Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  The efforts of Arab rulers to pander to public opinion proved futile eventually, as one by one they fell. Husni Za’im was barely six months in power before being overthrown and executed, setting the pattern for another sixteen regimes that would rise and dissolve in Syria in almost as many years. Next was ‘Abdallah, felled by a Palestinian bullet outside Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque in July 1951, while his grandson and later successor, Hussein, looked on. Iraq’s Hashemite king, Faisal, would be dismembered by a savage Baghdad mob in 1958, along with Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa’id, another vociferous anti-Zionist who had secretly contacted the Israelis.11 Egypt’s turn came in July 1952 with Faruq’s ouster by a clique of self-styled Free Officers under General Muhammad Naguib. Within a year, Naguib himself was deposed by the true strongman behind the regime, the inspired and purportedly moderate colonel: Gamal Abdel Nasser.

  Here was a man with whom the Israelis thought they could do business. Egyptian and Israeli representatives again engaged in secret contacts, even producing a letter (unsigned) from Nasser to Israeli leaders. But the basic Egyptian position had not altered: Peace was unthinkable under current circumstances, and should those circumstances change, would become possible only once Israel ceded the entire Negev desert. By 1953, as Egypt began sponsoring raids by Palestinian guerrillas (fida’iyyun in Arabic: self-sacrificers) into Israel, and its propaganda renewed calls for a “second round,” Ben-Gurion had come to view the contacts as a ploy, an attempt to anesthetize Israel before slaughtering it.

  The following year, 1954, undistinguished elsewhere in the world, was a Middle Eastern watershed. That year, the Soviet Union, having supported Israel since its creation, having recognized and armed it, switched its allegiance to the other side. The USSR indeed had nothing more to gain from Zionism—the British empire was dying—and everything to gain in terms of placating the new, post-colonial governments, securing its vulnerable southern border, and threatening the West’s oil supplies. “Deserving of condemnation [is]…the State of Israel, which from the first days of its existence began to threaten its neighbors,” declared Communist party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, who further accused Israel of plotting with imperialism to “crudely ravage the natural treasures of the region.” Short of destroying Israel, the USSR endorsed all and every means of realizing “Arab rights in Palestine.”12

  The cold war had come to the Middle East, and 1954 was also the year that the U.S. and Britain aspired to defend the region through an alliance of Northern Tier states (Iran, Turkey, Pakistan) and their Arab neighbors. Viewing the Arab-Israeli conflict as an obstacle to the bloc, Anglo-American planners sought to remove it with a secret peace initiative. Code-named Alpha, the plan was to coerce Israel into conceding large chunks of territory in return for an Arab pledge of nonbelligerency. The assumed key to the plan’s success was Nasser, who was close to the Americans—the CIA had quietly assisted his coup—and who stood to gain substantially from his cooperation. Payment would include boatloads of American arms as well as Egypt’s long-coveted land bridge across the Negev.13

  The physical link between Egypt and the East was looming even more prominently in Nasser’s thinking. The officer who had risen to power on the promise of reforms at home now discovered the world beyond. He declared Egypt an Arab country, a country nonaligned in the Cold War, and began speaking of concentric spheres of interest—the Arab and Islamic worlds, Africa—at the core of which lay Egypt and at the center of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

  His challenges set, Nasser lost no time in meeting them. He concluded an agreement for ending Britain’s seventy-two-year occupation of the Canal Zone, then turned around and thwarted Britain’s attempt to append Iraq to the Northern Tier—the so-called Baghdad Pact. Subtly at first, he adopted socialist ideas, blending them with both Arab and Egyptian nationalism. Islamic extremists consequently branded him a heretic and tried to take his life, but Nasser remained undeterred. Escaping from one assassination attempt, he reportedly exclaimed, “They can kill Nasser but another will take his place! The revolution will live on!”14

  The drama around him mounted, and yet Nasser had all but ignored the most poignant of Arab issues: Palestine. While maintaining the blockade and a moderate level of guerrilla activity, the Egyptian leader downplayed the conflict with Israel, keeping it—as diplomats liked to say—“in the icebox.” But the “street” demanded more. The mere existence of the Jewish state was abhorrent to Arabs, a reminder of Palestine’s plundering and a bridgehead for imperialism’s return. More pressing on Nasser was the fact that not only did Israel exist, but that it asserted its existence militantly.

