Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  It remains to be seen whether, nearly four decades and as many wars later, Arabs and Israelis have become better acquainted. Though the advent of modern communications promises to expand such mutual knowledge, in the Middle East the media often serve to spread falsehoods and deepen ignorance. In the end, there is no substitute for face-to-face personal encounters between Arabs and Israelis. Borders of hostility must be broken down before those of peace can arise.

  NOTES

  The Context

  1. Al-Fatah’s first operation is described in many sources. The versions vary, however. See, for example, Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 107-8, 121. Ehud Yaari, Strike Terror: The Story of Fatah (New York: Sabra Books, 1970), pp. 49-79. Salah Khalaf, My Home My Land, A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle (New York: Times Books, 1981), pp. 44-49. Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 22-39. Alan Hart, Arafat: A Political Biography (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1994), pp. 155-56. Ahmad al-Shuqayri, Mudhakkirat Ahmad al-Shuqayri, ‘Ala Tariq al-Hazima, Ma’a al-Muluk wal-Ru’asa’ (Beirut: Dar al-‘Awda, 1971), 3, pp. 152-88, 229-56. Arafat quote in Riad El-Rayyes and Dunia Nahas, Guerrillas for Palestine (London: Croom Helm, 1976), p. 27.

  2. Studies on the origins of Zionism abound. See, for example, David Vital, The Origins of Zionism: The Formative Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

  3. On Britain’s promises to the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, see Walter Laqueur, The Israel-Arab Reader (New York, Citadel Press, 1968), pp. 15-18, and Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration (London: Mitchell Vallentine, 1961), pp. 309-514, 534-58. See also J. M. Ahmed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1960).

  4. Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985), pp. 177-78. Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1966), pp. 71, 95, 248. For biographies of Ben-Gurion, see Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1906-1948 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), and Michael Bar Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography (New York: Adama Books, 1977).

  5. Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900-1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 40-55, 231-69. Michael Doran, Pan-Arabism Before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 94-127. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (London: Faber and Faber, 1991), pp. 340-64.

  6. Yehoshua Porath, In Search of Arab Unity (London: Frank Cass, 1986), pp. 290-311. Ahmed M. Gomaa, The Foundation of the League of Arab States: Wartime Diplomacy and Inter-Arab Politics, 1941 to 1945 (London and New York: Longman, 1977), pp. 98-133.

  7. Mary C. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 151-86. On the flight of Palestinian refugees, see also Ilan Pappe, Britain and the Arab-Israel Conflict, 1948-1951 (London: Macmillan, 1988). Dan Scheuftan, Ha-Optzia ha-Yardenit: Ha-Yishuv ve-Medinat Yisrael mul ha-Mimshal ha-Hashemi ve ha-Tnua ha-Leumit ha-Falastinit (Tel Aviv: Yad Tabenkin, Machon Yisrael Galili, 1986). The best treatment of international diplomacy on the Palestine issue can be found in Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 381-574.

  8. A similar observation was made by the Hebrew University historian J. L. Talmon immediately after the 1967 war: “The Jewish complex grows from a mixture of fear and distrust, on the one hand, and a feeling of power on the other…The mixture of hubris and fear is all pervading in Israel. One hears people say in the same breath ‘we can reach Cairo within hours; we may be destroyed in half an hour…’” See J. L. Talmon, The Six Days’ War in Historical Perspective (Rehovot, Israel: Yad Chaim Weizmann, 1969), p. 78.

  9. Recent writings by revisionist authors have claimed that the Jewish forces in the 1948 war actually outnumbered the Arabs. See, for example, Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, pp. 20-23. This may be true for the later stages of the conflict, but in its crucial initial phase, in May-June, when Israel’s fate hung in the balance, the Arabs invaded with overwhelming force.

  10. On the contacts with Husni Za’im, see David Peled, “Ben-Gurion Wasn’t Rushing Anywhere,”Ha’aretz (English edition), Jan. 20, 2000, p. 4, and Itamar Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 65-167.

  11. On Nuri’s secret contacts with the Israelis, see Michael Oren, “Nuri al-Sa’id and Arab-Israel Peace,”Asian and African Studies 24, no. 3 (1990).

