User:Ykantor/Sandbox/Israel1967-Nasser- Attack Israel

The Arab crowds wanted a war. (Mutawi) p. 111

Nasser, for his own political ends, who had been instrumental in ratcheting up the tension over Palestine in the run up to the war. Shair, p. 144

Before the war

1967

According to Shlaim, the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967 was the result of a crisis slide. President Nasser appeared to challenge Israel to a duel but most observers agree that he neither wanted nor expected a war to take place. What he did do was to embark on an exercise in brinkmanship which went over the brink.

Who would win

According to the KGB's deputy resident in Washington at that time, no one in Moscow had any doubt that Israel would be quickly defeated"

"there reportedly were Soviet estimates that the Arab armies could pursue a protracted war" Golan1990p66

Moscow's assumption that Israel was too weak to launch a pre emptive strike was proven wrong". Nizameddin1999p26

The Kremlin estimated mistakenly, as if turned out – that Israel was militarily weak...Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Soviet leadership operated under the illusion that Arab armed forces could easily repel any Israeli offensive and defeat the IDF on the battlefield. Brezniev1967

Washington, May 26, 1967. The C.I.A estimate:

5. The Israelis face dismaying choices. Surprised and shaken by Nasser's action, they failed to take the instant military counteraction which might have been most effective. If they attack now they will face far more formidable opposition than in the rapid campaign of 1956. We believe that they would still be able to drive the Egyptians away from the entrance to the Strait of Tiran, but it would certainly cost them heavy losses of men and materiel. We are not sure that they have sufficient stockpiles of ammunition and equipment for a war lasting more than three or four weeks, and it is possible that they would not embark upon a major campaign without prior assurances from the US of adequate resupply.

6. But the alternative for the Israelis is perilous. To acquiesce in the permanent closing of the Strait of Tiran would constitute an economic and political setback from which no early recovery would be foreseeable. The Israelis would expect, correctly we believe, that the Arabs over the long run would be encouraged to undertake new and still more dangerous harassment. We are inclined to believe that unless the US and other major powers take whatever steps are necessary to reopen the Strait, the Israelis will feel compelled to go to war.

- The British intelligence erred and underestimated / overestimated the Israeli military strength. HughesJackson2008p236

A new phase started at 13 may 1967

The situation entered a new phase when on 13 May 1967 Nasser received a Soviet intelligence report which claimed that Israel was massing troops on Syria's border.(Mutawi) Although Nasser verified that the report was false,

The Soviet-inspired false ‘information’ was clearly responsible for the sudden change in the Egyptian president’s strategy on 13 May 1967, as he himself testified. The line of complete abstention from entering confrontation with Israel (followed since Israel withdrew from Egyptian territory in 1957) changed to his being drawn into a fresh confrontation, without preparation, on the basis of false information received from the Soviet Union.(Govrin)

Egypt

The UNEF evacuation

The Egyptian general told Rickeyh that it was imperative that UAR forces occupied the strategic positions of Sharm el Seikh

The straits blockage

"…of the straits closure, especially Israel's near total dependency on oil from Iran via the Red Sea." Shalom2006p97

Egypt planned to attack Israel at 27 May 1967

During the night of 26/27 May...the Soviet ambassadors in Tel Aviv and Cairo roused the two heads of government from their beds with urgent messages...urged Israel to settle the conflict by non military means...advised Nasser that the Israelis had alleged that Egypt was about to attack Israel, perhaps even dawn the next morning...urged Egypt not to go to war.BaileyBenjaminMillerMangold

Nasser knew that operation Dawn was already set to be launched in only few hours time, at sunrise. His mood soured since he realized that Israel had accessed Egyptian secrets and compromised them. Nasser hurried to an emergency meeting at the headquarters, and told Amer about the exposure of Dawn and and asked him to cancel the planned attack.(Oren)

As late as 25 May, therefore, everything was set for an attack at daybreak on 27 May.(Shlaim, Louis)

It was only one hour before the planned strike on 27 May that Said’s army liaison officer told him the attack had been aborted after a U.S. request to the Soviets. Shazly was not informed of the shift to a defensive posture until about 1 june. Although Nasser reiterated that Egypt would not strike first, tanks and planes in the Sinai were fully fuelled and not concealed, as if they were going to attack (Shlaim, Louis)

Senior Egyptian officials testimonies:

"the testimony of Egyptian Chief of Staff General Mahmoud Fawzi to the effect that an Egyptian air attack was scheduled for 27 May, and that the relevant orders had already been signed by Abdel Hakim Amer when Nasser ordered its cancellation on 26 May" Gluska

According to then Egyptian Vice-President Hussein el-Shafei:"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." Bowen 2003, p. 57 ,Hussein el-Shafei interview, Cairo, 15 December 2002

the testimony of Bassiouny, who recalls that when the Washington Embassy reported that Secretary of State Dean Rusk had information that Egypt was going to start the war, Amer wrote on the cable, “Shams, it seems there is a leak.”...

