Many Muslims came to the opposite conclusion. Radical Islam blamed the crushing defeat on the moral decay of modern, secular Arab society. Evidently, God had turned against them. The only remedy was to embrace the pure Islam embodied in the times of the Prophet, which meant a return to Islamic law, jihad, and the tribal codes of seventh-century Arabia. The loss of Jerusalem, in particular, fueled the rise of Islamic extremism and sharpened the hatred of the Jewish state. Other Muslims decried the corruption and backwardness of Arab governments, all of them—excepting fractured Lebanon—in the hands of kings, sheikhs, sultans, generals, dictators, and presidents-for-life, where the voices of democracy and modernism were effectively silenced.
Deception and delusion play a role in every conflict, but especially in the Middle East. The manner in which the Six-Day War was set in motion would place it on an irrational trajectory that its participants seemed unwilling or unable to escape. It began with Anwar Sadat, then president of the Egyptian parliament, making a stopover in Moscow on May 13, 1967, after a goodwill trip to North Korea. His plane was delayed by an hour, so he had a chance to talk with Soviet president Nikolai Podgorny and Vladimir Semyenov, the deputy foreign minister. They gave him the startling news that Israel had moved ten brigades to the Syrian border. Egypt had recently signed a mutual defense pact with Syria. “You must not be taken by surprise,” the Soviet president warned in dire tones. “The coming days will be fateful.”
He was right about that; three weeks later the map of the Middle East would be redrawn and Egypt would suffer a defeat so rapid and abject that there are few parallels in history. But he was wrong about the Israeli brigades. There was no such movement toward the Syrian border. That fact has subsequently led to abundant speculation about whether the Soviets merely lied to Sadat, perhaps in order to destroy Nasser, or were carelessly passing on misinformation from sources, such as Syria or Israel, with their own agendas, or simply were mistaken. When the Israelis learned of the false report about their troop movements, they invited the Soviets on three occasions to tour the Syrian border region to see for themselves that there were no such troop concentrations. Each time, the Soviets refused, saying that they already knew the facts. Nasser sent a trusted general to Syria to study aerial photographs; the general even surveyed the border from a private plane. “There is nothing there,” he reported to Nasser. “No massing of forces. Nothing.”
Still, Nasser felt obliged to make a show of force by sending Egyptian troops into Sinai and demanding that some of the UN peacekeepers be removed from their posts. Despite the bellicose speeches that followed, Nasser seemed to be bluffing. He didn’t expect all of the UN troops to be withdrawn, although they were. A war with Israel couldn’t have come at a worse time for Egypt; the country was already tied down in a war in Yemen, where nearly half of the Egyptian Army was involved. In addition, a third of its planes were unfit for action, as well as a fifth of its tanks. On top of this, the Egyptians had no actual battle plan and no strategy. Nasser’s gestures stopped short of pulling the trigger. Then, tired of being heckled by other Arab leaders because of his weak responses toward Israel in the past, he closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. The Israelis had long warned that this would be an act of war. “If war comes it will be total and the objective will be Israel’s destruction,” Nasser boasted. He pledged to “totally exterminate the State of Israel for all time.” Rhetoric left reason far behind as the logic of war took command. “Nasser was carried away by his own impetuosity,” Sadat observed.
Many Egyptians would look back at this moment with fury and shame. They were living inside a bubble that had been inflated by an absurdly self-confident, over-empowered military establishment; a dictator who listened only to the cries of his name in the streets; and a tamed and in any case censored press. Ignorance of the enemy’s capabilities and designs led to an exuberant feeling that history was about to bow to the Arabs at last. Egypt, haunted by its ancient grandeur, had found a new champion in Nasser; together they would unify the Arabs and lead them to a resurgent future. Destroying Israel would be only a first step.
