Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  “I have to admit that once June was over, it took me a long time to understand, digest and face up to what had happened,” the king confessed in his memoirs. “It was like a dream or worse yet, a nightmare.” He, too, had taken steps to repair his army, not so much purging its ranks as reshuffling them to give greater power to royal family members, filling the void left by ‘Atif al-Majali, the general who insisted on defending Jerusalem and who collapsed and died shortly after the city’s surrender. Hussein had tried to integrate hundreds of PLO fighters now stationed on Jordanian territory, and to shelter hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Yet he had also mustered the resources to tour Arab and Western capitals, there to deliver hard-line speeches while secretly seeking a “just and honorable peace.” At a clandestine meeting in London, he replied to Ya‘akov Herzog’s question—“Is Your Majesty ready to sign a peace treaty with Israel?”—saying, “Certainly, yes, but…I must move together with the entire Arab world.”20

  Peace, Hussein believed, could be achieved only through a summit that authorized him to negotiate for the West Bank’s return while protecting him from the Arab radicals. Hussein then convinced an initially skeptical Nasser that a formula could be found for political latitude that did not mean recognizing Israel. Now, together in Khartoum, the two former enemies faced onerous challenges: Algerian and Iraqi demands for continuing the oil embargo and nationalizing Western companies, and Shuqayri’s clamoring for guerrilla attacks and a popular uprising in the territories. Syria’s delegates described the summit as the springboard for a new military offensive and, finding little support for the initiative, promptly flew back to Damascus.

  But Nasser was unfazed. As in his heyday, he dominated the conference, telling participants that Soviet and American plans for ending the state of war “will lead us to surrender and humiliation,” while stressing, “There is a difference between political action and the liquidation of the [Palestine] issue.” He warned of the danger of creeping Israeli annexation of the West Bank, and urged support for Hussein’s efforts to redeem the area, indirectly, through the Americans. Nasser’s imprint was discernible in the final communiqué that committed the Arab states to stand united on “political action” to retrieve Arab territories and realize Palestinian rights, while conceding “no recognition of Israel, no peace and no negotiations with her,” and taking “all steps necessary to consolidate military preparedness.”21

  Western observers would later debate whether Khartoum was a victory for Arab moderation or radicalism. True, it vetoed any interaction with Israel, but it appeared to open doors to third-party arbitration and the demilitarization of the occupied territories. Hussein claimed the conference had Arab extremists “put on ice,” and compelled the Israelis “to prove that they really mean to live in peace…and be accepted in this world on which they have encrusted themselves like a scab.” Yet, when presented with a Yugoslavian scheme in which Israel would vacate Sinai in return for guarantees of free passage, Nasser turned his back. He reminded his ministers that “our primary intention is to continue to pursue the political solution road in order to gain time for military preparation and to persuade the Soviets to supply us with all the weapons we need.” For the Israelis, the “three no’s” of Khartoum effectively closed the door on the June 19 resolution. Said Eshkol, “This stand of the Arab Heads of State reinforces Israel’s decision not to permit the return of such conditions that enabled our enemies to undermine our security and plot against our sovereignty and existence.”22

  Confusion continued to surround Khartoum, yet certain conclusions were clear. The Arab’s focus had shifted away from liberating Palestine to liberating those areas recently conquered—from “erasing Israel,” as Shuqayri put it, to “erasing the traces of the aggression.” And for Nasser, who successfully ended the Yemen war and procured $200 million in aid, the summit was unquestionably a triumph, his last.23

  The next three years would be rife with disappointments for Nasser—military, economic, political. By 1970, the economy was in appalling shape, even by Egyptian standards, and the country was virtually occupied by thousands of Soviet advisers. The attrition war along the Canal had escalated disastrously—the outskirts of Cairo were bombed—without loosening Israel’s hold on the territories. In August, Nasser consented to a cease-fire, but a month later he was again thrust into conflict as Palestinian forces in Jordan staged an open revolt against the monarchy. Syrian tanks moved toward the Jordanian border, and the Israelis pledged to help Hussein—the entire region verged on conflagration until Nasser stepped in and mediated a solution in which Arafat and his guerrillas would evacuate Jordan and receive asylum in Lebanon. The Jordanian civil war or, as the Palestinians called it, Black September, utterly drained the already desiccated Nasser. He returned to Cairo on September 28 and went to bed, never to rise again.

