by Jeremy Bowen
Anderson travelled on to Cairo and on 31 May saw Nasser, who was relaxed and expansive, dressed in ‘sport clothes’. He seemed confident that he was getting the right intelligence and that Egypt’s army was strong enough to deal with anything that was thrown at it. He repeated his familiar line – that he had mobilised his troops because Israel was on the verge of attacking Syria. Johnson had invited Vice-President Zakkaria Mohieddin to Washington. Nasser wanted him to travel as early as 4 or 5 June. He knew war was getting closer. Getting Mohieddin to Washington to start a public dialogue with the United States was, he sensed, his last chance to head off an Israeli attack.
Anderson’s trip was so secret that he had to travel to Lisbon to have his report encrypted and sent to Washington. By then it was 2 June. Nasser was realising that his gamble was going wrong. Dayan, his old enemy, was installed at the ministry of defence. Israel was on the brink and it was not blinking. The question now was whether Mohieddin could get to Washington before Israel attacked. If it was possible, Egypt had a chance of avoiding war and extracting some lasting political gains from the crisis. Nasser needed to buy time and his commanders had to brace themselves for war.
He summoned Field Marshal Amer and his senior generals. The war he told them, will start in two to three days, on Sunday 4 June or Monday 5. His calculation was based on the progress of the Iraqi forces that were already heading across the desert into Jordan. The Iraqis had plans to send a big force of at least three infantry brigades and a reinforced armoured division. It would take them two to three days to deploy. The Israelis, he understood perfectly well, had the same information. They could not allow such a fundamental change in the balance of forces on their eastern border. They were, therefore, certain to attack.
The army chief of staff General Fawzi, General Sidqi Mahmoud, the head of the air force and General Ismail Labib, commander of air defence listened as Nasser squashed any lingering hopes they might have had of seizing the initiative with a first strike. Even a limited attack was out of the question. President Johnson had told him not to strike the first blow. So had the Soviet ambassador. Egypt would do as it was told. It was now, he told them, all about absorbing the Israeli offensive, rolling with the punch and then hitting back. Sidqi protested that the air force was designed for attack, not to wait for Israel’s warplanes to come calling. Since British and French aircraft had destroyed Egyptian air power in the 1956 war, Egyptian military intelligence had predicted that Israel would aim to open the next war with a devastating blow to the air force. Sidqi had put in a multi-million-pound request to build hardened shelters for his war planes, but the money had been cut from the budget. Surely, he argued, Egypt should mount its own pre-emptive attack.
Nasser was not used to being challenged so forcefully. He treated Sidqi like an impertinent schoolboy. Who gives the orders here, he asked. Is it the politicians or is it the military? Field Marshal Amer chipped in with his own question. Did Sidqi want to hit Israel first and then see the United States lining up with Israel to deliver its reply? Sidqi, chastened and humiliated, muttered that of course he would never dream of giving the president orders and he would be horrified if the United States came in on Israel’s side. Very well, Nasser continued, tell me how great the losses would be if we have to take the first blow? Sidqi, not wanting to make matters any worse for himself by sounding defeatist, answered that the air force would probably lose 20 per cent of its strength if Israel mounted a surprise attack. Fine, Nasser told the meeting. That means we will have 80 per cent left for our fightback.
The same evening Mahmoud Riad, the Egyptian foreign minister, was still trying to see if there was a way for Egypt permanently to change the rules of the game in the Straits of Tiran and in Sinai without getting involved in a disastrous war with Israel. To prepare the ground for the vice-president’s visit to Washington, he spoke to Charles Yost, the American special envoy attached to the Cairo Embassy, whom he had known for years. Riad told him that Egypt did not intend to start any war. But then, according to Yost, the Egyptian held forth for an hour and a half with ‘intense and uncharacteristic bitterness’ about Israel and the way, as he saw it, that America automatically backed it. There seemed to be one law for Israel and one law for the Arabs. Riad made an offer. The straits would stay closed to Israeli ships, because the long-standing state of war with Israel gave Egypt ‘belligerent rights’. Even so, everything except oil would be allowed through on foreign vessels. Israel’s problems with restrictions on the use of its port at Eilat were ‘not economic but purely psychological’.
Riad was almost right about Eilat. Although Israel had Mediterranean ports, it would have suffered significant economic damage if it could no longer import Iranian oil through Eilat. But that was less important than a fundamental psychological and strategic point. Israel had never, in the previous nineteen years, allowed an Arab state to change the status quo in its favour through political or military action. The accepted Zionist wisdom was that if Israel took one backward step, its power to deter its enemies would start to crumble. Its guiding principle was to push constantly, with great stamina, to change the status quo in its favour. The strategy had worked very well. Small facts created on the ground in the teeth of Arab resistance or international criticism fast became big new realities. Now Egypt was trying fundamentally to reverse the trend by using Israel’s own methods to change the status quo. Riad should have realised that Israel could never allow that to stand.