  12. Yaacov Ro’i, From Encroachment to Involvement: A Documentary Study of Soviet Foreign Policy in the Middle East, 1945-1973 (New York: Wiley, 1974), p. 115. Galia Golan, Soviet Politics in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 29-37. Naftali Ben-Tsion Goldberg, “SSSR Protiv Izrailia,”Sem Dney, Aug. 17, 2000, p. 4. M. Prokhorov, ed., Sovetskii Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar, 4th ed. (Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1989), p. 486. Khrushchev quote in Yosef Govrin, Israeli-Soviet Relations, 1953-1967: From Confrontation to Disruption (London: Frank Cass, 1990), p. 66.

  13. Alpha plan discussed in Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 1951-1956 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), pp. 242-67, and Michael B. Oren, “Secret Efforts to Achieve an Egypt-Israel Settlement Prior to the Suez Campaign,”Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 3 (1990).

  14. Gamal Abdel Nasser, The Philosophy of the Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1955). Nasser quote from Robert Stephens, Nasser, A Political Biography (London: Penguin, 1971), pp. 135-36.

  15. Zaki Shalom, David Ben-Gurion, Medinat Yisrael ve ha-Olam ha-Aravi, 1949-1956 (Sede Boqer: Ha-Merkaz le-Moreshet Ben-Gurion, 1995), p. 39. Michael B. Oren, Origins of the Second Arab-Israeli War (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 29-34. Michael B. Oren, “The Egypt-Israel Border War,”Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1990). V. A. Kirpichenko, Iz Arkhiva Razvedchika (Moscow: Mezhdunorodnyie Otnosheniya, 1993), pp. 37-39. On the disputes surrounding the Jordan River and the Hula swamp, see Arnon Soffer, Rivers of Fire: The Conflicts Over Water in the Middle East (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), and Kathryn B. Doherty, Jordan Waters Conflict (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1965).

  16. Oren, “Secret Efforts to Achieve an Egypt-Israel Settlement Prior to the Suez Campaign.”

  17. Michael B. Oren, “The Tripartite System in the Middle East, 1950-1956,” in Dori Gold, ed., Arms Control and Monitoring in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990).

  18. NAC, MG 26, N1, 29: Pearson Papers: Middle East Crisis, Nov. 20, 1956. ISA, 2459/1: Tekoah to Embassies, Nov. 15, 1956. John Moore, ed., The Arab-Israel Conflict: Readings and Documents (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 1045-55. PRO, FO371/121738/189: Dixon to Foreign Office, May 3, 1956. FRUS, XVI, p. 1208. BGA, “Diary: The Diplomatic Battle Over Suez,” July 1957. Michael B. Oren, “Faith and Fair-Mindedness: Lester B. Pearson and the Suez Crisis,”Diplomacy and Statecraft 3, no. 1 (1992); Michael B. Oren, “Ambivalent Adversaries: David Ben-Gurion and Dag Hammarskjold,”Journal of Contemporary History 27 (1992). Brian Urquhart, A Life in Peace and War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 193-94.

  19. P.J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), p. 161.

  20. For Arab perceptions of Israel during this period, see Mahmud Husayn, Al Sira’ al-Tabaqi fi Misr min 1945 ila 1970 (Beirut: Dar al-Tali’a, 1971), pp. 250-53. Amin Al-Nafuri, Tawazun al-Quwwa bayna al-‘Arab wa-Isra’il: Dirasa Tahliliyya Istratejiyya li ‘Udwan Haziran 1967 (Damascus: Dar al-I’tidal lil-Tiba’a wal-Nashr, 1968), pp. 162-67.

  21. Malcolm H. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-70 (Oxford: Oxford University Pre
ss, 1971). Stephens, Nasser, pp. 356-57. John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 57-82.

  22. Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile: The Soviet-Egyptian Influence Relationship Since the June War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 136.

  23. Baruch Gilad, ed., Teudot le-Mediniyut ha-Hutz shel Medinat Yisrael 14, 1960 (Jerusalem: Israel Government Printing House, 1997), pp. 16-32. Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 55-56. Ze’ev Lachish and Meir Amitai, Asor Lo Shaket: Prakim be-Toldot Hail ha-Avir ha-Shanim 1956-1967 (Tel Aviv: Misrad ha-Bitahon, 1995), pp. 232-47. Oral history, Col. Shlomo Merom, Dec. 7, 1999. Interview with General Anwar al-Qadi in al-Ra’i al-‘Am, June 2, 1987.

