by Jeremy Bowen
Eban
Israel’s generals knew how strong the IDF was and how weak were its enemies. They were angry and frustrated when the politicians vetoed an immediate military strike. They were incandescent when the foreign minister, Abba Eban, was sent to Washington to see whether the Americans could find a way out short of war. The generals were left fuming and putting the finishing touches to war plans they believed they would soon be using.
Abba Eban was familiar to television viewers across the world. His colleagues sometimes found him irritating and self-important, especially when he was enjoying the ‘glory of the television cameras’. Since 1948 he had been the public face of Israeli diplomacy as their first ambassador to the UN and then ambassador to Washington. He started life as Aubrey Solomon in Cape Town in 1915, but he grew up in Britain where, via a classical education in London and triple first in Classics and Oriental languages at Cambridge he became a tall, cultivated and plump man. Eban’s Zionist credentials were as strong as his academic ones. When he was two, his mother translated the Balfour Declaration, which was Britain’s promise to the Jews of a state in Palestine, into French and Russian. Eban became an active Zionist, but his first visit to Jerusalem in 1942 was as a major in the British army, the liaison between the Special Operations Executive and the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
Eban arrived in Washington on Thursday 25 May after stopping over in Paris and London. In Paris President Charles de Gaulle dismissed Eban’s argument that Nasser had started hostilities by blockading the straits. He told him that Israel must not fire the first shot. In London Prime Minister Harold Wilson sat him in the Cabinet Room at Number 10, lit his pipe and was much more reassuring. Both countries continued arms deliveries to Israel. A couple of days earlier Britain had come up with an idea for solving the crisis. With the Americans they would organise an international naval force to open the Straits of Tiran. The mere threat of it, they hoped, might persuade Nasser to back down.
Eban did a lot of thinking on the seven-hour flight across the Atlantic. More than anything, he wanted to avoid a rerun of 1956, when Israel was branded as an aggressor and forced to give back what it had taken. If Israel was to fight, it had to be with American consent. At the airport the biggest crowd of reporters and TV cameramen that he had ever seen wanted to know whether he was asking American soldiers to risk their lives for Israel – a big issue at a time when the US had half a million soldiers in Vietnam. No, he told them, all he wanted was for Washington to respect Israel’s right to defend itself.
The Israeli ambassador Avraham Harman drove in with Eban the Mayflower hotel in downtown Washington DC. In the car he gave him a personal, top-secret message from Eshkol. Eban read it and had ‘one of the severest shocks’ of his life. He said nothing. When they got to his suite, ‘he paced up and down … read the cable again, flung it on a table, as he used to do with papers which utterly displeased him, and in a tone of command completely unnatural for him he snapped: “Read it.”’ The telegram said Egypt would attack within twenty-four hours. Eshkol ordered him not to contact Israel to discuss the message. It was too risky. Instead he was to ask President Johnson immediately for ‘practical, repeat practical measures’ to deal with the ‘anticipated explosion’. Johnson must declare publicly that any attack on Israel would be considered an attack on the United States. Eban, at the airport, had just told the world’s press that that was one thing he was not going to do.
While Eban was crossing the Atlantic the IDF’s generals and Yigal Allon, their leading ally in the cabinet, put Eshkol under huge pressure. Allon was minister of labour, Rabin’s old commander in the Palmach and a national hero ever since his exploits in the war of independence. The generals and Allon made up a formidable military lobby, straining at the leash, utterly confident that Israel would win. On 24 May General Hofi, the head of operations in the General Staff, summed up their mood. ‘We have no problems on the ground. As for the Jordanians, what they do depends on how well we screw the Egyptians.’ Tanks, artillery and troops were everywhere they were needed. Above them was the air force. Even Egypt’s poison gas did not worry Hofi. According to British intelligence sources Egypt had already carried out around a dozen attacks in Yemen in 1967, using phosgene and mustard gas, killing some 800 people, including many women and children. Hofi dismissed the threat. The air force would knock them out – the flyers were ‘our best gas mask’. The only worry was that the longer they left it, the bloodier it would be. They convinced Eshkol to cable Eban that Egyptian tanks were repositioning for attack. Rabin, who had gone back to work after his breakdown, rewrote it to make it sharper. It was going to be a ‘total, repeat total struggle’.