  Egypt was seized by a paroxysm of anguish unprecedented in its modern history. Kosgyin, notoriously unflappable, was moved to tears by the sight of countless thousands of mourners choking the streets of Cairo. Flags flew at half-mast throughout the Middle East, where the mood was best described by Sadat, Nasser’s successor: “My grief for him will live as long as I live, inflaming my heart.” Among Israelis, alone, the reaction was muted—not celebratory, but wary of an Arab world without a leader strong enough to make peace as well as war. Many could have subscribed to the words of King Hussein: “The greatness of most world leaders lies in their ideas and actions, but Gamal’s greatness empowered his actions and ideas.”24

  Hussein would outlive Nasser by nearly thirty years, navigating his country through social and economic crises and eruptions of Arab-Israeli violence. Abrogating to the PLO his role as representative of the Palestinian people, and surrendering his claim to the West Bank, Hussein tried to mediate between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Though passively pro-Iraqi in the 1991 Gulf War, he joined Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 in signing the Jordan-Israel peace treaty, and the following year delivered the main eulogy at Rabins funeral. He died of cancer in February 1999, and was mourned by the entire world, with the exception of many Palestinians.

  Hussein, in turn, was survived by one year by Hafez al-Assad, who conspicuously boycotted Khartoum. Ousting Jadid and “Doctors” Makhous and Atassi, al-Assad achieved supreme power in Syria. He joined Egypt in launching what the Arabs called the October or Ramadan War of 1973, which ended with the IDF on the outskirts of Damascus. Three years later, in an effort to aid Christian militias warring against the PLO, al-Assad sent his troops into Lebanon, where they soon turned on the Christians as well and occupied much of the country. Renowned for his ruthlessness, credited with massacring an estimated 20,000 of his countrymen in an abortive 1982 revolt, he bitterly opposed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, and continued to support Palestinian guerrillas. And yet al-Assad also negotiated, albeit indirectly, with Rabin and other Israeli leaders. They offered to return most, if not all, of the Golan, but their quid pro—peace—proved too steep for Assad.

  Yasser Arafat, the longest-lived of all the Arab leaders of 1967, was not even invited to Khartoum. Yet the conference, by negating the possibility of conventional war for the near future, placed him and his guerrillas in the van-guard of the armed struggle. The Palestinians, moreover, were now geographical united (albeit under Israeli rule) as never before since 1948, further galvanizing their national identity. Within two years, Arafat had gained the chairmanship of the PLO—Shuqayri was swiftly forgotten—and mounted numerous high-profile raids, typified by the 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympic athletics in Munich. Two more years passed and the Arab states recognized the PLO as “the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” and Arafat was invited to address the UN General Assembly. But then the PLO became embroiled in the Lebanese civil war, fighting first the Christians, then the Syrians, and finally the Israelis. Arafat, who had already been banished from Jordan, was now exiled to Tunis where, after declaring his support for Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War and sidelined by a po
pular revolt in Gaza and the West Bank (the Intifada,) he seemed to be consigned to obscurity. Rabin revived him, however, and Arafat returned to the territories as president of the newly created Palestinian Authority.25 The militant who praised the assassins of Sadat in 1981 appeared to be following in his footsteps. Like the Egyptians and Jordanians before him, Arafat would draw on an American peacemaking experience that began, thirty years before, with Lyndon Johnson.

  242: Legacy and Reality

  The last shot of the war had scarcely been fired, but Arthur Goldberg was already canvassing UN delegations on the possibility of peaceful arrangements; of mediation and direct talks between the parties. Yet very quickly, the difficult of transforming the latest Arab-Israeli war into a lasting Arab-Israeli peace became apparent.