  24. Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (London: I. B. Taurus, 1988), pp. 65-68.

  25. Foreign Relations of the United States 18, 1961-1963: Near East (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), p. 62. Statistics on U.S. wheat shipments to Egypt and the Chester Bowles quote in William J. Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy Toward Egypt, 1955-1981 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), pp. 212-16.

  26. Ali Abdel Rahman Rahmi, Egyptian Policy in the Arab World: Intervention in Yemen 1962-1967, A Case Study (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983), pp. 189-96. On Nasser’s relationship with ‘Amer, see ‘Abdallah Imam, Nasir wa-‘Amer (Cairo: Mu’assasat al-Kitab, 1985), pp. 5-32, 67-83. Gen. Muhammad Fawzi, Harb alThalath Sanawat (Cairo: Dar al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabi, 1980), pp. 33-45. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, 1967: Al-Infijar (Cairo: Markaz al-Ahram, 1990), pp. 181, 394-98.

  27. Nasser himself would make the Yemen-Vietnam comparison. See LBJ, Lucius Battle Oral History, p. 38.

  28. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation, pp. 161-62. Anwar El-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 162-63. Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy, pp. 139-40. Rahmi, Egyptian Policy in the Arab World, pp. 189-96. Kennedy quote from Foreign Relations of the United States 18, 1961-1963, pp. 752-53.

  29. Kennedy quote from Foreign Relations of the United States 18, 1961-1963, pp. 280-81. See also Judith A. Klinghoffer, Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East: Unintended Consequences (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 9. Mordechai Gazit, President Kennedy’s Policy Toward the Arab States and Israel: Analysis and Documents (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1983). Moshe Ma’soz, Syria and Israel: From War to Peacemaking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 86-87.

  30. Israel’s nuclear policy in this period, and its place in Kennedy’s foreign policy, are discussed at length in Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) and Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option (New York: Random House, 1991). Nasser’s use of West German and former Nazi scientists is revealed in PRO, FCO 39/233 UAR Internal Political Situation: Who’s Who of Nasser’s Ex-Nazis, June 26, 1967. See also Martin Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), p. 164. Terence Prittie, Eshkol: The Man and the Nation (New York: Pitman, 1969), p. 225.

  31. Ben-Gurion quotes from, respectively, ISA, Foreign Ministry files, 3329/1: Prime Minister to Director-General of the Foreign Ministry, Nov. 19, 1961, and 723/5/A: Foreign Ministry to Embassy in Washington, May 14, 1963. America’s assessment of Egyptian missile capabilities in LBJ, National Intelligence Estimates, boxes 6-7: The Eastern Arab World, Feb. 17, 1966. On Israel’s contract with Dassault, see Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, p. 116.

  32. Ze’ve Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army, 1874 to the Present (New York: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 115-17. George W. Gawrych, The Albatross of Decisive Victory: War and Policy Between Egypt and Israel in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000), pp. 23-27. Ze’ev Lachish and Meir Amitai, Asor Lo Shaket, pp. 28-31. Aharon Yariv, Ha‘arakha Zehira: Kovetz Ma’amarim (Tel Aviv: Ma’arakhot, 1998), pp. 123-24. Yair Evron, “Two Periods in the Arab-Israeli Strategic Relations 1957-1967; 1967-1973,” in Itamar Rabinovich and Haim Shaked, eds., From June to October: The Middle East Between 1967 and 1973 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1978), pp. 100, 112-13. S.N. Eisenstadt, Ha-Hevra ha-Yisraelit (Jerusalem: Magnes Press of Hebrew University, 1970), pp. 26-33. Klinghoffer, Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East, p. 20. Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive, pp. 156-57.

  33. Prittie, Eshkol, p. 211. Eshkol quotes from Moshe A. Gilboa, Shesh Shanim, Shisha Yamim-Mekoroteha ve-Koroteha shel Milhemet Sheshet ha-Yamim (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1969), pp. 34, 36.

  34. Egyptian quote from Moshe Shemesh, The Palestinian Entity 1959-1974: Arab Politics and the PLO (London: Frank Cass, 1989), p. 4. Saudi-Jordanian quote from Asher Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan: A Political Biography of Wasfi al-Tall (London: Frank Cass, 1994), pp. 55-57.

