Ron Forthofer: Revisiting the
Six Day War
By Ron Forthofer
Special to PalestineChronicle.com
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, an
event that dramatically changed the Middle East. As a result
of the war, Israel occupied Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian
territories. The ongoing occupation of Palestinian and Syrian
lands remains a source of conflict and suffering forty years
later. In addition, controversy still swirls around the war
itself.
Initially Israel said that it had been attacked and that its
survival was at stake. However the evidence clearly shows that
Israel began the fighting when its air force attacked Egypt on
June 5th. Israel’s sneak attack essentially destroyed the
Egyptian air force while Egyptian planes were still on the
ground.
Since both U.S. and Israeli intelligence services confidently
predicted that Israel would quickly win a war against the
combined Arab forces, the claim about Israel’s survival being
at risk was quite a stretch. Israeli General Matityah Peled,
chief of the logistical command during the 1967 war, was even
more blunt in March 1972: “Since 1949 no one was in any
position to threaten the very existence of Israel. Despite
this, we continue to nurture the feeling of inferiority as
though we were a weak and insignificant people struggling to
preserve our own existence in the face of impending
extermination.” Also in March 1972 General Ezer Weizmann,
former Commander of the Israeli Air Force and Chief of
Operations in 1967, claimed there was “no threat of
destruction,” but that the attack was justified so that Israel
could “exist according to the scale, spirit and quality she
now embodies.”
In yet another 1972 interview, Mordechai
Bentov, a former member of the Israeli ruling coalition during
the June war, said: “This whole story about the threat of
extermination was totally contrived and then elaborated on
afterwards to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.”
Confronted with this evidence about the Israeli attack, many
now argue that the attack was preemptive and prevented an Arab
attack. Leading up to the Israeli attack, both sides were
engaging in brinkmanship with many provocations particularly
along the Israeli-Syrian border. On May 22nd, Yitzak Rabin,
Israel’s Chief of Staff, met with Moshe Dayan, Israeli
military legend. According to Rabin, Dayan critiqued the
Israeli Cabinet and Army saying: “The nature and scale of our
reprisal actions against Syria and Jordan had left Nasser with
no choice but to defend his image and prestige … thereby
setting off a train of escalation in the entire region.” The
U.N.’s General Odd Bull, chief of the U.N. forces in the
Middle East, said: “it was quite clear the military
establishment, including the intelligence services, badly
wanted a showdown with the Arabs.”
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser took several steps to
reduce the threat of an Israeli attack against Syria. He
ordered the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from the
Egyptian side of the frontier with Israel. Little noted is
that Israel immediately rejected repeated requests to allow
the UNEF to take up positions on its side of the frontier.
Nasser also moved large numbers of Egyptian troops into the
Sinai. Israel then began a large-scale mobilization of its
reserves. Nasser subsequently said the Straits of Tiran were
closed to Israeli flagships and to ships carrying oil and
weapons bound for Israel. Israel had not sent a flagship
through the straits in nearly two years, but it did receive
Iranian oil shipped through them. However Israel could also
import oil through its port at Haifa. U.S. diplomats worked to
resolve this crisis, and the Egyptian vice-president was to
meet with President Johnson on June 7th. Dean Rusk, the U.S.
Secretary of State was bitterly disappointed by the Israeli
attack. He said: “They attacked on a Monday, knowing that on
Wednesday the Egyptian vice-president would arrive in
Washington to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran. We
might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the
Strait, but it was a real possibility.”
Despite these moves by Nasser, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba
Eban wrote in his autobiography “Nasser did not want war; he
wanted victory without war”. James Reston of the New York
Times wrote from Cairo on June 4th that: “Cairo does not want
war and it is certainly not ready for war.” In 1968 Yitzak
Rabin said: “I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two
divisions he sent to the Sinai in May [1967] would not have
been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew
it and we knew it.” In 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Begin
admitted: “In June, 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian
army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was
really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves.
We decided to attack him.” Reinforcing the position that Egypt
was not prepared for war with Israel, Egypt then had 50,000 of
its crack troops tied down in Yemen.
Given these doubts about Israel’s stated reasons, why did
Israel attack? Was it to deny Nasser a political victory and
to crush the idea of Arab unity? Or was the intent to destroy
Arab weapons and forces? In a 1976 interview Moshe Dayan said
the attack on Syria was due to Israelis’ greed for Syrian
land. It is likely that all three of these reasons played some
role in the decision to attack. However, regardless of the
reason, in July 1967 Gen. Yigal Allon, then deputy prime
minister for the Labor Party, created a plan to solidify
Israel’s occupation of key parts of the West Bank and to
prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state. This
Allon Plan, slightly expanded, has basically been implemented
in the West Bank, making daily life almost impossible for
Palestinians and leading to horrific violence and terrible
losses for both Palestinians and Israelis.
The Israeli occupation of Arab lands, particularly of the West
Bank and Gaza, has been brutal. The fact that the occupation,
with all the subsequent violations of the Geneva Conventions,
continues after 40 years provides a severe indictment of the
world community. The U.S. is particularly guilty through its
almost blind support for Israeli policies and aggression.
Through their actions, the U.S. and Israel are saying that
international conventions do not apply to them. They have
taken us back to the law of the jungle where might makes
right. Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not confront
these two rogue nations and thus allows this awful situation
to fester and to grow worse. Unless and until human rights and
international law are respected, there will be no peace in the
Middle East, and it is likely the violence will spread.
-Ron Forthofer ran for Colorado 2nd
the Nov 2000 election.
Congressional District in