Syrian military officials were also disturbed that their Egyptian counterparts were given more responsibility, better arms, and other advantages, which was viewed as discriminatory or humiliating. Finally, in 1961, a group of Syrian army officers staged a coup and declared Syria’s independence from the U.A.R.
Egypt acquiesced to the Syrian decision to end the U.A.R., but the United States was unsure what to do. Policymakers were afraid that Damascus would be upset if the United States did not recognize Syria, and expressed concern that Nasser would be angered if it did. When the Soviet Union granted Syria recognition, Kennedy was off the hook and was able to follow suit without worrying about Nasser’s reaction.
Israel Says “Tanks”
After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Lyndon Johnson inherited the Middle East problems along with all the rest. He was viewed by the Israeli lobby as a friend, and Israel tested that friendship almost immediately by pressuring his administration to sell them tanks and planes.
The Johnson administration had begun to consider a tank sale to Israel in January 1964, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that Israel had no need for tanks and that the United States should place the highest priority on restraining the flow of arms to the Middle East. If the administration decided nevertheless to sell tanks to Israel, the Joint Chiefs recommended that the tanks be sold only as replacements for obsolete tanks and that they be supplied discreetly.
A secret transaction was no longer an option when, in early 1965, the Arab nations found out that the United States had been indirectly supplying arms to Israel through West Germany since 1962, under the terms of a secret 1960 agreement. The Arab nations responded to this revelation by threatening to recognize East Germany and by pressuring the West German government to halt the sales. The United States then stepped in and fulfilled the remainder of the contract.
The United States, in an attempt to maintain an appearance of evenhandedness, matched the Israeli sale with a similar sale of tanks to Jordan. The administration refrained from supplying large amounts of arms to either the Arabs or Israel. Johnson was willing to strengthen the ability of America’s allies to defend themselves, but wouldn’t provide one state in the region a military advantage over another.
In February 1966, the state department announced the sale of 200 Patton tanks to Israel. In May, it announced a new agreement to provide Israel with Skyhawk jet bombers. Militarily, these sales dramatically improved Israel’s offensive capability. Symbolically, this was the first public acknowledgment that the United States was not only willing to sell, but was actually selling the equipment Israel needed to maintain its defenses.
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Mysteries of the Desert
The sales to Israel represented the U.S. desire to counterbalance Soviet arms supplies to the region. The Johnson administration was unwilling to abandon its policy of preventing any nation in the region having a strategic advantage. For instance, at the same time the United States had decided to sell Israel Skyhawks, it had also concluded secret agreements to sell F-5 bombers to Morocco and Libya, as well as to supply additional military equipment to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.
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Meanwhile, Nasser began to express a desire to develop good relations with the United States. This raised hopes in Washington that Egypt might not join the Soviet camp and that Nasser might adopt a more pro-West orientation. U.S. officials believed that their influence with Egypt, as well as other Arab nations, might be compromised if the United States became too closely allied with Israel.
Then a watershed in U.S.–Egyptian relations occurred in a small, distant country that few Americans had ever heard of.
Egypt’s Vietnam
In September 1962, the autocratic ruler of Yemen died and was replaced by a group of pro-Nasser army officers. The former ruler’s son challenged the new regime, however, and was backed by Jordan and Saudi Arabia—both of whom feared the spread of the revolutionary forces unleashed in Yemen. Nasser, meanwhile, sent assistance to the new government.
The United States shared the Saudis’ concern about Nasser’s intervention and potential for threatening the kingdom. However, Kennedy decided to recognize the pro-Nasser government, still hoping to win some influence with the Egyptian leader.
The strategy failed. Nasser’s involvement in Yemen grew, and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations lost all interest in cultivating a relationship with him. To counter his influence, the United States focused on building up Saudi defenses and engaging the United Nations to mediate. In the end, the Yemeni leaders proved relatively moderate and never became serious threats to the pro-Western regimes in the area.
The Birth of the PLO
The imbroglio in Yemen didn’t distract the Arab states from their fixation with Israel. In 1963, the Arab League decided to introduce a new weapon in its war against Israel—the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Ahmed Shukeiri, a one-time Saudi delegate to the United Nations, was chosen by the Arab League to wage a terror campaign, and he established the Palestine Liberation Army of the PLO to do so.
The PLO formally came into being during a meeting of the first Palestinian Congress, in 1964, in an effort to give a voice to the large number of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon. It was not long after that that the group began to splinter into various factions—all of whom believed that they knew the best way to achieve Palestinian liberation. All believed in violent means, but some were more committed to one ideology, such as communism, than others. Most notable of these groups were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Fatah). Each of these factions remained more or less under the umbrella of the PLO and never strayed too far from the fold—or from the influence of Nasser.