  In reprisal for guerrilla attacks, special IDF units launched punishing raids across the border. In one such action alone, in the West Bank town of Qibya in October 1953, Israeli commandos led by Major Ariel Sharon blew up dozens of houses, killing sixty-nine civilians—inadvertently, he claimed. To the Syrians’ chagrin, Israel drained the Hula swamp in the northern Galilee, and cultivated the DZ’s. Nor was Nasser spared this activism. In the summer of 1954, the Israeli ship Bat Galim sailed into the Suez Canal, where its seizure by Egyptian authorities caused an international scandal. Finally, in an ill-conceived scheme to thwart Britain’s evacuation from the Canal, Israeli agents attempted to foment chaos in Egypt by vandalizing public institutions. Eleven Egyptians, Jews, were arrested and charged with treason.

  Outraged and humiliated, Nasser intensified his support for the Palestinian guerrillas. He refused to release Israel’s boat or to pardon the arsonists, two of whom were eventually hanged; the rest were sentenced to prison. Also rejected was the Alpha plan, in spite of its territorial enticements. Ben-Gurion’s response was quick and exacting: the largest retaliation against regular Arab troops since 1948. The Gaza Raid, as it came to be called, on February 28, 1955 claimed the lives of fifty-one Egyptian soldiers and eight Israelis, and inaugurated the countdown to war.

  So throughout 1955 the violence spiraled. Nasser went on the offensive against Israel with guerrilla operations and, politically, against the conservative Arab dynasties—the Hashemites of Jordan and Iraq, the Saudis—who opposed his intensifying radicalism. Then, in September, Nasser delivered a blow to Israel and Arab monarchs alike. Operating through Czech suppliers of Soviet arms, he purchased more tanks, guns and jets than those amassed by all the Middle East’s armies combined. In one coup de théâtre, the USSR had leap-frogged the Northern Tier and landed at the crossroads of Asia and Africa, while Nasser soared to a status unprecedented in modern Arab history. Transcending the borders contrived by colonialism, Nasser now preached directly to Arab populations on the need for wahda and karama—unity and dignity—under his, and Egypt’s, aegis.

  Ben-Gurion observed Nasser’s ascension with deepening anxiety. He had long prophesied the emergence of a strong and charismatic individual, another Ataturk, who could unite the Arab world for war. Suddenly that nightmare had materialized. It was only a matter of time, Ben-Gurion reasoned, before the Egyptian army absorbed its massive influx of arms and Nasser lost the excuse not to use them. His prediction proved accurate: the six months following the Czech arms deal witnessed large-scale border fighting, retaliations, and guerrilla attacks that took the lives of hundreds.15

  By the spring of 1956, Ben-Gurion had decided on the need for a conclusive showdown with Egypt. Together with protégés Moshe Dayan, the IDF chief of staff, and Defense Ministry director Shimon Peres, he conceived of an operation to defeat the Egyptian army and deflate Nasser’s prestige. All Israel required was a Great Power to provide it with arms and protection from Soviet intervention. Having rebuffed Israel’s repeated requests for a defense treaty, the United States was out of the question, as was Great Britain, which had threatened to bomb Israel in reaction to its raids into Jordan. But finally an alliance was formed with France, which was also at war with Arab nationalism—in Algeria—and which shared Israel’s socialist ideals.

  Ben-Gurion prepared for war but Nasser had another confrontation i
n mind. On July 26, just weeks after negotiating a treaty with Britain and France over the future of the Suez Canal, he unilaterally nationalized the waterway. Following Nasser’s threats to Britain’s allies in Jordan and Iraq, and to French rule in Algeria, the Europeans were ready to employ force in compelling Nasser to “disgorge” the Canal. But just as Israel needed Great Power backing for its own action against Egypt, so, too, did Britain and France require the support of a superpower, the United States.