The exhilaration in Egypt was matched by a sense of mounting panic in Israel. War loomed on two horizons—in the east, with Syria and probably Jordan as well, and in the south, with Egypt. Other Arab armies would rush into the fray if they thought there was any chance of victory. The Egyptian Air Force, fortified with new MiG fighters, dared to make a reconnaissance flight over the Israeli nuclear reactor in Dimona. The Israelis were also aware that the Egyptian Army had used chemical weapons in Yemen, and the prospect of facing gas attacks resurrected thoughts of the Nazi death camps, inflaming profound psychological wounds. Israel had one of the most potent militaries in the world, but the feeling of invulnerability alternated with a sense of weakness and victimization that was never far from reach. The days leading up to the war were fraught with talk of annihilation, an entirely different discussion than the prospect of defeat. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol faltered and stuttered during an address to the nation, sending chills through the country. The military chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, had a nervous breakdown of sorts, fretting that the country was on the brink of catastrophe for which he would be responsible. The Israelis stockpiled antidotes to poison gas and dug trenches in city parks to be used as mass graves.
It was still unclear, however, whether the Egyptian military buildup was a genuine prelude to war or a beating of drums on Nasser’s part to elicit cheers from the Arab street. America was urging both Egypt and Israel not to strike the first blow; President Lyndon Johnson promised the Israelis that the U.S. would lead an international flotilla through the Straits of Tiran and pry open the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli ships again. As it turned out, Johnson was unable to garner the support of other countries to carry out this action, and the Israelis decided they couldn’t wait for the Egyptian attack. “We must strike now and swiftly,” argued Ezer Weizman, who was Rabin’s deputy chief of staff. “We must deal the enemy a serious blow, for if we don’t, other forces will soon join him.” Israel formed an emergency cabinet, bringing Menachem Begin into the government for the first time in his career as a minister without portfolio. Dayan, who had demonstrated his military genius in the 1956 war, was made the minister of defense four days before the war was scheduled to commence.
Dayan took immediate charge of the planning, deciding to concentrate his forces entirely on the Egyptian front before turning to other adversaries. At the same time, he deliberately gave the impression that Israel was in no hurry to respond to the Egyptian threats. He was sufficiently convincing that Nasser canceled the state of emergency he had imposed on his country. On June 5, just before the war actually began, Israel decided to lie about who started it. A message, which Dayan opposed, was sent to President Lyndon Johnson saying that the Egyptians had fired on Israeli settlements and that an Egyptian squadron had been spotted headed toward Israel. Neither of these statements was true.
Dayan coolly had breakfast with his wife, then coffee with his mistress, and finally he went to his office and began the war. Shortly after seven a.m., the entire Israeli Air Force took to the air. “The whole plan rested on total surprise,” Weizman recalled. “All those planes, taking off from different airfields, flying at different speeds, would get into formation as planned and, at precisely the identical moment, they’d arrive at nine Egyptian airfields.… If the scales should tip against us, and we failed to destroy the Egyptian Air Force, only four planes were held in defense of Israel’s skies.” Within thirty minutes, more than two hundred Egyptian planes had been destroyed. The outcome of the war was effectively decided.
Israel was aided by excellent intelligence—one of its spies was Nasser’s personal masseur—and by Egyptian incompetence. The commander in chief of the Egyptian Army, Field Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amir, who had goaded Nasser into the war, was on his way to inspect an air force base near Suez, along with all his top commanders, and he had ordered his anti-aircraft and missile forces to hold their fire
for fear they would hit his plane. The skies over Egypt were wide open.
When Sadat awakened that morning, he learned from the radio that the war had started. “Well, they’ll be taught a lesson they won’t forget,” he thought, as he shaved and leisurely dressed. He didn’t arrive at the command center until eleven in the morning. Entering Field Marshal Amir’s office, Sadat found him standing in the middle of the room, his eyes wandering like an animal that has been stunned by a blow. “Good morning!” Sadat said, but Amir seemed unable to hear him. Other officers whispered that the Egyptian Air Force had been totally wiped out.
