Six Days of War
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President Johnson was eager to exploit the opportunity he believed 242 created, to cooperate with the UN representative, Swedish diplomat Gunnar Jarring, and to move the Middle East toward peace. Events, however, overwhelmed him. Two months after the Security Council’s decision, North Vietnam launched its Tet Offensive, and two months after that, with his foreign policy in ruins and a generation of young Americans reviling him, Lyndon Johnson declined to stand for reelection. The Johnson administration would leave a mixed legacy of good intentions and tragically failed dreams, yet there could be no gainsaying its contribution in laying the cornerstone for future Arab-Israeli agreements. Through seven subsequent presidencies, the United States has continued to champion 242 and the territory-for-peace principle it implies, if never explicitly promises.
Even from the perspective of thirty-five years, the answer to the question, “Did six days of war truly change the Middle East?” remains equivocal. Events in the region that previously converged only toward conflict could also, post-1967, surge in the direction of peace. Diplomatic breakthroughs once deemed inconceivable became almost commonplace in the following years, facilitated by special mediators and leaders of both courage and vision. Violence, nevertheless, continued to plague the lives of millions throughout the Middle East, and to threaten to pitch not only the region, but the entire world, into war.
Along with opportunities for peace, the Six-Day or June War opened the door to even deadlier conflagrations. Basic truths persisted: for all its military conquests, Israel was still incapable of imposing the peace it craved. Though roundly defeated, the Arabs could still mount a formidable military campaign. The status of territories could be negotiated but the essential issues—Israel’s right to exist, the demand for Palestinian repatriation and statehood—remained. If the war was indeed a storm that altered the region’s landscape, it also exposed the underlying nature of the Arab-Israel conflict—its bedrock. The modern Middle East created in 1967 was therefore a hybrid: a region of incipient promise but also of imminent dangers, a mixture of old contexts and new.
At the time of this writing, the Middle East is once more in the grip of turmoil. The Palestinians have taken up arms, Israel has retaliated, and the peace process has run aground. Familiar patterns of terror and counterstrike, incursion and retribution, have resurfaced. Nor has the bloodshed been confined to the Arab-Israeli arena, but has burst beyond in the form of massive terrorist attacks against the United States and America’s reprisals against Islamic extremists. Today, Arab demonstrators, many bearing posters of Nasser, are demanding a showdown with the West and with Israel. The Israelis wait, meanwhile, and weigh the risks of preemption. The war that never quite ended for statesmen, soldiers, and historians, is liable to erupt again.
AFTERWORD
More than two years have passed since the outbreak of the latest Middle Eastern turmoil, and there is still no cease-fire in sight. Called by Palestinians the al-Aqsa Intifada, and by the Israelis the “disturbances,” the “events,” or, simply, the Palestinian terror, the violence that erupted in September 2000, and which has raged ever since, is in every sense a war. No less than in 1948 and 1967, Arabs and Israelis are today once again battling over the final disposition of the area known in Arabic as Filastin and in Hebrew as Eretz Yisrael—the Land of Israel. As in the processes leading up to previous Arab-Israeli confrontations, mounting violence between Palestinians and Israelis threatens to set the entire region ablaze.
In many respects, the current fighting resembles the civil war in Palestine that broke out in November 1947, following the UN’s decision to partition the country into independent Jewish and Arab states. The Zionist leadership accepted the notion of territorial compromise, but the Arabs of Palestine saw no reason to forfeit what they considered their exclusive national rights, and determined to block the partition with attacks against Jewish settlements, road systems, and neighborhoods. Other Arab forces, most prominently those associated with the militant Muslim Brotherhood, aided the Palestinian Arabs from across the border. The Jews, for their part, initially showed restraint, but in April 1948, fearing annihilation, they too went to war. Subsequently, dozens of Arab villages and towns were destroyed, their populations displaced, and their leaders either killed or rendered ineffective. But the Palestinians’ defeat generated sympathy throughout the Arab world and intensified the pressure on Arab leaders to intervene against the Jews. The result came one month later with the advent of the first Arab-Israeli war.
A remarkably similar process occurred more than fifty years later, in the later half of 2000, when the Clinton Administration again proposed to partition the land between the Palestinians and the Jews. Specifically, the United States called for the creation of a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip—Israeli settlements would either be removed or concentrated in blocks—with its capital in East Jerusalem. A small number of Palestinian refugees would be repatriated to Israel; the rest were to receive compensation. The Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel in relations of full peace, but while Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak approved the formula, the Palestinian Authority under its president, Yasser Arafat, rejected it. Rather, Arafat demanded the return of all the refugees—a move that, if implemented, would have created a Palestinian majority in Israel. As in 1947-48, the issue was not merely the borders of the Jewish state, but its very existence.