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Ask the Sphinx
The name Fatah comes from the first letters of the Arabic phrase Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al Filastini, which means the “Movement for the (National) Liberation of Palestine.” Because the letters H, T, and F have a connotation of sudden death in Arabic, they were reversed and rendered Fath (more usually, Fatah), which means “conquest by means of jihad (holy war)” in Arabic.
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Ultimately, the largest faction, Fatah, would come to dominate the organization, and its leader, Yasser Arafat, would become the PLO chairman and most visible symbol. All the groups adhered to a set of principles laid out in the Palestine National Charter, or Palestinian Covenant, that was initially drafted by Shukeiri in 1964. The key articles called, in essence, for the destruction of Israel and would be the basis 35 years later for Israeli concerns about the trustworthiness of Palestinian commitments to fulfill the peace agreements they had signed.
Fightin’ Words
To understand Israeli sensitivity about the covenant, it is important to look at the words and meaning of the articles. For example, Article 6 says, “Jews who were living permanently in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.” This suggests that only Jews born in Israel prior to 1917 (the date Arabs regard as the start of the invasion) would be allowed to remain.
Article 22 states that “Zionism is a political movement organically related to world imperialism and hostile to all movements of liberation and progress in the world. It is a racist and fascist movement in its formation; aggressive, expansionist, and colonialist in its aims; and fascist and Nazi in its methods. Israel is the tool of the Zionist movement….”
Article 19 declares, “The partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are fundamentally null and void….”
Fightin’ Deeds
The PLO’s belligerent rhetoric was matched by deeds. Terrorist attacks by the group grew more frequent. In 1965, 35 raids were conducted against Israel. In 1966, the number increased to 41. In just the first four
months of 1967, 37 attacks were launched. The targets were always civilians.
Most of the attacks involved Palestinian guerillas infiltrating Israel from Jordan, the Gaza Strip, and Lebanon. The orders and logistical support for the attacks were coming, however, from Cairo and Damascus. Nasser’s main objective was to harass the Israelis, but a secondary one was to undermine King Hussein’s regime in Jordan.
King Hussein viewed the PLO as both a direct and indirect threat to his power. Hussein feared that the PLO might try to depose him with Nasser’s help or that the PLO’s attacks on Israel would provoke retaliatory strikes by Israeli forces that could weaken his authority. By the beginning of 1967, Hussein had closed the PLO’s offices in Jerusalem, arrested many of the group’s members, and withdrew recognition of the organization. Nasser and his friends in the region unleashed a torrent of criticism on Hussein for betraying the Arab cause. Hussein would soon have the chance to redeem himself.
Terror from the Heights
The breakup of the U.A.R. and the resulting political instability only made Syria more hostile toward Israel. Another major cause of conflict was Syria’s resistance to Israel’s creation of a National Water Carrier to take water from the Jordan River to supply the country. The Syrian army used the Golan Heights, which towers 3,000 feet above Galilee, to shell Israeli farms and villages. Syria’s attacks grew more frequent in 1965 and 1966, forcing children living on kibbutzim in the Huleh Valley to sleep in bomb shelters. Israel repeatedly protested the Syrian bombardments to the UN Mixed Armistice Commission, which was charged with policing the cease-fire, but the UN did nothing to stop Syria’s aggression—even a mild Security Council resolution expressing “regret” for such incidents was vetoed by the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Israel was condemned by the United Nations when it retaliated.
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Mysteries of the Desert
Israel’s National Water Carrier is a network of pipes, aqueducts, canals, tunnels, dams, reservoirs, and pumping stations that brings water from the northern and central regions of Israel to the semi-arid south. To prevent Israel from taking water, Syria initially tried to divert the river, then attacked the construction engineers, and finally waged war. The scarcity of water in the region remains a major source of conflict, and many analysts believe that disputes over sharing this vital resource will ultimately cause the next war.
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While the Syrian military bombardment and terrorist attacks intensified, Nasser’s rhetoric became increasingly bellicose. In 1965, he announced, “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand; we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.”
Again, a few months later, Nasser expressed the Arabs’ aspiration: “…the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people. In other words, we aim at the destruction of the state of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel.”
Israel before June 1967.