Abdel Magid Farid, however, suggests that Nasser did actually consider the first strike option until early on 27 May, when he was hauled out of bed at 3 by the ambassador from the Soviet Union (his only source of arms and spare parts) and warned not to precipitate a confrontation. (Shlaim, Louis) ( Farid was the secretary-general of the Presidency, a cabinet level post, from 1959 to until Nasser's death http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5195412&fileId=S0020743800065971) )

-According to Sami Sharaf, Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, ...the decision (the closure of the Tiran straits) was known (to Nasser) to make war inevitable" .ShlaimLouis2012p64

" Zakaria Muhieddin A member of the original Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and a longtime associate of Nasser's, Muhieddin was vice president and theoretically the third man in the regime after Amr, who was the first vice president. He felt that Nasser had acted in a very uncharacteristic fashion. The president had said repeatedly that war would come at a time of his, or Arab, choosing, not someone else's. This would be when the Arab military forces were ready. The UAR armed forces had not in fact been ready to take on Israel, and even though Marshal. Amr had absolute authority over the armed forces, Nasser had his ways of knowing what was really going on. The problem had been one of quality rather than quantity. The best third of the army had been tied down in Yemen, and the remainder was poorly trained and unprepared. That plus the economic situation made it a poor time to take on Israel. Nasser knew this. He had acted like a man playing poker. He was bluffing, but a successful bluff means your opponent must not know which cards you are holding. In this case Nasser's opponent could see his hand in the mirror and knew he was only holding a pair of deuces. All of this was out of character. In the early days of the revolution Nasser had been the most cautious member of the RCC; that was why he was its leader. He was forever saying, after they had taken a decision, "Let's think this over until tomorrow." After he came to power he gradually changed. He ceased consulting his colleagues and made more and more of the decisions himself. His tendencies in this regard may have been accentuated by diabetes, which Muhieddin said sometimes leads people to make rash decisions. That was the only rational explanation for his actions in 1967. "Parker1993p79

Did Israel Want the Six Day War?, By Michael B. Oren: "But it was the Egyptians, not the Israelis, who were preparing “to go.” As Israeli intelligence had warned, the leadership in Cairo had authorized a major military attack against Israel’s port city of Eilat and other strategic targets in the Negev.60 The plan, code-named Asad, was to be put into operation the following day, Saturday, May 27, and would have gone ahead had not Johnson hotlined the Kremlin, passing along Eban’s warning of an impending Egyptian attack. The result was a visit to Nasser at three in the morning by Soviet Ambassador Dmitri Pozhdaev, who conveyed Moscow’s stern objection to any initiation of war by Egypt. Nasser promptly canceled the attack.61" . sources: 60. Egyptian sources describe the planned attack in detail. See Murtagi, Attests, p. 81; Fawzi, Three Year War, pp. 93-94, 113-126; Baghdadi, Memoirs, p. 274; Heikal, Explosion, pp. 573-583. See also Haber, Today, p. 186. 61. ‘Asam Daraj, The Officers of June Speak: How the Soldiers of Egypt Died in the Aggression of 1967 (Cairo: al-Manar al-Jadid, n.d.). [Arabic] At the same time, Nasser ordered internal army security beefed up to prevent future intelligence breaches.

with Operation 'Dawn,' the orders for which were to be issued directly from Amer's own house. Despite doubts expressed by Murtagi, Fawzi, and Sidqi Mahmoud, by May 25 everything was ready for an attack at daybreak on May 27. Nasser and his enemies: Foreign policy decision making in Egypt on the eve of the Six-day war, Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 2005) p. 32

will to attack first

accusation that Moscow had prevented an Egyptian move and and caused Nasser to be taken by surprise when Israel launched its pre-emptive strike" Golan1990p63

Egyptian military steps

on May 26, two Egyptian Air Force MiG-21s overflew the reactor on a photographic reconnaissance mission, and interceptors and missiles failed to bring them down. The Israelis linked the mission to a possible preemptive strike on the plant (Morris) (Mutawi)

In the Sinai, there was deep confusion; as late as 5 June officers were still not sure whether their goal was offensive or defensive. Nasser is said by some officers to have added to the chaos by his constant interference in military plans. (Shlaim, Louis)