When Nasser came into the room, Amir suddenly began to talk. He had come up with the theory that it was the U.S. Air Force, not the Israelis, that had attacked. Nasser sneered at the accusation, but an idea was planted in his mind. Soon afterward, he called King Hussein of Jordan. Hussein was cowed by Nasser. Several days earlier, he had formally entered the war after Nasser lied to him, saying the battle was in Egypt’s favor. “Quickly take possession of the largest possible amount of land in order to get ahead of the UN’s cease-fire,” Nasser had advised earlier that morning. The Israelis had pleaded with King Hussein not to join the war, promising to leave Jordan alone, but once again he cast his vote with the Arabs. In a matter of minutes, he lost his air force as well. Syria had lost half of its planes already. Now, in this desolate moment, Nasser asked Hussein, “Shall we say that the United States is fighting on Israel’s side?” He was unaware that his conversation on an unscrambled line was being recorded by Israeli intelligence. “Shall we say the United States and England or only the United States?”
“The United States and England,” Hussein replied.
When Radio Cairo broadcast the lie about American involvement in the war, most of the Arab world broke diplomatic relations with the U.S., although Jordan did not. After Israel released the contents of his call with Nasser, Hussein apologized. Meantime, mobs attacked American embassies throughout the region, and Arab oil producers banned shipments to the U.S. and Great Britain.
Sadat, not sure what to do, simply went home, and stayed there for several days, going for long walks. “I was dazed and unable to locate myself in time or space,” he admitted. Meantime, he agonized over the Egyptian people, who were being told that they were winning the war. Young men on flatbed trucks roamed the city leading the chorus of cheers. “I wished I could have another heart attack,” Sadat wrote. “I wished I could pass away before these good and kind people woke up to the reality.”
Jordan had begun its misbegotten war by firing on Israeli positions in Jerusalem. Begin passionately lobbied for the immediate capture of the Old City, which had been off-limits to Jews since 1948. Dayan had not wanted to divert attention from Sinai, but the nearly instant elimination of any air threat made it easier to open another front. He ordered General Uzi Narkiss to surround the Old City in hopes it would fall without a fight.
In the early hours of the following morning, Dayan made another fateful decision. Jordan was shelling Israeli settlements from Jenin, one of the main cities on the West Bank. Dayan ordered the guns silenced. At that point, there had been no discussion of conquering and occupying the territory, but it was in the back of everyone’s mind. From the Israeli perspective, the war really had no design beyond the elimination of the Egyptian threat, but it opened up opportunities. As Dayan sat in the operations room of military headquarters, a commander radioed that his forces had surrounded Jenin. Dayan turned to look at the other officers in the room, including Weizman. “I know exactly what you want,” he said. “To take Jenin.”
“Correct!”
“So, take it!”
In that dizzying, unaccountable, almost thoughtless moment, the decision to seize the West Bank was made. Within a few days, more than a million and a half stateless Palestinians would fall under Israeli control, and the moral burden of becoming an occupying power would fall on the shoulders of the Jews.
Later that same fateful morning, Dayan announced he was going to Jerusalem. Weizman offered to fly him there in an Alouette helicopter. He flew low, so the convoys of Israeli troops could see their instantly recognizable commander. They waved to him in greeting. Weizman set the helicopter down in the parking lot of the Jerusalem convention center. The war was all around them and the smell of cordite seared the nostrils. Dayan ordered General Narkiss to provide a jeep to take them up to Mount Scopus, which looms over the Old City. Although nominally a part of Israeli territory, Mount Scopus had been a demilitarized enclave inside Jordanian Jerusalem since 1948. That war had left the city divided between the new Jewish neighborhoods and the major portion, including the Old City, which Jordan had seized and annexed. Now after nineteen years the prospect of reunifying the holy city was within grasp. “What a divine view!” Dayan declared when they reached the ridgetop. Around him were the hills of Golgotha, the Mount of Olives, Mount Zion—names that echoed in the minds of believers—and before him was the historic Old City behind its crenellated limestone walls. The Temple Mount, with the glorious Dome of the Rock, was at his feet. He was struck by the Old City’s air of calm indifference as the sounds of war exploded all around it.
Weizman broke away from the others and entered the old Hebrew University, shuttered for nearly twenty years. His uncle Moshe Weizmann had been a professor of chemistry at the university, and his laboratory was still there. The clock on the wall had stopped. Professor Weizmann’s papers were still on the desk, and his handwriting was on the blackboard. It was as if time had frozen and now that other life might just start again.