  The Arabs were insisting on the total and unconditional return of their territories, and the Israelis, though willing to cede Sinai and the Golan Heights, had dug in their heels on the West Bank and Jerusalem. America had scant means of influencing the Arabs, and only limited leverage on Israel. “It wasn’t Dayan that kept Kosygin out,” the president told his advisers shortly after the cease-fire. “The USSR will soon get fed up with Israel’s braggadocio.” The Soviets, meanwhile, were ready to “pull out all the stops”—Joe Sisco’s phrase—to defend the Arabs’ rejection of any form of acceptance for the Jewish state. “Israel’s keeping the West Bank would create revanchism for the rest of the 20th century,” Dean Rusk concluded, “but Israel must be accepted.”

  Faced with such mountainous challenges, burdened with his own difficulties in Vietnam, Johnson might well have ignored the Middle East. Instead, he embarked on a daring initiative. Addressing an educators’ conference on June 19 (again, that date), the president set out the ideas he and his staff had been developing since the very first day of the war. These were framed in five principles that recognized the right of every state in the region to exist, assured the territorial integrity and political independence of all states, and guaranteed freedom of navigation while advocating Middle East arms control and a solution to the refugee problem. Eshkol expressed “deep admiration” for the speech; Eban called it “masterful,” and Rostow reported, “as of tonight the Arabs haven’t cut the pipelines or our throats.”26 There remained only the Soviet’s cooperation to solicit.

  The appeal was made in an unlikely venue: a Victorian house in Glassboro, New Jersey. There, on June 23, Johnson raised a number of issues with Premier Kosygin, among them Vietnam and nuclear proliferation, before dealing with the Middle East. Johnson appealed for support for his five principles, and for a “common language of peace.” But Kosygin was intractable. He accused the U.S. of encouraging Israeli expansion, of dealing perfidiously with Nasser. “The Arabs are an explosive people,” he warned, predicting that the Arabs would “fight with hunting rifles, even their bare hands,” to regain their lands unconditionally. In return for Israeli withdrawal from all the territories, the Soviets would at most agree to adjudication of the Straits blockade by the International Court of Justice.

  Ten years would pass before Kosygin’s ouster by Brezhnev—Podgorny’s fall would follow—but in the summer of 1967 the premier’s powers were broad. Having failed to fulfill his goals in the Security Council, he requested an emergency General Assembly session to “to bring about the liquidation of the consequences of aggression and the immediate evacuation of Israeli forces behind the armistice lines.” U Thant, in what Western observers saw as an effort to atone for his lack of judgment during the crisis, softened the Soviet blow. He merely cited the Uniting for Peace mechanism used when the Security Council was deadlocked, and quietly convened the Assembly.

  The session lasted five weeks but failed to uphold the Arab claim that the war had been an act of Israeli aggression. Rather, it produced a Latin American resolution offering UN mediation and the return of all conquered land for recognition of “the right of all states in the area to live in peace and security,”and a non-aligned motion demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal. The Arabs rejected both, however, and the Soviets, exasperated by what they termed “extremist Arab circles,” tabled a resolution closely resembling the Latin draft. But this, too, failed to pass. “The Russians seem to have made every mistake that they could,” observed Lord Caradon. “Having led the Arabs into battle and having them sustain a resounding defeat, they then showed that they were ready to abandon them.” Ambassador Federenko, the demagogue who had once sworn to “humiliate and wipe the floor with the United States,” was saddled with the failure and permanently removed from his post.27

  “We are now in the process of mopping up after Mr. Kosygin’s onslaught in the General Assembly,” Johnson wrote to Harold Wilson. “The most likely prospect is that the Middle East will go back to the Security Council, where it belongs, and that results will have to be negotiated out behind the scenes.” Quiet talks had indeed already begun between Rusk, seeking to wed the “hare” of evacuation to the “horse” of the price the Arabs would pay, and Soviet ambassador Dobrynin, eager to reach any compromise that avoided the word “non-belligerency.” Finally, in early July, Gromyko and Goldberg reached an agreement that stipulated prompt withdrawal “in keeping with the inadmissibility of the conquest of territory by war,” and upheld each party’s right “to maintain an independent national state of its own and to live in peace and security.” UN intervention would be sought in solving the refugee and free passage problems.28

