Casualties, prisoners, refugees—all were ultimately dwarfed by the war’s most tectonic outcome. Israel had conquered 42,000 square miles and was now three and a half times its original size. Exceedingly vulnerable before the war, its major cities all within range of Arab guns, the Jewish state now threatened Damascus, Cairo, and Amman. Its own capital, Jerusalem, was united. Though ties had been severed with the Soviet Union and permanent strains left in its relations with France—and in spite of the Liberty incident—Israel had earned the solid respect of the United States. “The spirit of the army, indeed of all the people, has to be experienced to be believed,” Harry McPherson reported to his president, relating how he had seen a jeep with two Israeli women soldiers, “one with a purple spangled bathing cap on her head, the other with an orange
turban,” riding in the Negev. “After the doubts, confusions, and ambiguities of Vietnam, it was deeply moving to see people whose commitment is total and unquestioning.”
Moribund before the war, Israel’s economy suddenly flourished as tourists and donations flooded the country, and oil was extracted from Sinai wells. Emigration all but ceased, and thousands of new immigrants hastened to partake of the glory.
Israel indeed basked in that glory as its press for weeks afterward praised the army’s audacity, its ingenuity and power. Ha’aretz informed its readers of the minting of a new victory coin, and supplied a recipe for “victory cakes” to be baked for homecoming soldiers. “From the podium of the UN, I proclaimed the glorious triumph of the IDF and the redemption of Jerusalem,” Abba Eban told a riveted audience in Lod. “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.” Less decorously, Haim Bar-Lev told the Cabinet, “We have screwed every Arab country.” Always popular, Dayan and Rabin were now elevated to icon-status, and not only among Israelis but throughout the Diaspora where the war had enabled Jews “to walk with their backs straight.” To the chief of staff was given the exceptional honor of actually naming the war. Among the titles proposed—The War of Daring, the War of Salvation, the War of the Sons of Light—Rabin chose the least ostentatious, the Six-Day War, evoking the days of creation.
For a moment, the apocalyptic aspect of the Israeli self-view appeared to have been eclipsed by that of the indomitable, the invincible Israeli—but only for a moment. Michael Hadow, the British ambassador, noting the absence of mass celebrations, found “something very inspiring and yet rather terrifying” about the dispassionate way the Israelis went to war, won, and returned home to business as usual. The discomfort many Israelis felt with their victory, the guilt and pain of their losses, poured out in a postwar collection of interviews with kibbutz members, entitled fittingly, The Seventh Day. “We weren’t especially excited or happy about killing Arabs or knowing that we’d won,” recalled Shai, a twentyseven-year-old member of Kibbutz Afikim, who had led paratroopers at Umm Qatef. “We just felt that we’d done what we had to do. But there’s a big difference between that and feeling happy.” Similarly, Gal, from Givat Haim, a tank gunner, said, “What have I got against an Arab? Even if I can see that he’s got a gun? You shoot at him, you know he’s man, that he’s got a family…It all goes fine right up to the moment you see someone dead. That’s when we began to curse the war.” The diary of Rivka Niedt, of Kibbutz Usha, records her feelings upon arriving at al-‘Arish: “There’s a heavy, thick blackness outside, and an awful noise…shots, screams, and short frightening booms…Your throat chokes, your eyes cloud over and you run outside…but the wind…only brings in great gusts of stench from the dead and the clouds of black flies.”
Following “Jerusalem of Gold,” the most popular Hebrew song to emerge in the years after the war was “The Song of Peace,” a threnody of the recently dead:
No one can bring us back
From the dark depths of our grave
Here the thrill of victory means nothing
Nor do songs of praise
Therefore, sing a song for peace
Do not merely whisper a prayer
Better to sing a song for peace
Shouting it loudly.6
For Arabs, though, there could be no such ambivalence toward the war. Even the “Six-Day” epithet, with its image of lightning conquests, proved odious to them, and they resorted to more reticent titles—The Setback, The Disaster, or the anodyne June War. No sooner had the shooting stopped than the Arab world embarked on what one Middle East historian called “an audit during a moment of great stress and clarity,” examining how “a small state had displayed their historical inadequacy, had seized massive chunks of land, and had devastated the armies whose weapons and machismo had been displayed with great pride for the last decade or so.” Intellectuals would evince intense disillusionment with Arab nationalism—as a mass movement, it would never revive—and stress the need for modernization and democracy. Others would advocate an even more militant radicalism on the Vietnamese or Cuban model, or a return to the rigorous fundamentals of Islam. Painful examinations would be made of Arab society, its inherent propensities and weaknesses, and of the Arab personality and psyche.