That evening in the White House Ephraim Evron, President Johnson’s closest Israeli contact, warned that the political and psychological pressures for war were increasing in Israel. Evron had a suggestion. Forget the international armada. Israel would send a ship into the straits to test the blockade. Egypt would open fire, Israel would go to war and America would be off the hook. All the US had to do was to keep the Soviets quiet and agree that it would be self-defence. Walt Rostow liked Evron’s idea. The State Department had discussed something very similar with the British more than a week earlier. The idea of Israel taking the risk was attractive, though as he told the president, it could turn into ‘a terrible bloodbath’.
The last weekend
The political and psychological pressures of which Evron spoke in Washington were just as clear to Meir Amit, the head of Mossad. The virtual shutdown in the economy concerned him most. On 31 May, with a passport in a false name, Amit boarded a plane to Washington DC to see his close friend Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence.
The plan for a naval task force – known to its planners as the ‘Red Sea Regatta’ – was going nowhere fast. Politically and diplomatically it was the only idea that the Americans and the British had to head off a war. But the admirals and the politicians hated the idea. The Pentagon doubted it had the firepower to fight another war. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that if they somehow cobbled together a naval task force, probably from American and British forces that were already east of Suez, ‘the capability of these forces to prevail, if attacked by major Egyptian forces, is doubtful’. As far as they were concerned, as a military plan, it stank.
The Israelis had wind of the fact that the naval operation was a non-starter. On 2 June, the last Friday before war broke out, Israel’s generals put the definitive case for war to the cabinet defence committee. Yariv, for military intelligence, told them not to worry about the Americans. Washington ‘knows we must act’ because it had no intention of breaking the blockade of Eilat itself. Picking up the signal sent by Rostow through Evron, he said the US would be relieved and as long as Israel moved fast it ‘will not stand in our way’. Rabin added that ‘a military-political noose is tightening around us and I don’t believe anyone else is going to loosen it’.
Once again they told the politicians that they would beat the Egyptians, and the longer they had to wait to start the harder it would be. Brigadier-General Gavish, now back in place as head of Southern Command, urged immediate action because ‘the most reliable information that couldn’t be m
ore reliable’ was telling them that the Egyptian army was still no match for the IDF. Some of their soldiers had been given no food or water for forty-eight hours. Soldiers were arriving in their galabiyas because no one had uniforms for them.
Other generals, more temperately, repeated some of the words they had used during their showdown with Eshkol. Sharon warned that ‘hesitation and delay’ was eroding Israel’s best deterrent, ‘the Arab fear of us’. Peled, the head of the logistics branch, said, ‘We know that the Egyptian army is not yet ready for war … they are relying on the hesitancy of the Israeli government. They did it out of confidence that that we would not dare to attack them … Nasser brought an unprepared army to the border and he is deriving all the benefits. The one thing working in his favour is that the Israeli government is not prepared to attack him. What has the army done to deserve these doubts about our capabilities? What more does an army have to do than to win every battle in order to gain the confidence of its government?’
The same day Moshe Dayan presented his war plan to Eshkol, Eban, Allon, Rabin and Ya’acov Herzog, the head of the prime minister’s office. He wanted to smash the Egyptian army in Sinai – but without taking Gaza or going to the Suez canal. Allon, whose long-held dislike of Dayan was even deeper now that his rival had captured the ministry of defence, had his own ideas. It included going to Suez, and expelling hundreds of thousands of refugees across the canal. Dayan dismissed it as ‘barbaric and inhuman’.
In Washington Meir Amit was with his friend Helms in the director’s office at the CIA. Helms confirmed that the idea of opening the straits with a naval task force was sinking fast. Then Amit saw Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. ‘He was very impressive, wearing no tie or jacket. Mr Secretary, I said, I understand your position. Now listen to ours … I’m going to recommend a war.
‘McNamara asked only two questions. How long? I said it would take a week. How many casualties? I said less than the war of independence, which was 6000. McNamara said I read you loud and clear.
‘I asked a question. Should I stay a day or two, linger around? He said you have to go home, your place is there now.’
The Americans had given a clear signal. They had been told that Israel would be going to war and had made no attempt to stop it happening. Amit travelled back to Israel on an aircraft full of gasmasks and military equipment. Ambassador Harman, who had accused him of being ‘trigger-happy’ and wanted to urge moderation and delay, went with him. They landed in Tel Aviv on the evening of Saturday 3 June. A car took them straight to Eshkol’s apartment in Jerusalem, where he and his key ministers were waiting.
It was getting on for midnight by the time they arrived. Harman and Amit spoke. Amit said a war was necessary and that the Americans ‘wouldn’t sit Shiva about it’ (in other words, go into mourning). It was his understanding that America would not intervene. Harman wanted Israel to wait another week or so. Dayan disagreed. ‘If we wait for seven to nine days, there will be thousands dead. It’s not logical to wait. We’ll start it. Let’s strike first and then look after the political side.’
