turn. The man who had resisted immeasurable pressures over the past three weeks, who had been lambasted and isolated and scorned, at last had the final word. “I’m convinced that today we must give the order to the IDF to choose the time and the manner to act.”
Still, objections were raised. Haim Moshe Shapira quoted Ben-Gurion saying that Israel could never go to war without an ally. “Then let Ben-Gurion go and find us an ally,” Dayan cut him off. “I’m not sure we’ll still be alive!” To Shapira’s defense came the religious affairs minister, Zorach Warhaftig. Short, almost dwarfish, he was endowed with a towering legal mind and a moral conviction that transcended his concern for his three sons serving in the army. Warhaftig demanded that Israel send a ship through the Straits to establish a casus belli. “Better that one or two of our sailors get killed than that Israel get blamed for starting the war,” he later explained. “I had no doubts about victory. It was the day after victory that worried me.”
But the threat of international condemnation failed to impress what had become the majority of ministers. Yigal Allon seemed to speak to them when he brushed aside Warhaftig’s fears. “They will condemn us,” he predicted, “and we will survive.”
There remained only to take a vote. Twelve were in favor of war now, and only two opposed. The decision, drafted by Dayan, was short, understated, and devoid of any sentiment:
After hearing reports on the military and diplomatic situation from the prime minister, the defense minister, the chief of staff and the head of IDF intelligence, the Government has determined that the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan are deployed for a multi-front attack that threatens Israel’s existence. It is therefore decided to launch a military strike aimed at liberating Israel from encirclement and preventing the impending assault by the United Arab Command.49
The timing of the operation was to be left to Dayan and Rabin. Both were eager to begin as soon as possible, before Iraqi troops entered Jordan and Egyptian commandos crossed the West Bank. H-hour was thus set for the following morning, between 7:00 and 7:30, Monday, June 5, 1967.
Arab World Resurgent
“We must expect the enemy to strike a blow within 48 to 72 hours, by June 5 at the latest.” So Nasser told the officers gathered at Supreme Headquarters on June 2. The meeting had first been addressed by Military Intelligence Chief Sadiq, who showed that the IDF had completed its mobilization and deployment. Dayan’s appointment as defense minister, coupled with reports of Israeli aircraft carrying out deep reconnaissance flights over Sinai, indicated a new activism. Israel, it was pointed out, had two choices: either accept the new status quo or attack. The latter option seemed likelier as Iraqi troops prepared to enter Jordan. Israel had always regarded the presence of such troops as a casus belli, and would surely act at once. Should Egypt, then, strike first?
A debate, at times stentorian, broke out between Sadiq and Sidqi Mahmud, the former recommending that Egyptian planes be pulled back from forward bases in Sinai, vulnerable to surprise attack. The air commander balked at the idea, shouting, “I know my business, Sadiq! Abandoning the forward bases will ruin the pilots’ morale!” He still opposed waiting for Israel to land the first blow. “We will lose between 15 and 20 percent of our planes,” he forecast. “We will be crippled.” Now it was Nasser’s turn to object, stepping in to explain that Egypt could not risk alienating world opinion by assaulting Israel, or jeopardize its newfound rapport with France. There were also the beginnings of a dialogue with the United States, and Muhieddin’s scheduled visit to Washington. Israel had suffered a serious strategic defeat, but that, too, would be forfeited if Egypt started the war, Nasser reasoned. “You will still have 80 to 90 percent of your planes,” he reassured Sidqi Mahmud. “With those, how many losses can you cause the enemy?” The commander replied: “Sixty or 70 percent.”50
Nasser seemed to be of two irreconcilable minds on the crisis. The first held that, backed into a corner, Israel had to lash out in a matter of days, striking Egypt’s air force or oil refineries at Suez. But then he also sensed that war might be averted and diplomatic solution achieved, with Egypt its main beneficiary. Recognition would be obtained for the new status quo in Sinai, and substantial financial aid from the U.S. and the Arab states. Asked by his former Free Officer colleagues when Israel would attack, Nasser cavalierly replied “six to eight months,” if at all. The Israelis would never move without permission from the Americans, he claimed, and the Americans had been stymied by the Soviets. The two minds would find expression in separate interviews Nasser granted to the British press on June 3. In one, he claimed that war was imminent, and in the other, that the crisis had already passed.51
Yet Nasser was not alone in believing that Israel had already been beaten and a bloodless victory won. “Few diplomatic observers seem to appreciate that there is the danger of a desperate Israeli attack or to watch or understand what is happening inside Israel,” R.M. Tesh, Canada’s ambassador in Cairo, related. “It is accepted that Nasser has brought off a very clever coup and the Russians cancel out the Americans.” Though blackouts and air raid drills continued to be conducted, hospital beds reserved and military youth clubs formed, Egypt’s mood was steadily returning to normal. Emergency regulations were eased along with restrictions on internal travel. Even tourism appeared to be up. Ambassador El Kony at the UN may have protested “colonial policies of 19th century warship diplomacy” and threatened to “take all necessary measures to stop aggression against Egypt’s territorial waters,” but the USS Intrepid sailed unimpeded through the Suez Canal, escorted by Egyptian ships and greeted by thousands of villagers. “If we have been able to restore conditions to what they were before 1956, God will surely help us to restore them to what they were in 1948,”
Nasser exulted before the National Assembly. “We are now ready to confront Israel…The issue now at hand is not the Gulf of Aqaba, the Straits of Tiran or the withdrawal of UNEF, but the…aggression which took place in Palestine…with the collaboration of Britain and the United States.”52
Was a war still pending or was it already won? The emergence of that question deepened the confusion already rampant on the Sinai front. Thousands of reservists continued to arrive without equipment or food or a sense of either place or purpose. A report prepared by the army’s planning wing concluded that Egypt needed another six months at least to shore up its Sinai defenses for battle, but the recommendation went unheeded and perhaps even unread. Instead, chaos reigned. Gen. Tawfiq ‘Abd al-Nabi, formerly the Egyptian military attaché in Karachi, arrived in Sinai to take command of an antitank brigade only to find that he had no artillery, no mortars, and only seven tanks borrowed from another unit. His soldiers, moreover, knew nothing of antitank warfare.