Arab politicians, on the other hand, persisted in avoiding any responsibility for the defeat, much less engage in introspection. Nasser continued to blame the insubordinate Egyptian officers and the Anglo-American cabal for Egypt’s defeat in what he curiously called “Bunche’s war.” King Hussein waxed fatalistic, telling his people that “I seem to belong to a family which…must suffer and make sacrifices for its country without end…If you were not rewarded with glory it was not because you lacked courage, but because it is Allah’s will.” The deepest denial came from Syrian leaders, criticized throughout the Arab world for having done so much to start the war and then so little to fight it. “The Israelis’ objective was not to conquer a few miles from Syria but to topple its progressive government,” explained Gen. Suweidani. “This they did not accomplish. Therefore we must view ourselves as the victors of this war.” The point was refined by Foreign Minister Makhous: “Were Damascus or Aleppo to fall, they could be rebuilt. But there could be no compensation for the loss of the Ba’th, for it is the hope of the Arab nation.” Hafez al-Assad declared that “Syria, alone, fought for six days, without letup, with all our might.” When one junior officer demanded an investigation of the debacle, Assad reportedly had him shot.7
Not until after the 1973 war, with their army’s honor restored, did Egyptians begin to speak out about the causes of 1967. Thus, Salah al-Hadidi, chief justice in the trials of officers held accountable for the defeat, wrote that, “I can state that Egypt’s political leadership called Israel to war. It clearly provoked Israel and forced it into a confrontation.” Gen. Fawzi singled out “the individualist bureaucratic leadership” and “‘Amer’s collapse,” while Muhammad Sadiq spoke of “promotions on the basis of loyalty, not expertise, and the army’s fear of telling Nasser the truth.” Murtagi credited the Israelis with having better weapons, command, and organization; they seemed to have a stronger will to fight. Sidqi Mahmud pointed his finger at the hasty decision to oust UNEF, to occupy Sharm al-Sheikh, and to weather Israel’s first strike. “We were totally dependent on Russian equipment,” he testified. “The field marshal was not committed to the army’s affairs.” Lack of intelligence was the problem, according to Zakkariya Muhieddin: “While the Israelis knew the name of every Egyptian on relief, and his wife’s name too, we didn’t even know where Moshe Dayan’s house was.”‘Ali Sabri faulted the army’s refusal to investigate its failures in the Suez and Yemen wars, and to oust the officers responsible. Shams Badran blamed Nasser: “He took the decisions that placed the army in a trap. Without consulting with anyone, he led us into the ambush that Israel had laid with American help.”8
How had it happened? No shortage of pundits rushed to answer that question, noting the Israelis’ superior training and motivation, the Arabs’ lack of operational unity and inability to understand their foe. Hadow stressed the personal element, the stark dis
parity between the Israeli and the Arab soldier:
These were not elite professional troops lavishly equipped with the most modern equipment, but for the most part civilian reservists, with comparatively limited training behind them, who were carried into battle in civilian transport, and were supplied and supported by essentially civilian services. By comparison, the professional Arab armies showed a total lack of appreciation of the essential elements of modern warfare, and an almost equal inability to use the sophisticated weapons and equipment provided by their Russian quarter-masters. Their leadership on almost all fronts was inept to a degree which hardly seems possible after 10 years of preparation and training for a war which was to bring about Israel’s annihilation.