Icily, Eban suggested Rabin was still suffering from ‘nervousness’ after his collapse. It was ‘a hypochondriac cable … [lacking] wisdom, veracity and tactical understanding’. Eban judged correctly that Nasser wanted victory without war. He thought Rabin was pushing him to ask Johnson for promises that he could not deliver so Israel would not be blamed for going to war. As a diplomat, he wanted to persuade Johnson to offer support, not to embarrass him by putting the US on the spot. But the military men were getting impatient. They wanted action, not talk.
Israel had wind of an Egyptian plan, called Operation Lion, to thrust into the Negev desert to cut off Eilat, which would be bombed. It was a pet scheme of Field Marshal Amer’s, which he had been pushing Nasser for since the start of the crisis. After a succession of false starts, vetoed by Nasser, the latest time for the attack was 27 May. As soon as Nasser knew what Amer wanted he cancelled it. He intended to heed warnings from Washington and Moscow about not shooting first. Lieutenant-General Amer Khammash, Jordan’s chief of staff, was in Cairo just before Eban went to Washington. He concluded that the Egyptians had no meaningful offensive plans. They were ‘playing a political game rather than preparing for war … and did not expect there would be a need to fight a war’.
Washington
As the US Marine helicopter took off from Andrews Air Force Base, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was uneasy. He was on his way back to the White House after spending the day at EXPO 67 in Montreal. President Johnson knew Abba Eban was in town wanting public support. Johnson was going to have to go carefully. The USA was not the unchallenged hyperpower that it became by the end of the century. The Vietnam war was eating away at his and the US military’s view of their own power. In Moscow they had what seemed a threatening and dynamic enemy. Johnson’s own instincts were deeply pro-Israel, but he wanted to know what exactly America’s obligations were and how much danger Israel really faced. The last thing he needed was another war.
During the ten-minute flight to the South Lawn of the White House, he asked for a compilation of every statement every president had ever made on Israel. He knew that in 1957, as part of the package of measures that accompanied Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai desert after its last war with Egypt, President Eisenhower had promised to keep the Gulf of Aqaba open. Promises that public were not easy to bury. On top of that, there was a more general assurance that the US would never allow Israel’s destruction. Johnson needed to know whether Israel’s existence really was at risk.
Johnson had the nasty feeling that the US might have to deal with the crisis without any of its major allies – just like Vietnam, where only Australia was contributing troops. When they landed on the South Lawn, Walt Rostow went straight to his office in the basement. He was LBJ’s closest adviser on foreign affairs. They spoke almost every hour of every working day. The president would buzz down or phone and Rostow would hurry up the stairs to the Oval Office. Waiting in Rostow’s office for the president to return were Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State and Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence, who was carrying the latest intelligence report. It analysed information from Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service, that Israel was at a ‘turning point’. Egypt and Syria, Mossad claimed, were ready to strike.
The CIA rejected the Israeli warning as not ‘a serious est
imate of the sort they would submit to their high officials. We think it is probably a gambit intended to influence the United States to do one or more of the following: A) provide more military supplies B) make more public commitments to Israel C) approve Israeli military initiatives D) put more pressure on Nasser.’ Twenty minutes after the helicopter from Andrews had landed, Rostow passed the Mossad document and the CIA’s assessment up to the Oval Office. He scrawled a note to Johnson. Israeli anxieties and the desire of Nasser and the USSR to pick up prestige made for an ‘explosive’ mix.
Before they went in to see the president, Helms said he stood by what his people said, even though it was very different to what Israel was saying. Rusk sighed. ‘Well, I just want to tell you this … if it’s a mistake, it’s a beaut.’ Upstairs, in the Oval Office, Johnson sat in his rocking chair at the head of a coffee table in front of the fireplace. The other men sat down on cream sofas on either side. The table had a sliding drawer, containing the most high-tech phone 1967 had to offer. Close to his desk were two tall glass-faced cabinets, housing news agency tickers. Next to them were three black and white televisions, one for each network, encased in polished cabinets.