  35. Syrian quote from Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy, p. 140. Nasser quote from Avraham Sela, The Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Middle East Politics and the Quest for Regional Order (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 59. Itamar Rabinovich, Syria Under the Ba‘th 1963-66: The Army-Party Symbiosis (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972), pp. 95-96. Tal quote from Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan, p. 55. See also Leila S. Kadi, Arab Summit Conferences, and the Palestine Problem, 1945-1966 (Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization, 1966), pp. 96-109. Fawzi, Harb al-Thalath Sanawat, p. 49. Mohamed H. Heikal, Sanawat al-Ghalayan (Cairo: Markaz al-Ahram, 1988), pp. 729-30.

  36. Syrian quote from Moshe Shemesh, “Hama’avak ha-‘Aravi al ha-Mayim Neged Yisrael, 1959-1967,”Iyunim 7 (1997): 124. Nasser quote from Heikal, Sanawat alGhalayan, p. 740.

  37. David Kimche and Dan Bawly, The Sandstorm: The Arab-Israeli War of June 1967: Prelude and Aftermath (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968), p. 25.

  38. Mahmoud Riad, The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East (New York: Quartet Books, 1981), p. 12. Samir A. Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 57-58.

  39. Quote from Shemesh, The Palestinian Entity, p. 38. See also Sela, The Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, pp. 62-68. Fawzi, Harb al-Thalath Sanawat, pp. 47-48.

  40. Ma’oz, Syria and Israel, p. 81.

  41. The PLO, hailed as “the vanguard of the joint Arab struggle for the liberation of Palestine,” was constituted by a Palestinian assembly in Jerusalem on May 28, 1964. See Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, pp. 95-100. Al-Shuqayri, Mudhakkirat 3, p. 144. Avraham Sela, ed., Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East (New York: Continuum, 1999), pp. 602-3.

  42. LBJ, National Intelligence Estimates, boxes 6-7: The Eastern Arab World, Feb. 17, 1966. Kadi, Arab Summit Conferences, pp. 176-77. Al-Shuqayri, Mudhakkirat 3, pp. 78-84, 98-106. Heikal, al-Infijar, pp. 199-218. Mohamed Ahmed Mahjoub, Democracy on Trial: Reflections on Arab and African Politics (London: Andre Deutsch, 1974) pp. 105-14.

  43. Oral history interview, Adnan Abu Oudeh, Amman, Nov. 6, 1999. Jadid quotes from Avraham Ben Tzur, Gormim Sovietiim u-Milhemet Sheshet ha-Yamim: Ma’avakim ba-Kremlin ve-Hashpa’ot be-Azoreinu (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1975), p. 17. Ma’oz, Syria and Israel, p. 84.

  44. Bourgiba’s plan was designed to paint Israel into a corner. If Israel also accepted the Partition Resolution, sacrificing 30 percent of its territory and accepting the establishment of a Palestinian state, then that would become the basis for negotiations and additional Arab claims. If Israel rejected the plan, the Arab call for war would then be legitimized. For the period of the second and third Arab summits, see Kerr, The Arab Cold War, pp. 98-116. Sela, The Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, pp. 75-94. Gilboa, Shesh Shanim, Shisha Yamim, p. 40. Heikal, Al-Infijar, pp. 137-42. Rahmi, Egyptian Policy in the Arab World, pp. 224-27.

  45. Nasser quote from Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy, p. 159. An alternative translation appears in Richard B. Parker, The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana Uni
versity Press, 1993), p. 105. Klinghoffer, Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East, p. 72. Heikal, Al-Infijar, p. 372. See also LBJ, Lucius Battle Oral History, p. 38; David Nes Oral History, pp. 3-5.

  46. PRO FCO/39/285, UAR - Economic Affairs: Effects of the Arab-Israeli War on the UAR Economy, Dec. 1, 1967. Kimche and Bawly, The Sandstorm, pp. 35-36. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation, pp. 202-12. Heikal, Sanawat, pp. 733-57, 774-75. Heikal, Al-infijar, pp. 175-84. Riad, The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East, pp. 15-17. El-Sadat, In Search of Identity, pp. 164-65.