Moshe Dayan proved less complimentary. His final report to the general staff criticized Israel’s misreading of Nasser’s intentions, its overdependence on the United States and hesitation to act the minute Egypt closed the Straits. Yet Israel had “ended the Six-Day War with maximum lines on all fronts,” in spite of these shortcomings, he wrote. The reason was that Egypt had failed to appreciate the advantages of launching a first strike, had failed to gauge the enemy’s power and his willingness to use it. Lulled into arrogance by these errors, the Israelis would repeat them six years later, in their next major war with the Arabs.9
Such analyses perhaps explained how Israel won the war; they could not account for its outcome. Beyond the goals of eliminating the Egyptian threat and destroying Nasser’s army, no other stage of the conflict was planned or even contemplated, not the seizure of the entire Sinai Peninsula, not the conquest of the West Bank, nor the scaling of the Golan Heights. Even the “liberation” of Jerusalem, as Israelis call it, regarding the event as the most significant of the war and assigning it almost messianic ramifications, came about largely through chance. The vagaries and momentum of war, far more than rational decision making, had shaped the fighting’s results. Had Egypt accepted the cease-fire after the first day’s fighting, had the Jordanians refrained from seizing Government Hill or had Dayan stuck to his opposition to conquering the Golan (to cite only a few “if”s), the region would have looked much different. Its subsequent history—the upheavals and the breakthroughs, the grueling search for peace—would probably have evolved differently as well.
A similar capriciousness characterized the process leading to the outbreak of the war. This book opened with the well-known image of the butterfly, which, with a mere flap of its wings, triggers a thunderstorm. Starting in November 1966, the Middle East would witness many such “flaps.” Take, for example, Ambassador Barbour’s tardiness in conveying King Hussein’s condolence letter to Eshkol, and the subsequent Samu‘ raid in which Jordanian and Israeli soldiers inadvertently clashed. There was Jordan’s attempt to save face from that defeat by accusing Egypt of “hiding behind UNEF’s skirts,” and Egypt’s resultant interest in ousting the force. Nasser’s complex relationship with ‘Amer, the political machinations that weakened Eshkol and brought Dayan to the Defense Ministry, elements of honor and chauvinism and fear—each would influence events in profound and unanticipated ways. The last-minute cancellation of Operation Dawn—Egypt’s one chance to do to Israel what Israel would soon do to Egypt—poignantly illustrated the process’s randomness.
Yet even that chaos had its context. Only within the unique milieu of the Arab-Israeli conflict could elements as diverse as Syrian radicalism and Israeli politicking, inter-Arab rivalry and America’s preoccupation with Vietnam, Soviet fears and Egyptian aspirations, combine in a chain reaction culminating in war. And once the war started, that same context allowed for a succession of unexpected events, from the retreat of Arab armies to Israel’s attack on the Liberty, from the Security Council’s paralysis to the Soviets’ failure to intervene.
The context facilitated the war, but had the war, in turn, transformed the context? Did it leave the region more or less unchanged, or did it establish an entirely new set of rules and rulers? Were those six explosive days really an act of creation, producing a modern Middle East fundamentally distinct from the old one?
“A Peace of Honor Between Equals”
There had not been just one but several ceremonies held in the newly rededicated Hebrew University amphitheater atop Mount Scopus. Leonard Bernstein had conducted Mahler’s 2nd Symphony—the “Resurrection”—and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with solo performances by virtuoso Isaac Stern. “Jerusalem of Gold” was repeatedly rendered. Now, on June 29, overlooking the Judean desert and the Dead Sea coast so recently occupied by Israeli forces, Yitzhak Rabin received an honorary Doctorate of Philosophy.
Accepting the degree in the name of the entire IDF, Rabin contrasted the exaltation of the home front with the somberness of frontline soldiers “who had seen not only the glories of victory but also its price—the friends who fell next to them, covered in blood.” Those soldiers, “aware of the righteousness of our cause, of their deep love of the homeland, and the difficult tasks imposed on them,” had demonstrated their moral, spiritual, and psychological worth under the hardest conditions. Many had given their lives to preserve what Rabin called “the right of the people of Israel to live in its own State—free, independent, in peace and tranquillity.”