The Palestinians consequently embarked on an armed offensive using tactics reminiscent of those employed in 1947-48—roadside ambushes, snipers, and car bombs—together with the innovation of suicide bombers. Militant Islamic elements once more played a prominent role in the campaign. At first, Israel’s reaction was again restrained, but as casualties rapidly mounted, the IDF finally struck back. In April 2002, Israeli forces reoccupied much of the West Bank, causing extensive damage to Palestinian cities and villages, and killing or isolating many Palestinian leaders. As in 1948, the Palestinians’ plight aroused sympathy in neighboring Arab countries and placed pressure on their leaders to intercede. Soon Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon were launching rockets into northern Israel; the Syrian army went on high alert, as did units in Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq. Israel mobilized its reserves. The region careered toward yet another Arab-Israeli war.
The fighting in 2000-2002 recalled not only the events of 1947-48 but, even more poignantly, those of 1967. That war, this book asserts, was the result of a series of incidents triggered by Palestinian guerrilla raids and Israel’s retaliations against them. Today, more than three decades later, the Middle East is still in the grips of a context of conflict in which a single spark can ignite a regional conflagration. Such a spark was kindled in September 2000, when Ariel Sharon, then head of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, paid a visit to the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, in Jerusalem.
Though the visit had been cleared with the Palestinian Authority, many Palestinians viewed it as a provocation and protested against it violently. Firing on the rioters, Israeli forces provided the pretext for launching an intifada, or popular uprising, named after the Haram’s al-Aqsa mosque. Mass demonstrations of Palestinian youths soon escalated into armed attacks against Israeli targets, most of them civilian, and increasingly fierce countermeasures by Israel. Israeli reprisals in turn instigated unrest in adjacent Arab countries. The “street” was once again agitating—a déjà vu of 1967—and Arab rulers had little choice but to act.
Unlike in 1948 and 1967, however, war between Arabs and Israelis did not erupt in 2002. Though the region has remained in many ways unchanged, several fundamental transformations nevertheless have combined to mitigate the dangers of war.
There is, firstly, the existence of peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan. In spite of their failure to bring about any true reconciliation between their signatories, these agreements have nonetheless provided the nations with open channels of communication and venues for reducing tensions. Another change is the emergence of the
U.S.-Israeli alliance that not only guarantees Israel a decisive military edge over its enemies, but also affords Washington far-reaching influence over Israeli actions. Finally, there is the nonconventional weaponry now in the arsenals of virtually every Middle Eastern state, which has sharply elevated the stakes in any Arab-Israeli confrontation.
Yet for every change curtailing the chances of war, another could equally contribute to its outbreak. Absent today is the peculiar stability engendered by the Cold War, of a rational counterpart whom the U.S. president might hotline in a crisis, and superpower constraints over key regional players such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The once neat division between Arab radicals and Arab conservatives has been replaced by internal fissures within each Arab country—between each regime and its domestic, often Islamic, opposition—and even the lines in the Arab-Israeli conflict have become obscured. Most destabilizing, arguably, is the growth of terrorist organizations, global in outlook and adamant in their theology, transcending all borders and contemptuous of any attempt to restrain them.
These countervailing changes, coupled with the continuing friction surrounding nondemocratic Middle Eastern regimes and Arab resistance to the very idea of a Jewish state, might have set the stage for an Arab-Israeli war bigger and possibly more destructive than those of 1948 and 1967. Instead, war in 2002 was averted by the timely intervention of the United States. As tensions in the region spiraled toward an explosion, President George W. Bush strongly advised Syria to rein in its Hezbollah allies and told the Palestinian Authority that its support of terror was totally unacceptable to Americans. At the same time, Washington publicly recognized Israel’s right to defend itself and convinced Israelis that they did not stand alone. Bush’s actions—admonishing the Arabs and reassuring the Israelis—were precisely those that Lyndon B. Johnson failed to take in 1967, and in 2002 they succeeded in containing, if not defusing, the crisis.
Like Johnson, Bush was engaged in an international struggle with an implacable enemy—no longer communism, of course, but Islamic extremism—but rather than tie his hands as Vietnam once had Johnson’s, America’s new conflict impelled George Bush to act. The events of September 11, 2001, spurred a radical departure from long-standing American policies toward the Middle East. Having become the victim of large-scale Arab terror, the administration voiced newfound empathy for Israel and its struggle against suicide bombers and gunmen, and went so far as to identify Israel’s enemies—Hamas and Islamic Jihad—as America’s. Moreover, in declaring war against international terrorism, in dispatching its soldiers thousands of miles to fight in Afghanistan and, avowedly, in Iraq, Washington could hardly deny Israel the ability to strike back in the West Bank and Gaza, its own backyard. Concomitantly, American leaders expressed severe reservations regarding the Arab states, even toward their traditional allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, citizens of which were heavily implicated in 9/11. Relations between the U.S. and the Arab world were further strained by the Arabs’ reluctance to support a military effort to invade Iraq and oust its dictator, Saddam Hussein.