The president was not convinced. Too many over-optimistic reports from Vietnam had made him cautious about intelligence. He asked Helms and General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had joined them, to have the information ‘scrubbed down’. In the course of that day, the CIA, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the British all reassessed what was happening in the Sinai. They all concluded that the Egyptian deployments were defensive. Israel was not showing any signs of going on the offensive, but as more intelligence reports stressed in the next few days, it was capable of attacking with little or no warning if it wanted to do so. According to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, ‘The only difference between the British and us was how long it would take the Israelis to beat the Egyptians. I have forgotten whether we thought it could be done in seven days and they in ten, or vice versa.’ The CIA version concluded that Israel would beat all its Arab neighbours in about a week. Richard Helms summed it up: ‘If the Israelis attacked first, it was going to be a short war. If the Egyptians attacked first, it was going to be a longer war, but there wasn’t any question about who was going to win it…’
The CIA also analysed Nasser’s behaviour. Moscow was not telling him what to do. Senior Soviet officials insisted that Nasser had acted on his own when he closed the gulf. The CIA’s conclusions, written on 26 May 1967 and not declassified until the end of 2000, still stand up. Nasser, it said, was responding to Israel’s threats to Syria. It was ‘highly unlikely’ that he wanted war. He had not changed his view (shared by the CIA and his allies in Moscow) that the Arabs could not beat Israel. But Nasser was gambling that his army could resist an Israeli offensive, as long as he could get enough men and machines into the Sinai in time. Nasser was hoping for a big political victory to relieve the pressure at home. The Egyptian economy was in bad shape and relations with the US were disastrous. There could also have been a ‘fatalistic conclusion that a showdown with Israel must come sooner or later, and might best be provoked before Israel acquired nuclear weapons’.
Nasser, the CIA judged, had won the first round. Israel faced ‘dismaying choices’. It had failed to take ‘the instant military counteraction which might have been most effective’. It would still win a war quickly, but with heavy losses. War was not attractive for Israel, but neither was doing nothing. Allowing the permanent closure of the Straits of Tiran was an ‘economic and political setback from which no early recovery would be foreseeable’. The CIA warned that unless the US and other major powers reopened the straits, the Israelis will ‘feel compelled’ to go to war.
President Johnson went to bed knowing that Israel had a serious problem, but satisfied that its existence was not in danger. Just before he finished for the evening he wrote to Harold Wilson in London that ‘we are not inclined to be as alarmed as they appear to be’. The biggest danger now to US interests was Israel taking matters into its own hands, a point he planned to get over to Eban, who wanted to see him the next day. ‘We are also urging upon Eban the real danger of any pre-emptive action by the Israelis which would create an impossible situation in the Middle East as well as in the US.’
Eban and his team went for cocktails and dinner at the State Department, in Foggy Bottom, close to the River Potomac in northwest Washington. So many reporters and cameramen were waiting in the State Department lobby on C Street that Eban was hustled in to the building through the basement.
As Secretary of State Dean Rusk poured the drinks he warned Eban that the president would not be offering him a NATO-style guarantee. Eban wasn’t surprised: ‘I did not get the impression that the US had ever decided to enter a new and complicated defence alliance between cocktails and the first course of a dinner party.’ But over the dinner table, on the roof of the State Department on a balmy midsummer night, the Israelis had their own warnings for Rusk. Nasser had ‘declared war’ when he blocked the straits. It was a time bomb and in Israel, the mood of the cabinet was ‘apocalyptic’. The choice was to ‘surrender or fight’.
Just after 1:30 p.m. the next day, President Johnson summoned his main diplomatic and military advisers. What was he going to tell Eban? He needed advice and wanted it fast. The Texan looked round the table. ‘Along about sundown I have to bell this cat. I need to know what I am going to say.’ President Johnson was reassured that Israel was in no danger it could not handle. But Johnson was America’s shrewdest politician, who dominated Capitol Hill before he became John F. Kennedy’s vice-president. He knew he had to give Eban something to take home to the Israeli cabinet.