Peace and tranquillity would become a lifelong and elusive goal for Rabin. While political rivals would continue to criticize his performance before and during the war—his breakdown, his inability to stand up to Dayan—the public generally credited him with victory. Riding on that crest, he would soon leave the army and serve successfully as Israel’s ambassador in Washington and then, with less aplomb, as Israel’s prime minister (1974-77) in the dreary aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. His greatest achievement was to conclude a separation-of-forces agreement in Sinai and so lay the foundation for Israel’s subsequent peace treaty with Egypt.
Rabin returned to the prime minister’s office in 1992, and embarked on a strategy no less risky than the Six-Day War, seeking a historic reconciliation with the Palestinian people under the leadership of Yasser Arafat—the same Arafat whose guerrilla attacks had helped precipitate the war. The process launched by Rabin and Arafat would earn them each a Nobel Prize (Shimon Peres, Israel’s foreign minister, received one as well), but also the enmity of Israelis and Arabs who opposed the process. Palestinian terrorists killed dozens of Israeli civilians and Israeli extremists branded Rabin a traitor. On November 4, 1995, one of those extremists shot and killed the prime minister. Rabin had been addressing a Tel Aviv peace rally. Found in his pocket were the blood-stained lyrics to “The Song of Peace.”
The 1967 war, Rabin concluded, had changed the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, not by making Israel any less repugnant to the Arabs, but by convincing them that it could never be eliminated by force of arms. Many Israeli leaders shared his conviction, and some went even further, believing that for the first time peace was attainable, if purchased with Arab territories.
Ten days before the Mount Scopus ceremony, on June 19, the Cabinet had secretly decided to exchange Sinai and the Golan Heights—some areas would be demilitarized, and free passage through Tiran guaranteed—for peace treaties with Egypt and Syria. Of the territory seized from Egypt, only the Gaza Strip would be incorporated into Israel, and its refugees resettled as part of a regional plan. Fiercely debated, the motion passed by a single vote. But no decision could be reached regarding the future of the West Bank, where many ministers still hoped to create an autonomous Palestinian entity. A consensus was achieved only on Jerusalem, which was to remain Israel’s united and sovereign capital.
Prominent among the supporters of the June 19 decision was Abba Eban. He, too, was present at Mount Scopus that day, notwithstanding his reservations about Rabin. The previous week, he had advised his ambassadors: “There is a new reality and it points at talks on peace and security. Those aspects, it must be emphasized, have a territorial dimension. The world and the Arab world must know that there’s no turning back the clock to 1957 or 1948.” At the
same time he indicated that “everything is fluid, flexible, and open.” Eban would adhere to those principles throughout his tenure as foreign minister, until 1974. Originally opposed to creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, he later embraced the idea,warning that the annexation of nearly two million Palestinians would undermine Israel’s Jewish majority. Ultimately, Eban would be reconciled with Rabin and with the Israeli public that had so often scoffed at him. Awarded the Israel Prize for Life Achievement in 2001, Abba Eban died the following year, at age eighty-seven.10
After the 1967 war, Eban described himself as one of the “politicians” in Israel’s leadership who was willing to take advantage of the altered context on the chance that the Arabs would trade territory for peace. Like-minded ministers such as Zalman Aran and Haim Moshe Shapira expressed their willingness to return virtually all the captured land, except Jerusalem, and received support from an unlikely quarter: David Ben-Gurion. Never again to play a significant role in Israeli politics, permanently consigned to his bungalow in Side Boker, the once-feared martinet cautioned against the demographic dangers of annexation until his death in December 1973, in the shadows of the Yom Kippur War.
But while some decision makers favored far-reaching concessions, others—“security men,” Eban dubbed them—doubted the Arab’s readiness to negotiate and, for strategic and ideological reasons, insisted on keeping most of the territories. In the Cabinet, they were led, as previously, by Yigal Allon. The labor minister—later foreign minister—voted against the Cabinet’s June 19 resolution, and lobbied for the creation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. These would form a new defense line down the Jordan Valley, around Jerusalem and southward to the Hebron Hills, delineating “an agreed, independent Arab State, surrounded by ZIsraeli territory.” Though Allon would die, aged sixty-two, in 1980, the “Allon Plan” would remain Israel’s unofficial policy unit the advent of Rabin’s negotiations with Arafat.
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