  The Eisenhower administration was hardly enamored of Nasser, given his nonalignment policies and his arms deals with the USSR. The latest American disappointment came in the first half of 1956 with the advent of Gamma, another secret initiative to purchase Egyptian nonbelligerency with a swath of Israeli land. President Eisenhower sent a personal emissary, Robert B. Anderson, a Texas oil-man and former Treasury secretary, to mediate the deal. He found Ben-Gurion closed to territorial concessions but willing to meet Nasser anywhere, anytime. But Nasser first made light of the mission—Why risk talking with Israel for the sake of the Baghdad Pact? he asked—then refused to receive Anderson at all. Thereafter, Eisenhower approved another top-secret project—Omega—geared to toppling Nasser by all methods except assassination.16

  Washington indeed disliked Nasser, but it abhorred European colonialism even more. Though signatory with France and Britain to the 1950 Tripartite Declaration prohibiting any attempt to alter Middle East borders by force, the United States refused to regard the Canal’s nationalization as such an attempt, or to sanction the use of force against Egypt. A succession of international initiatives followed, all aimed at resolving the crisis, all notable for their lack of teeth. Exasperated, the French finally turned to their Israeli allies, and convinced the British to do so as well. On October 24, in the Paris suburb of Sèvres, representatives from the three countries signed a top-secret protocol. Israeli forces would feign an assault on Suez, thus providing the Europeans with an excuse to occupy the Canal, ostensibly to protect it. In return, the Israelis would receive air and naval support as its forces destroyed Egypt’s army in Sinai and opened the Straits of Tiran.17

  The second Arab-Israeli war, known in Israel as the Sinai Campaign, and among the Arabs as the Tripartite Aggression, began in the afternoon of October 29th. Israeli paratroopers landed in the Mitla Pass, twenty-four miles east of the Canal. With the pretext established, the Powers issued their ultimatum which the Egyptians, as expected, rebuffed. Dayan’s armored columns, meanwhile, broke through the Egyptian lines in central and southern Sinai and rolled through Egyptian-occupied Gaza. General Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hakim ‘Amer, the Egyptian commander-in-chief, panicked and ordered his troops to retreat. Israel’s victory was swift—too swift, in fact, for Britain and France. The Anglo-French armada dallied at sea, while French and British leaders wavered under international pressure. Not until November 4 did the invasion commence, by which time the Egyptians could claim they had never been driven from Sinai but had rather retreated tactically in order to defend their homes.

  Operation Musketeer, the invasion’s codename, was a consummate military success. The Egyptian army was shattered and three-quarters of the Canal reoccupied. Politically, though, the results were disastrous. Cold war and cultural differences disappeared as the world community united in condemning the attack, and under the dual threat of American sanctions and Soviet missiles, the French and the British buckled. Their troops ignominiously withdrew and their flags lowered forever over the Middle East.

  The Israelis, by contrast, controlling all of Sinai, Gaza, and the Straits of Tiran, were not so quick to retreat. Though also subject to enormous pressures from the U.S. and Russia, Israel still enjoyed international sympathy as the victim of blockades and terrorism, and Ben-Gurion had strong support at home. While bending to demands to pull his troops from Sinai, he dug in his heels over guarantees for free passage through the Straits of Tiran and for protection against border raids. The Armistice, under which Egypt had exercised belligerency against Israel, was dead, he declared.

  Four months of breakneck diplomacy would follow, during which Abba Eban, Israel’s highly articulate ambassador to Washington and the UN, strove to secure his country’s irreducible interests. But the role of rescuer fell not to Eban or to any other Israeli but to Canada’s Foreign Minister, Lester “Mike” Pearson. Uniquely trusted by all parties involved—Arabs, Israelis, Europeans—Pearson came up with the notion of creating a multi-national United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to oversee the Anglo-French withdrawal from Egypt. He then applied that concept to Israeli forces in Sinai. The idea was to deploy UN troops from a consortium of countries along the Egyptian-Israeli border, in the Gaza Strip, and at Sharm al-Sheikh overlooking the Straits of Tiran. Nasser, predictably, resisted the idea, which struck him as a qualification of Egyptian sovereignty and a reward for Israeli aggression. Ben-Gurion, too, raised objections, noting that Nasser could evict the force whenever he saw fit.