But deciding what took time. The Israelis had an anxious afternoon, waiting for the White House to call. Ephraim Evron, the number two at the Israeli Embassy, had known Johnson since he was a senator. He went to the White House to fix a time for Eban’s appointment. In the Oval Office Johnson told him that he could not do anything without the approval of Congress, ‘otherwise, I’m just a six foot four friend Texan’. With the help of Britain and other maritime nations, the straits could be opened, but Israel must not try any ‘unilateral action that will cause her great damage’. Eban was still being stalked by news teams. To avoid them the plan was that the foreign minister and Ambassador Harman would go into the White House through the diplomats’ entrance. But they turned up at the wrong gate, where the guard would not let them in. The Israeli foreign minister preserved his dignity as the guard phoned into the executive mansion that ‘some guy out here by the name of Eban says he is supposed to see the President’.
The Israelis were finally ushered into the Oval Office at 7:15 p.m. Both sides were keyed up. Johnson wanted to finesse his way between his genuine commitment to Israel and his desire to keep the United States out of another shooting war. Eban had to take something home for the impatient generals. He opened by saying that there had never been a moment like this in Israeli history. Nasser was trying to strangle Israel, which would fight and win rather than surrender. An Arab attack was coming soon. What was the United States going to do? Would it honour its commitment to keep the straits open? What was happening with the plan for an international maritime force to open the straits?
Johnson told him not to worry. Israel was not in imminent danger. If the Arabs attacked, the Israelis ‘would lick them’. You can tell the cabinet, the president said, that ‘we will pursue vigorously any and all possible measures to keep the strait open’. But Israel must not initiate hostilities. Johnson then spoke with what the official White House note-taker said was ‘emphasis and solemnity’. Israel would not be alone unless it decides to go it alone. He repeated the sentence to make sure they understood. Johnson and his aides hoped that the carefully composed formula would stop the Israelis from launching a pre-emptive strike. The president used all the skills he had acquired in a lifetime of political persuasion. He was pushing for Congressional support. ‘What I
can do, I do,’ he told them. He handed over some of his notes. Copy them if you like, he said.
Then it was Eban’s turn to speak slowly and precisely. What was the US doing to take action in the straits? Nasser would think twice about stopping a ship if he saw it had a British or American flag. Looking at Johnson he asked, ‘I would not be wrong if I told the Prime Minister that your disposition is to make every possible effort to ensure that the Strait and the Gulf will remain open to free and innocent passage?’ One word came from Johnson. ‘Yes.’ And don’t worry about an Egyptian attack, he said again. An attack from Egypt was not imminent. If it came, ‘you’ll whip hell out of them’.
At dinner that evening in the executive mansion Johnson thought he had given the Israelis, if not exactly what they wanted, then at least enough to hold them back. He was exultant, crowing, ‘They came loaded for bear, but so was I! I let them talk for the first hour and then I finished it up in the last fifteen minutes. Secretary McNamara said he just wanted to throw his cap into the air, and George Christian [the White House Press Secretary] said it was the best meeting of the kind he had ever sat in on.’
Eban left immediately for home. On the way back he stopped off at the Waldorf Towers hotel for two hours, where he met the US ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, who deliberately tried to damp down what the president had said. Don’t forget, he said, that Johnson said he needed the support of Congress before he did anything. That meant that Eban should assume that the presidential commitment was conditional – and Washington would tolerate no surprises.
Eban and his team arrived back in Tel Aviv late on the evening of Saturday 27 May. They were driven straight to the prime minister’s office in Tel Aviv where the cabinet had started what turned into an all-night session. The army was ready to attack the following morning. Rabin, who was there too, warned Moshe Raviv, Eban’s political assistant, that not going to war was going to be ‘very difficult’. Eban urged the ministers to respect the American request for more time to work on opening the straits. After a fierce debate, nine ministers voted for Eban’s proposition. Nine voted for immediate war. Overnight, there was another message from President Johnson warning against pre-emptive action. The next morning, the 28th, the cabinet agreed to give the Americans another two weeks.