Dozens of units had been exhausted, their vehicles worn out, transferring back and forth across the desert. Tanks and troops were first moved to Kuntilla, there to reinforce Shazli’s unit, and then to Gaza, on Nasser’s personal order. The more experienced generals viewed these peregrinations with horror. Not only was the army’s strength being wasted, but the deployment based on the Conqueror plan had all but unraveled. The sole voice of protest, though, was ‘Amer’s. “This is a substantive departure from our plan,” he reminded Nasser.
“Gaza has supreme political and propaganda value,” the president replied. “What will the Arabs say about me if I promise them to restore Palestine and then I lose Gaza and al-‘Arish?”
But ‘Amer demurred. “And what will they say if we lose the war entirely?” he retorted, and purportedly marched off in a huff.53
If Nasser was divided over whether Israel would or would not attack, ‘Amer remained committed to an Egyptian offensive along the lines of the Lion plan. He still hoped to launch an air and ground offensive in the Negev, and entrusted the Shazli Force with blocking any Israeli countermove into Sinai. “Between me and Moshe Dayan there is a feud going back to the Tripartite War,” he told Gen. Murtagi, “This is my opportunity to teach him a lesson he won’t forget and to destroy the Israeli army.” To Sidqi Mahmud he declared, “Forget your 20 percent [losses] and fight Israel!” Preparing for that fight, ‘Amer continued to shift troops around—the 124th and 125th reserve brigades, for example, moved four times in ten days—and to ignore intelligence reports showing Israeli forces concentrating in northern and central Sinai, and not in the south, as assumed.54
But ‘Amer was too fixed in his plans for the coming fight, and absorbed in the effort to expand his power yet further. Throughout the first days in June, he assiduously altered the army’s structure in Sinai, dividing the peninsula into an Eastern and Western Command, a Canal Command, a Forward and a Field Command. Orders from Supreme Headquarters had to pass through the hands of no less than six senior officers before reaching the field. These positions were again filled with ‘Amer’s cronies, military bureaucrats with little if any combat experience and responsible directly to him. Observing these changes, the Israelis were thrilled. “He created five new layers of command and with people who’d never fought,” Shaike Gavish remembered. “We’d be halfway to Suez before they’d even get an order approved.”
But ‘Amer seemed oblivious to these pitfalls. He remained confident in his army and particularly in his air force. “Maybe this war will be the Jews’ chance, for Israel and Rabin, to try their might against ours and discover that all they wrote on 1956 and the conquest of Sinai was nothing more than a collection of nonsense,” he told a briefing of pilots in Sinai. In a phone conversation with Shuqayri on June 4, he expressed the hope “that soon we’ll be able to take the initiative and rid ourselves of Israel once and for all.”
The following day, the field marshal planned to personally inspect his forward positions in Sinai, and in preparation for that review, issued his second war order. Summarized were the week’s events—the Egypt-Jordanian pact, the dispatch of Iraqi forces to Jordan, Israel’s efforts, thwarted by the Soviets, to obtain American support for aggression. Pressured by the exorbitant cost of mobilization, facing intolerable threats to its eastern front, Israel would attack in two weeks, ‘Amer had determined, and had issued his orders accordingly. “Our goal is the destruction of the enemy’s main armed forces. Our army can accomplish that with the immense capabilities at its disposal.” He called on the army to show discipline and bravery, “to fight with the utmost aggressiveness.” The battle, he concluded, was not just for Egypt but for the entire Arab nation. “In your hands is the honor of the armed forces and of the Arab nation. I am assured and confident of victory. Allah strengthen your hand and preserve you.”55
Neither ‘Amer nor Nasser had any doubt now about the army’s ability to defend the country against Israel. Defeating it, however, required an all-Arab effort. As much as Dayan’s strategy rested on keeping Syria and Jordan out of the war, Egypt’s was contingent on enlisting them.