The success of Bush’s effort to rally an anti-Saddam coalition is not, as of this writing, guaranteed. Numerous obstacles, domestic and foreign, stand in the president’s way. Nor is it certain whether the toppling of Saddam will install democracy or merely another dictatorship in Iraq, or whether war in the gulf will ultimately enhance or further impair the area’s stability. One fact, alone, is incontestable: that the Middle East remains a flash point of multilateral confrontation, a source of seemingly intractable controversies, and a powder keg that the slightest spark could ignite. A context of conflict continues to seize the region, demanding of its leaders almost constant displays of both courage and caution.
November 2002
A CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL B. OREN
Fouad Ajami is professor of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs.
FOUAD AJAMI: How old were you in June 1967? I presume you were too young for this war to be part of your formative experience. I was twenty-two then, and this was truly a great divide. Do you have early memories of this war?
MICHAEL OREN: In 1967, I was twelve years old, very impressionable, and growing up outside New York City. It was a turbulent time throughout the United States, the time of the civil rights and antiwar movements, of the feminist and youth revolts. But no single event had a greater influence on my development, on my identity, than the Six-Day War.
The beginning crisis coincided with my birthday—May 20—and instead of celebrating, I watched as my parents cried over what they feared was Israel’s imminent destruction. A second Holocaust was about to occur, they believed, and the world would once again witness it silently. I remember going down to our synagogue, where the entire community had gathered to pledge its fullest resources to help ensure Israel’s survival.
Then came June 5 and the war that altered not only the Middle East but also American Jewry. Israel’s victory, it was said, allowed American Jews “to walk with their backs straight” and flex their political muscle as never before. American Jewish organizations that previously kept Israel at arm’s length suddenly proclaimed their Zionism.
For me, personally, the war’s impact was especially poignant. I will never forget my father rushing to the breakfast table, waving a copy of Life. On its cover was a photo of an Israeli soldier chest-deep in the Suez Canal, a captured Kalashnikov brandished over his head. “You see that!” he shouted. “That is what we can do!” And then he kissed the picture.
Years later, I met that soldier in person—he’s my neighbor in Jerusalem—and told him that it was because of him that I decided right then and there, in 1967, to move to Israel and take part in the drama of Jewish independence. Because of him I, too, would fight in wars and struggle in the face of terror. The man listened to my story, stood, and kissed me on the cheek. He understood how the Six-Day War had profoundly changed not only my life but a vast number of lives, in the Middle East and in America.
FOUAD AJAMI: You rightly observe that wars in history also become wars of history. Where do you see yourself in the battle of Israeli historians?
MICHAEL OREN: For twenty years now a fierce debate has been raging over the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its origins, its escalation, and its wars. The controversy revolves around which party—the Israeli or the Arab—bears greater guilt for initiating and exacerbating the dispute, and for frustrating repeated efforts to resolve it.
On one side of the argument are the self-styled “new historians,” mostly Israeli Jews of a distinctly leftist or Marxist orientation, who pin the blame primarily on Israel. The Israelis, they claim, sought to deprive the Palestinians of their homeland and to provoke Arab states into wars of territorial aggrandizement. In making their case, the “new historians” marshal documents from British, American, and Israeli archives, and apply their findings to the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They strive to pass judgment on historical figures—to be, as one of their spokesmen declared, “the hangmen of history.”
On the other side of the debate are the more traditional historians who see a prominent Arab role in starting and perpetuating the conflict, who rely not only on English and Hebrew documents but also extensively on Arabic and Russian sources, and who are less judgmental of former decision makers and more inclined to examine historical events on their own merits, free of contemporary influences. The debate surrounding the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been one of the most vicious in all of scholarship.
Though I would place myself within the second, traditional, school, in writing Six Days of War I nevertheless sought to rise above this fray. My goal was to present a truly comprehensive narrative, one that treated both the Arab and the Israeli sides in a fair and balanced manner, to utilize all of the available sources in all of the relevant languages, and to examine the war in the historical context of 1967, and not of 2002.
FOUAD AJAMI: I very much admire the serenity and the nonjudgmental quality of your observation that history is made by leaders in real time, not by historians in retrospect. In light of that, would it be fair to say that Egyptian president Nasser wanted the fruits of war but not war itself? As you put it yourself, he did not want war but only kudos. Do you see him as a tragic figure played upon by history and popular pressures?
MICHAEL OREN: As an Israeli and as a Jew who had grown up hearing of his repeated pledges to destroy the Jewish state and to cast its inhabitants into the sea, I naturally approached the subject of Gamal Abdel Nasser with reservations. Twenty years of studying him, however, beginning with my dissertation on the origins of the Suez crisis, led me to know a more nuanced Nasser—ruthless at times, yes, and cunning, but also incorruptible, charismatic, and committed to the good of his people.