Narkiss wanted permission to take the Old City immediately. “Under no circumstances,” Dayan replied, imagining the international outrage that would follow if any religious sites were damaged. But the following day, rumors of a UN cease-fire prompted Begin to call Dayan. “We must not wait a second more,” he said.
For two thousand years, Jews had been promising themselves, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Now that dream was about to be realized. An Israeli tank blasted open one of the giant gates to the Old City, and troops of the 55th Parachute Brigade raced down the Via Dolorosa toward the Temple Mount. As soon as it was taken, Dayan entered the Old City. He ordered an Israeli flag that had been placed atop the spire of the Dome of the Rock taken down. Then he joined the delirious soldiers at the Western Wall, a remnant of the temple that was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Many of the troops were weeping or praying. Following an ancient custom, Dayan took a small notebook from his pocket, wrote a prayer, and stuffed it into a crevice in the ancient rock face. It said, “May peace descend upon the whole House of Israel.”
“We have returned to the holiest of our sites, and will never again be separated from it,” this avowedly secular man declared. “To our Arab neighbors, Israel extends the hand of peace.” The victory was so rapid, so thorough, so mythic, that its architect still couldn’t take it all in. It would be at least a generation before the Arabs could mount another military challenge to Israel, Dayan boasted, and who could doubt him?
Afterward, in the helicopter back to General Headquarters, Dayan wrapped himself in his coat and curled up quietly in the corner, contemplating what future he had just created for his country.
HISTORY IS REPLETE with wars, conquests, and surrenders, but negotiated settlements between two ardent antagonists have been surprisingly rare. In the fifteenth century, Pope Alexander VI thoughtfully parceled out the newly discovered world between Spain and Portugal. He drew a line dividing the globe that was intended to give the continents of North and South America to Spain and everything east of that—i.e., Africa—to Portugal. It was later discovered that the bulge of Brazil strayed into the Portuguese sphere, which is why Brazilians speak Portuguese today.
Before Camp David, Hal Saunders, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, paid a visit to the State Department historian to ask if there were any precedents in the history of American diplomacy. The only example the historian could point to was when Presiden
t Theodore Roosevelt invited emissaries from the warring countries of Russia and Japan to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1905, to resolve their differences. Like Carter, Roosevelt had hoped that they would work it out between themselves, but that proved impossible. His strenuous and imaginative diplomacy provided the breakthrough that ended the war. He became the first American to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.
At Camp David, there were no formal meetings on Saturday, so the American team spent the fifth day drafting the American proposal. The new approach sprang in part from a fortuitous meeting that Cyrus Vance had several weeks before the talks began. At the same time as the Carters were vacationing in the Grand Teton National Park, Vance rented a house in Martha’s Vineyard next to an old friend, Roger Fisher, who taught negotiation at Harvard Law School. They played a game of tennis, and afterward, Vance asked if Fisher had any ideas about how to handle the forthcoming summit. Fisher had been hoping he would ask.
Vance was already a veteran negotiator. Lyndon Johnson had chosen him as his personal envoy to settle a dispute between Greece and Turkey over the division of Cyprus. He had been involved in the early peace talks at the end of the Vietnam War, where he was forced to spend much of his time debating the shape of the negotiating table. Both philosophically and morally, he was closer than anyone else in the Carter administration to the president; but Vance was handicapped by a growing suspicion on Carter’s part that he couldn’t conclude an agreement.
Both Fisher and Vance had fought in the Second World War, losing many friends in that conflict. At Harvard Law School, Fisher put together ideas about how countries could resolve disputes diplomatically rather than through the constant resort to arms. Over cocktails, when Vance asked him if he had any suggestions for the summit, Fisher was able to produce a draft of a book he had just written, titled International Mediation, a Working Guide: Ideas for the Practitioner.1 Still in his tennis duds, Vance sat in a lawn chair on Fisher’s terrace and looked it over.
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