The prospects for Jordan seemed sanguine. There, as in Egypt, life continued at a normal pace in spite of emergency blood drives, Nasserist demonstrations, and the army’s frenetic preparations for war. Gen. ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Riyad, now the commander of the Jordanian army and the Egyptian commandos in Jordan, worked quickly to complete his survey of the West Bank’s defenses. These were dictated not only by the vulnerability of the 300-mile border with Israel, but also by the political need of assuaging the Palestinians. “The loss of a single Palestinian village to the Israelis would have serious and violent repercussions,” noted an official history of the Hashemite army, “not only in Jordan, but throughout the Arab World.” Thus, instead of concentrating forces in key strategic areas, nine of Jordan’s eleven brigades were spread out in villages and towns where the people could see them. Once war came, the dispersed units would converge on vital axes to parry any Israeli thrusts or, failing that, fall back to the high ground overlooking the Jordan Valley.
Hussein personally approved Riyad’s plans, and the army’s generals raised no objection. The lone voice of dissent came from Brig. Gen. ‘Atif al-Majali, the senior and widely venerated chief of operations, who urged that all of Jordan’s forces be deployed in Jerusalem. “He who controls Jerusalem, controls the West Bank,” al-Majali said, but Riyad overrode him. Only one infantry brigade, the Imam ‘Ali, was moved up to Jerusalem, reinforcing the 27th king Talal Brigade already there, with ammunition to last for a month. The 40th and the 60th Armored Brigades, meanwhile, took up positions in the Jordan Valley, from which they could advance into either the West Bank or Jerusalem, as combat needs determined. With its superior command and training, the army was expected to hold the line, at least, until reinforcements arrived from other Arab countries, principally Iraq.56
But the army was not content with merely holding its line. Anticipating victory, military planners revived Operation Tariq (after the famed eighth-century Arab General, Tariq ibn Ziyad, for whom Gilbraltar is named), an old plan for cutting off Jewish Jerusalem and using it as leverage against any Israeli conquests in the West Bank. With the opening of battle, a four-pronged assault would be launched on Israeli positions north and south of Jerusalem—on Mount Scopus, Government House ridge, and around the Latrun corridor. Jordanian forces were to “destroy all buildings and kill everyone present” in these areas, including civilians. Jordanian planes and artillery would bomb Israeli airports as well.
Not even Hussein, better known for his temperance, resisted the fervor. On June 4, after receiving word from Nasser that Israel was liable to strike within forty-eight hours, the king summoned non-Arab ambassadors and warned them against becoming involved in the fighting. “Leave us alone with the Israelis,” he said. “Those who stand by us we will never forget. Those who stand with Israel are our enemies and they can forget any friendship they ever had here.”57
While Egypt and Jordan co
operated closely in preparing for war, Syria pursued its own inscrutable path. Ignoring their defense treaty with Egypt, Syrian leaders refused to coordinate their policies with Cairo. They agreed to host Iraqi forces—the first contingent, fifty tanks, arrived in Aleppo on June 1—but declined an offer of Egyptian planes. The frosty state of Syrian-Egyptian relations was then further chilled by the thawing of those between Nasser and Hussein. “We shall not change our attitude towards Jordan and its King Hussein so long as he takes his salary from his masters in Washington,” declared Gen. Mustafa Tlas. The official newspaper Al-Ba‘th featured photographs of Hussein, Nasser, and Shuqayri, and under them the banner, “The Three Treasonous Agents.” First Mahmoud Riad and then Zakkariya Muhieddin were dispatched to Damascus on appeasing missions, but neither proved successful. ‘Amer complained to his staff that “Syria’s present position is not encouraging, and that has been made clear by the treaty with Jordan…They received Muhieddin poorly, and have turned down our military requests.”58
In contrast to Egypt and Jordan, Syria looked very much like a country on the brink of war. Emergency regulations were enacted and strictly enforced; heavily armed detachments guarded every bridge and utility, and militiamen roamed the streets. The vigilance was more than just a show. The army was readying to move the minute either side, the Egyptians or the Israelis, attacked. Shelving its plans for the defense of the Golan Heights—Operation Holy War (Jihad)—the Syrians prepared to implement Victory (Nasr), an offensive operation. As designed by the Soviets, Victory called for a forty-mile blitzkrieg by three expanded divisions. After breaking through the Israeli defenses at Kibbutz Mishmar HaYarden, these forces would take the cities of Tiberias and Safad, together with the settlements of the Dan region, then regroup for the conquest of Afula, Haifa, and Nazareth.
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