  The agreement appeared to please nobody. Nasser objected to the absence of a clear reference to withdrawal to the June 4 lines, and to the suggestion of even indirect mediations with Israel. “I cannot accept this,” he told the Soviets. “If I did, I could not return home; I could not even face my daughters.” The Israelis, for whom even the Latin draft had been insufficiently specific on territory-for-peace, described the agreement “not only as a physical retreat but a diplomatic backtracking to the grave situation that has existed for the last 19 years.” Eban protested, “Nothing but a husk will remain of Johnson’s principles.” By the end of the summer, even the U.S. and the USSR appeared to be distancing themselves from the accord.29

  The violence in Sinai escalated, meanwhile, climaxing on October 20 in the sinking of the Israeli destroyer Eilat—a quarter of its crew was killed—by an Egyptian missile. Israel retaliated by shelling Egypt’s principal oil refineries at Suez and setting them ablaze. Sporadic fighting also broke out at various points along the Jordan River. War, much more than a negotiated settlement, seemed near. But the very threat of renewed regional conflict provided a fillip to diplomacy as the Security Council again took up the Middle East.

  Success, Goldberg realized, lay in language that intimated both Israel’s desire for total peace in return for less than all the territories and the Arabs’ demand for complete withdrawal in return for at most nonbelligerency. The démarche, Goldberg’s last before resigning over differences with Johnson on Vietnam, required weeks of intensive discussions. To sway the Israelis, Walt Rostow suggested “we lean against them just enough to keep their thinking from becoming too quickly set in the concrete of their current extended territorial possessions”—to which McPherson warned, “We would have to push them back by military force to accomplish a repeat of 1956; the cut-off of aid would not do it.” But having resisted Eisenhower’s pressure tactics during Suez, Johnson refused to arm-twist the Israelis. At most he was willing to delay arms shipments to Israel, while urging Eshkol to be “flexible, patient, discreet and generous.” As for the Jordanians, “our main purpose must be to let him [Hussein] down as gently as we can from his present conviction that you must pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him,” Bundy advised the president. “A formula that is good enough for Kosygin is good enough for Hussein.” America could scarcely influence the other Arab delegations, all of which were looking to Egypt’s lead. In peacemaking, as previously in war, Nasser held the key.30

  “This is merely an Israeli resolution camouflaged as an American one,” Mahmou
d Riad, arriving in New York, protested to Goldberg. “It does not even give us the minimum of erasing the traces of the June aggression.” Goldberg responded with several concessions to Egyptian sensibilities, including reference to the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and to a UN “representative” who would “establish contacts” and “promote agreement,” rather than a mediator who would facilitate talks. Peace was promised for the Middle East, and territorial integrity and security for all states in the area, without specifying peace with, or recognition of, Israel. Even a non-American sponsor for the resolution, Britain, was found. Finally, only one great stumbling block remained: the extent of Israel’s withdrawal—whether from “territories occupied in the recent conflict” or “the territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

  Ultimately, through untiring efforts by Goldberg and Caradon, the Egyptians were persuaded that “territories” indeed meant all the territories—the French and Arabic versions of the text both retained the definite article—while the Israelis were contented by fact that the official English-language version remained obscure. Thus, on November 22, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242 “Concerning Principles for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Middle East.”31

  Israel accepted the resolution, albeit begrudgingly, as did Jordan. Nasser’s response was more equivocal. While endorsing the UN’s decision, he reiterated the three no’s to his National Assembly, reminding it: “That which was taken by force will be regained by force,” and told his generals, “You don’t need to pay any attention to anything I may say in public about a peaceful solution.” And yet, secretly, he signaled the Americans his openness to a nonbelligerency accord with Israel “with all of its consequences.” Iraq and Syria rejected the resolution entirely, denouncing it as “a deception of the people, a recipe for failure,” as did the Palestinians, incensed by their exclusion from the text. The PLO, which would approve 242 only twenty years later, declared in 1967: “unresolved, the Palestinian problem will continue to endanger peace and security not only in the Middle East, but in the entire world.”32