Six-Day War 40th anniversary

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Alan

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There has hardly been a Middle East peace plan in the past 40 years -- including the current Saudi version -- that does not demand a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967. Why is that date so sacred? Because it was the day before the outbreak of the Six-Day War in which Israel scored one of the most stunning victories of the 20th century. The Arabs have spent four decades trying to undo its consequences.

In fact, the real anniversary should be now, three weeks earlier. On May 16, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser ordered the evacuation from the Sinai Peninsula of the U.N. buffer force that had kept Israel and Egypt at peace for 10 years. The United Nations complied, at which point Nasser imposed a naval blockade of Israel's only outlet to the south, the port of Eilat -- an open act of war.

How Egypt came to this reckless provocation is a complicated tale (chronicled in Michael Oren's magisterial "Six Days of War") of aggressive intent compounded with miscommunication and, most fatefully, disinformation. The Soviet Union had reported urgently and falsely to its Middle East clients, Syria and Egypt, that Israel was massing troops on the Syrian border for an attack. Israel desperately tried to disprove this charge by three times inviting the Soviet ambassador in Israel to visit the front. He refused. The Soviet warnings led to a cascade of intra-Arab maneuvers that in turn led Nasser, the champion of pan-Arabism, to mortally confront Israel with a remilitarized Sinai and a southern blockade.

Why is this still important? Because that three-week period between May 16 and June 5 helps explain Israel's 40-year reluctance to give up the fruits of that war -- the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza -- in return for paper guarantees of peace. Israel had similar guarantees from the 1956 Suez war, after which it evacuated the Sinai in return for that U.N. buffer force and for assurances from the Western powers of free passage through the Straits of Tiran.

All this disappeared with a wave of Nasser's hand. During those three interminable weeks, President Lyndon Johnson did try to rustle up an armada of countries to run the blockade and open Israel's south. The effort failed dismally.

It is hard to exaggerate what it was like for Israel in those three weeks. Egypt, already in an alliance with Syria, formed an emergency military pact with Jordan. Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco began sending forces to join the coming fight. With troops and armor massing on Israel's every frontier, jubilant broadcasts in every Arab capital hailed the imminent final war for the extermination of Israel. "We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants," declared PLO head Ahmed Shuqayri, "and as for the survivors -- if there are any -- the boats are ready to deport them."

For Israel, the waiting was excruciating and debilitating. Israel's citizen army had to be mobilized. As its soldiers waited on the various fronts for the world to rescue the nation from its peril, Israeli society ground to a halt and its economy began bleeding to death. Army Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, later to be hailed as a war hero and even later as a martyred man of peace, had a nervous breakdown. He was incapacitated to the point of incoherence by the unbearable tension of waiting with the life of his country in the balance, knowing that waiting too long would allow the armies of 100 million Arabs to strike first his country of 3 million.

We know the rest of the story. Rabin did recover in time to lead Israel to victory. But we forget how perilous was Israel's condition. The victory hinged on a successful attack on Egypt's air force on the morning of June 5. It was a gamble of astonishing proportions. Israel sent the bulk of its 200-plane air force on the mission, fully exposed to antiaircraft fire and missiles. Had they been detected and the force destroyed, the number of planes remaining behind to defend the Israeli homeland -- its cities and civilians -- from the Arab air forces' combined 900 planes was . . . 12.

We also forget that Israel's occupation of the West Bank was entirely unsought. Israel begged King Hussein of Jordan to stay out of the conflict. Engaged in fierce combat with a numerically superior Egypt, Israel had no desire to open a new front just yards from Jewish Jerusalem and just miles from Tel Aviv. But Nasser personally told Hussein that Egypt had destroyed Israel's air force and airfields and that total victory was at hand. Hussein could not resist the temptation to join the fight. He joined. He lost.