Syria’s attacks on Israeli kibbutzim from the Golan Heights finally provoked a retaliatory strike on April 7, 1967. During the attack, Israeli planes shot down six Syrian fighter planes—MiGs supplied by the Soviet Union. Shortly thereafter, the Soviets—who had been providing military and economic assistance to both Syria and Egypt—gave Damascus false information alleging a massive Israeli military buildup in preparation for an attack. Despite Israeli denials, Syria decided to invoke its defense treaty with Egypt and asked Nasser to come to its aid.
Countdown to War
On May 15, Israel’s Independence Day, Egyptian troops began moving into the Sinai and massing near the Israeli border. By May 18, Syrian troops were prepared for battle along the Golan Heights.
Nasser ordered the UN Emergency Force (UNEF), stationed in the Sinai since 1956 as a buffer between Israeli and Egyptian forces after Israel’s withdrawal following the Sinai Campaign, to withdraw on May 16. Without bringing the matter to the attention of the General Assembly (as his predecessor had promised), Secretary-General U Thant complied with the demand. After the withdrawal of the UNEF, the Voice of the Arabs radio station proclaimed on May 18, 1967:
As of today, there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain any more to the UN about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence.
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Ask the Sphinx
In 1956, the United States gave Israel assurances that it recognized the Jewish state’s right of access to the Straits of Tiran. Moreover, the Egyptian blockade violated the Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone, which was adopted by the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea on April 27, 1958.
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An enthusiastic echo was heard May 20 from Syrian defense minister Hafez Assad:
Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united…I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.
On May 22, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli shipping and all ships bound for the southern Red Sea port of Eilat. This blockade cut off Israel’s only supply route with Asia and stopped the flow of oil from its main supplier, Iran.
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Sage Sayings
If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent maritime passage must be preserved for all nations.—President Lyndon Johnson
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U.S. president Johnson expressed the belief that the blockade was illegal and unsuccessfully tried to organize an international flotilla to test it. At the same time, he advised the Israelis not to take any military action.
Nasser Defiant
Nasser was aware of the pressure he was exerting to force Israel’s hand, and challenged Israel to fight almost daily. “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight,” he said on May 27. The following day, he added, “We will not accept any…coexistence with Israel…. Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel…. The war with Israel is in effect since 1948.”
The Arab States Unite Against Israel
King Hussein of Jordan signed a defense pact with Egypt on May 30. Nasser then announced:
The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel…to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan, and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle; the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations.
President Abdur Rahman Aref of Iraq joined in the war of words: “The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear—to wipe Israel off the map.” On June 4, Iraq joined the military alliance with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
The Arab rhetoric was matched by the mobilization of Arab forces. Approximately 465,000 troops, more than 2,800 tanks, and 800 aircraft ringed Israel.
By this time, Israeli forces had been on alert for three weeks. The country could not remain fully mobilized indefinitely, nor could it allow its sea lane through the Gulf of Aqaba to be interdicted. Israel decided to preempt the expected Arab attack. To do this successfully, Israel needed the element of surprise. Had it waited for an Arab invasion, Israel would have been at a potentially catastrophic disadvantage. On June 5, Prime Minister Eshkol gave the order to attack Egypt.
Israel Goes It Alone
The United States tried to prevent the war through negotiations, but it was not able to persuade Na
sser or the other Arab states to cease their belligerent statements and actions. Still, right before the war, Johnson warned, “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone.”
On June 5, Israel was indeed alone, but its military commanders had conceived a brilliant war strategy. The entire Israeli Air Force, with the exception of just 12 fighters assigned to defend Israeli air space, took off at 7:14 A.M. with the intent of bombing Egyptian airfields while the Egyptian pilots were eating breakfast. In less than 2 hours, roughly 300 Egyptian aircraft were destroyed. A few hours later, Israeli fighters attacked the Jordanian and Syrian air forces, as well as one airfield in Iraq. By the end of the first day, nearly the entire Egyptian and Jordanian air forces, and half the Syrians’, had been destroyed on the ground.
The battle then moved to the ground, and some of history’s greatest tank battles were fought between Egyptian and Israeli armor in the blast-furnace conditions of the Sinai desert.
While most IDF (Israeli army) units were fighting the Egyptians and Jordanians, a small, heroic group of soldiers were left to defend the northern border against the Syrians. It was not until the Jordanians and Egyptians were subdued that reinforcements could be sent to the Golan Heights, where Syrian gunners commanding the strategic high ground made it exceedingly difficult and costly for Israeli forces to penetrate. It was not until June 9, after two days of heavy air bombardment, that Israeli forces succeeded in breaking through the Syrian lines.
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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict Page 25