  The logjam was eventually broken by two “good faith” agreements—one between Nasser and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and the other between Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Golda Meir, Israel’s foreign minister. Hammarskjold promised Nasser that Egypt would have the right to remove UNEF, but only after the General Assembly had considered whether the peacekeepers had completed their mission. Dulles pledged that the U.S. would regard any Egyptian attempt to revive the Tiran blockade as an act of war to which Israel could respond in self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. In such an event, Meir would undertake to inform the United States of Israel’s intentions. Britain and France also acceded to this agreement, as did Canada and several other Western countries—Sweden, Belgium, Italy, and New Zealand. Several glitches ensued when Egyptian troops returned to Gaza and when Dulles reiterated his support for the Armistice, but by March 11, 1957, UNEF was in position and the last Israeli soldier left Sinai.18

  Through it all, the Arab-Israeli conflict remained an immutable fixture of Middle Eastern life. From a local dispute in the 1920s and ’30s, it had expanded in the 1940s to engulf the region and then, in the ’50s, the world. The context of inter-Arab and Great Power rivalry, of Israeli fears and bravado, and of abiding bitterness on both sides, had coalesced. If a new status quo had been created, it was one of inherent instability, a situation so combustible that the slightest spark could ignite it.

  Cold Wars/Hot Wars

  The 1956 war, strangely, had benefited both sides. Buoyed by Egyptian propaganda, Nasser claimed political and military victory in the war; that he had single-handedly defeated the imperialists, and mobilized world opinion against Israel, which had not dared take on Egypt alone. The Suez Canal, now restored to its inalienable owner, would make Egypt a regional, if not an international, superpower.19

  The Israelis believed that the war had brought them ten years of quiet at least, a solid decade of development. IDF arms had taught the West that Israel was an established fact and could not be divvied up piecemeal by the Powers. Gone were the Alphas and the Gammas. Instead there were close relations with a wide range of Asian and African countries, oil from Iran, and sophisticated jets—Ouragans, Mystéres, and Mirages—from France. The French also helped construct what would become Israel’s boldest and most controversial achievement in the security field: the nuclear reactor near the southern town of Dimona.

  But along with these pluses, there was also the downside to 1956. If the Israelis’ confidence in their military prowess had been reinforced, so too had the fear of international pressure. The Arabs possessed incontrovertible proof that the “Zionist entity”—“Israel” was too repugnant to pronounce—was an imperialist tool, aggressive but ideologically weak. If the second round had been more successful than the first, the third would prove triumphant, they believed. Nasser had only to wage it.20

  Fortunately for Israel, Nasser did not fall victim to the Arabs’ “Suez syndrome” or to the lure of his own propaganda. He knew that the Egyptian army had been bested by the IDF, and
that another war, however heralded, had to be delayed as long as possible, until the Arabs were strong. He cooperated with UNEF and kept only token forces in Sinai; Israeli ships passed unmolested through Tiran. For all Nasser’s belligerent rhetoric, the Palestine issue was once again, firmly, “in the icebox.”

  Instead, Nasser thrust his energies into a yet more radical blend of Arab socialism and nationalism—Nasserism—and a series of single-party movements to animate the masses and jump-start Egypt’s economy. Few of these efforts bore fruit. Desperate for success, Nasser edged toward a closer alliance with the USSR and escalated his conflict with the Middle East monarchies—what one scholar termed the Arab Cold War.

  A savage succession of coups, assassinations, and bombings ensued, culminating in the Iraqi revolution of 1958 and the attempted overthrow of the Lebanese and Jordanian governments. The latter was averted only through Western military intervention as President Eisenhower, having ousted Britain and France, sought to fill that void with the doctrine that bore his name. From now on, the United States would defend any Middle Eastern country threatened by communism or its allies, the most obvious of which was Egypt.21