The world will soon be awash with 40th-anniversary retrospectives of the war -- and exegeses on the peace of the ages that awaits if Israel would only to return to lines of June 4, 1967. But Israelis are cautious. They remember the terror of that June 4 and of that unbearable May when, with Israel in possession of no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel's imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051701976.html

Very interesting and something many conviently forgot
 
The Arabs should just accept the fact of Israel, nothing less is acceptable.
 
going there for a holiday in july cant wait :)
 
Time Flies. Still remember reading the newspaper and seeing the pics of the boots left in the desert as the Egyptians ran away,
 
nivek said:
going there for a holiday in july cant wait :)
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Great country. Particularly if you enjoy history. My wife's cousin took us to a place called Beit Shean (sp?). Biggish Roman town. Turned out that it was where Saul met his end. Saul - first king of Israel. Father of Jonathon. Davids mentor and latterly totally paranoid fruitcake.
 
Israel needs to get out of the illegally occupied territories and stop persecuting the Palestinians if there is ever to be peace there.
 
rwenzori said:
Israel needs to get out of the illegally occupied territories and stop persecuting the Palestinians if there is ever to be peace there.
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There is nothing the Israelis would rather do than quit Gaza and the West Bank. Every time they do (and they quit Gaza recently, again) some twit lobs rockets over the border.

Regarding the conditions in those places, the Israelis never asked them to go there, they were encouraged by their own people. This Israelis wished for Arabs to remain. Presently the Arabs and the ultra-conservatives Jews hold sway in the knesset because of the perpetually hung parliment that Israel experiences. Never has any Palistinian refugee camp received 1c in aid from their Arab neighbours. Not one cent.

Jerusalem is particularly beautiful. It's much cooler than the surrounding countryside because of it's altitude. Buildings are required to be faced with Jerusalem stone and the effect is a strikingly beautiful city.
 
rwenzori said:
Israel needs to get out of the illegally occupied territories and stop persecuting the Palestinians if there is ever to be peace there.
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The Arab agenda is perfectly clear : mass genocide by wiping Israel off the face of the Earth.
Peace and land is not what they want - extermination is what they're after.

"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
--Arab League Secretary General Azzam Pasha, May 15, 1948, the day five Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel, one day after the nation declared its independence

"The Arab nations should sacrifice up to 10 million of their 50 million people, if necessary, to wipe out Israel ... Israel to the Arab world is like a cancer to the human body, and the only way of remedy is to uproot it, just like a cancer."
--Saud ibn Abdul Aziz, King of Saudi Arabia, Associated Press, Jan. 9, 1954

"I announce from here, on behalf of the United Arab Republic people, that this time we will exterminate Israel."
--President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, speech in Alexandria, July 26, 1959

"We shall never call for nor accept peace. We shall only accept war. We have resolved to drench this land with your (Israel's) blood, to oust you as aggressor, to throw you into the sea."
--Hafez Assad, then-Syrian Defense Minister, May 24, 1966, who later became Syria's president.

"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."
--President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, May 27, 1967, nine days before the start of the Six-Day War.

"The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear -- to wipe Israel off the map."
--President Abdel Rahman Aref of Iraq, May 31, 1967

"All countries should wage war against the Zionists, who are there to destroy all human organizations and to destroy civilization and the work which good people are trying to do."
--King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, in a speech in Uganda, Beirut Daily Star, Nov. 17, 1972

"The battle with Israel must be such that, after it, Israel will cease to exist."
--Libyan President Mohammar Qadaffi, al-Usbu al-Arrabi (Beirut) quoted by Algiers Radio, Nov. 12, 1973
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Paul_S said:
The Arab agenda is perfectly clear : mass genocide by wiping Israel off the face of the Earth.
Peace and land is not what they want - extermination is what they're after.
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Why don't you try getting a quote that's less than 30 years old?

And while we're at it : nice strawman, I don't see a single quote by a Palestinian in there.
 
Xarog said:
Why don't you try getting a quote that's less than 30 years old?
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"this is not a country of humans. These are animals and a group of gangs, and this country must be wiped off the face of the earth."
August 2006, Palestinian Government Spokesman, Dr. Ghazi Hamad

If you think the Arab's goals of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth has changed in the last 30 years then you're terribly naive.
Maybe they have softened their language a bit because it's not working to their advantage but they're still lobbing rockets and bombs in the presence or absence of peace treaties/agreements which shows that there has been no change of heart.
 
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