Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy

3 The Six Day War: Playing with Fire

3 The Six Day War Playing with Fire 1. introduction The typical study of the events and processes leading up to the Six Day War covers the following sequence. During the winter and spring of 1967, Israeli-Syrian relations escalated signi‹cantly. Exchanges of artillery ‹re, in‹ltrations of Palestinian guerrillas from Syria into Israel, and concentrated efforts by each state to derail irrigation and water projects of the other became a daily matter. The war of words between the two states also intensi‹ed. On April 7, 1967, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) shot down seven Syrian Mig-21 jets, some of them over Damascus. In late April and early May 1967, Soviet intelligence informed Egypt that Israel was concentrating its troops near its northeast border facing Syria. Israel ›atly denied these rumors. However, the Syrians—convinced that the Israelis were preparing a major strike against the Ba’ath regime—called upon Egypt for help. On May 15, 1967, in response to the Syrian and Soviet warnings, two Egyptian brigades crossed the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula. This move was a violation of a tacit understanding between Egypt and Israel—established following the Israeli decision to withdraw from the Sinai in 1957—that the Sinai Peninsula would remain demilitarized. The initial Israeli response to the Egyptian violation of the post–Sinai War understandings was to put the standing army on alert. Israeli diplomats kept reassuring the outside world that Israel had no aggressive 80 designs against Syria. At the same time, the Arab press—particularly in Jordan and Syria—began pounding Nasser for “hiding behind the UN apron” and called on Egypt to remove the UN force. Indeed, on May 18, Nasser demanded UN secretary-general U-Thant to reposition the UN forces out of the Gaza Strip. U-Thant not only agreed to do so without argument but also removed voluntarily the UN force from the Sharm aSheikh area. More signi‹cant, Israeli intelligence reported that Egypt was pulling its troops out of Yemen. At that point, the government decided on partial mobilization of reserve units. The West was alarmed by the escalation of Egyptian-Israeli relations. American, British, and French diplomats met with the region’s leaders in an attempt to calm things down. However, just the opposite happened. On May 22, Nasser announced the closure of the Tiran Straits to Israeli shipping. The closure of the straits constituted an of‹cial Israeli casus belli, thus leading to a general mobilization of Israeli reserve forces. Israel—invoking the tacit understanding that had been established between the two states in 1957—demanded that the United States act diplomatically or militarily to reopen the straits for Israeli shipping. While diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis continued, two parallel processes took over. First, a tremendous amount of rhetoric from all over the Arab world called for an all-out Arab attack aimed at destroying the Jewish state. A ›urry of Arab diplomatic activity brought about greater coordination between various states contiguous to Israel. The peak of this activity was the establishment of the Egyptian-Jordanian joint command on June 1 and the beginning of the transfer of Egyptian commando units to Jordan immediately thereafter. Second, the sense of an existential threat in Israel grew considerably. Out of a population of slightly over 2.5 million Israelis, the mobilized strength of the Israeli armed forces included some 275,000 soldiers, about two-thirds of them reservists. One-‹fth of Israel’s labor force was mobilized . The Israeli economy came to a screeching halt. Strategically, all of the “red lines” Israel had established as part of its deterrence policy after the Sinai campaign were violated by Egypt (Yaniv 1987a, 81–87). The Israeli government came under severe domestic criticism for its timidity. There was growing pressure on Prime Minister Eshkol to bring into the government people with signi‹cant strategic experience, such as BenGurion and Dayan. The IDF also put considerable pressure on the government to launch a preemptive strike. The government continued its quest for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. On May 28, it decided to delay military action in order to give The Six Day War 81 diplomacy another chance. The Johnson administration—despite its best efforts—failed in its efforts to organize an international ›otilla that would reopen the Tiran Straits. The domestic pressure on the government forced Eshkol to form a national unity government...