Everyone who was there had no doubt that the decision had been taken. Israel was going to war. Eshkol invited Amit to present his case to the cabinet meeting the following morning. Every minister voted for war, except for two left-wingers, who abstained. Afterwards, Amit and Dayan went to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to discuss what would happen on Monday. Amit advised Dayan that it would be ‘smoother’ if Israel first provoked Egypt into a response before launching the main offensive. Don’t bother, Dayan said. ‘We’ll start.’
In Jordanian Jerusalem the strident Arab nationalism and the belief that Israel was about to be crushed spilled over into general anti-Western feeling. Six men went to the director of the British School of Archaeology in East Jerusalem to advise him that it would be ‘better for his security’ to leave. By the 4th, he had found urgent business abroad. A Canadian couple who were staying at the Intercontinental hotel on the Mount of Olives made the mistake of complaining about the service. The police were called and they were arrested for questioning. For Britain’s consul-general in Jerusalem, ‘the atmosphere vividly recalls Syria just before Suez’.
Late in the afternoon of 4 June, the last day before war, Rabin called in Narkiss and Elazar, Israel’s commanders in the centre and north. Narkiss noticed immediately that Gavish of Southern Command was missing. As soon as he ‘saw the face of Rabin, I knew that this was it. He was clearly exhilarated.’ The meeting lasted only thirty minutes. Narkiss was jealous of the two other regional commanders. Gavish was going to ‘paddle his toes’ in the Suez canal. Elazar ‘would plant his feet’ on the Syrian Heights. But Rabin kept telling Narkiss that action against Jordan would have to wait. Narkiss was desperate to capture Jordanian Jerusalem, was convinced he could do it and dreaded the possibility of missing out. Rabin was insistent. The southern front took priority. Later, after some final briefings with senior officers whom he could not tell that war was coming the next morning, Narkiss’s driver came in to ask if he was going home. ‘I thought that if I behaved differently tonight than on other nights, the secret would be out. “Home,” I said.’
It was another warm Mediterranean evening. Generals Rabin and Hod chatted to their neighbours, strolled in their gardens and played with their children. They lived near each other in Tsalha, a small, green suburb of Tel Aviv that was favoured by senior officers. Rabin and Hod tried to seem normal, even nonchalant. Their minds were teeming with the detail of what was about to happen. As part of the deception plan, they decided to show themselves at their homes. Hod’s logic was simple: ‘If the chief of staff and the head of the air force are here, that means tomorrow is another quiet day.’
On that last weekend before the war the Israelis did everything they could to suggest that they were not about to go to war. The deception campaign was comprehensive and highly successful. It even extended to Winston Churchill, the grandson of Britain’s wartime leader who was in Israel as a journalist. On Saturday he was invited to lunch at Moshe Dayan’s house, which was also in Tsalha. He paid off his taxi, walked into the garden and almost tripped over what he assumed was the gardener who was working on an Egyptian mummy. It was Dayan. ‘He gave a terrific show on my behalf to show he was relaxed. Winston, he said, let’s drink wine from Tiberias … When I said the war was going to be all about air power, he said things are often grey, not black and white. It’s most unlikely that either side could achieve total air superiority.’ Churchill was convinced. The next day, he flew back to London. Dayan also helped convince the British ambassador, Michael Hadow, that the Israelis were going to give diplomacy a chance to work. Thousands of soldiers were given weekend leave, to pack the beaches in Tel Aviv. Hadow was taken in. He cabled London that there seemed to have been ‘an extensive stand-down’ for the armed forces. He concluded his report of 4 June: ‘I propose to discontinue these SITREPS unless there is anything of significance to report.’ During the night, the soldiers returned to their units.
At the British port of Felixstowe, as soon as it was dark, the Israeli cargo ship Miryam slipped silently away to sea. In its hold were cases of machine guns and 105 mm tank shells. Armoured vehicles were lashed to its deck. Journalists who had got wind of what was happening were banned from the quayside. In the docks, United States military police guarded an arms dump. The Miryam’s cargo was the latest of many consignments of arms that had been sent secretly to Israel from British and American reserves since the crisis started. Israeli transport planes had been running a ‘shuttle service’ in and out of RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, a high-security facility that was one of the biggest bases of Britain’s fleet of strategic V-bombers. British prime minister Harold Wilson had written to Eshkol that he was glad to help, but ‘the utmost secrecy should be maintained’. The United States had held up a consignment of weapons to Jordan. But contracts with Israel were being honoured and expedited.
At Kibbutz Nachshon they spent Sunday night layin
g mines. The kibbutz was a border settlement close to the so-called Latrun salient, a segment of Jordanian-held territory that bulged into Israel. They did not know that the war was going to start in a matter of hours, but they sensed it was coming soon. ‘The mining job was hard and serious, harder than our usual training routines. A vast, stubborn ground, untouched for years, filled with shoulder high thorns surrounded us along with complete darkness. We worked hard that night … swinging picks until dawn.’ Dog-tired, just before first light they jumped out of their skins when one of them dropped his pickaxe on to a mine with a sharp clang of metal on metal.