On approximately 20 May, Saad alDin Shazly, commander of a Special Forces unit in the Sinai, was given an offensive mission plan involving an advance through Israel.(Shlaim, Louis)

the situation entered new phase with Russia's announcement...on 13 May... this evoked an immediate response in Nasser... the following day he announced the mobilization of the Egyptian army. 2 divisions were ordered into Sinai. (Mutawi)

Nasser intentions

Nasser decisions) many others came abruptly, bearing the marks of an impulsiveness bordering in recklessness: the surprise announcement of an arms deal with Czechoslovakia in Sept 1955, the dramatic nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956, the hurried dispatch of Egyptian soldiers to Yemen in Sept 1962, and the sudden break with a decade of prudence in May 1967 . Ferris2012p12

Nasser suspected his Syrian allies of wanting to drag him into a war with Israel (Shlaim, Louis)

On 13 May 1967 Nasser received a Soviet intelligence report which claimed that Israel was massing troops on Syria's border. Nasser responded by taking three successive steps which made war virtually inevitable (Shlaim, Louis)

In 1966 Nasser himself had declared that if Israel developed an atomic bomb, Egypt’s response would be a “preemptive war’ directed in the first instance against the nuclear production facilities.27 On May 21, Eshkol had told the cabinet Defense Committee that Egypt wanted to close the straits and “to bomb the reactor in Dimona. (Morris)

He was subsequently to imply- as during his speech of May 26 to Arab trade union leaders-that the whole sequence of moves, culminating in the closure of the straits, had been planned to trigger war with Israel, with the ultimate aim of “liberating Palestine." (Morris)

The [Egyptian] general staff changed the operational plan four times during may 1967; One even envisioned an offensive into Israel to take the southern port of Eilat".(Pollack)(

as may drew to a close Nasser's declarations against Israel became increasingly extravagant and he taunted Israel to open hostilities. (Mutawi) p. 94

Nasser raised the ante on the high stakes game by expanding the scope of the crisis. ... "The issue now at hand is not the Gulf of Aqaba, the Straits of Tiran or the withdrawal of the U.N.E.F., but the rights of the Palestinian people...the agression that took place in 1948". In other words, the battle that was to ensue was the complete eradication of Israel as a state. Sicker2001p223

In 1976, General Abdal Muhsin Murtaji, an officer since 1937 and the commander of the Sinai front in 1967, wrote a bold, scathing indictment of the Egyptian military in his book Al-Fariq Murtaji Yarwi Al-Haqiqa (General Murtaji Narrates the Truth)... The failed union with Syria and the debacle in Yemen forced Nasser to find an outlet for his failures, which he found through the 1967 war (FAO Journal,VOLUME VIII, NUMBER 3 ,September 2004, page 14,http://www.faoa.org/resources/Documents/pub27.pdf)

In April 1967, after meeting with Nasser,... Lucius Battle, reported back to Washington... that the Egyptian leader was anxious to create a forein policy crisis in order to deflect mounting internal pressure against his regime. CashmanRobinson2007 p. 181

"In 1967 when Egypt's leader took the necessary actions to restore his position as champion of the Arab cause in Palestine, he accomplished little more than precipitating an Israeli attack. IsmaelPerry2013p4

Nasser's steps made the war inevitable

maoz p.98 The existing literature...most of the blame for the outbreak of the war is placed on Nasser and the Egyptian decision making process. A small share of the blame is put on the Soviet.. ...Israel's conduct during the process get fairly good marks by most analysts... ...Israel is absolved of the blame for its escalation. Israel faced an existential chalenge and handled the crisis well

... We must examine the roots of the Israeli Syrian crisis

p. 111 it is most important to reiterate the conclusion of most scholarly accounts of this crisis: this was a process of unwanted escalation, which everybody wanted to prevent, but all were responsible for making this escalation unavoidable.

---

• Many / commonly

1. -Many commentators treat it (the six day war) as the locus classicus of anticipatory action in self defence. Szabo2011p147.
2. "Terence Taylor…wrote in 2004…that "many scholars" considered Israel to have "conducted the (1967) action in anticipatory of self-defense". Quigley2012p135
3. Both the decision to demand the removal of UNEF from Sinai and the decision to close the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping- commonly accepted as the point where war became inevitable-" Ferris2012p286
4. "(P. 111) It is generally assumed that the June war was fought because in May Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. (P. 113) on 23 May 1967, knowing that it might very likely provide Israel with the trigger it needed to launch a war, Nasser made the fateful step of closing the Straits of Tiran. Bickerton2009P111

• Arab sources:

1. "Amer raised the stakes once more. On May 21, he demanded the closing of the Strait of Tiran to Israeli navigation. When Nasser alerted him that Israel might consider this blockade a casus belli, Amer retorted that his troops in Sinai could not sit on their hands as Israeli flags flashed before them, and that if his wish was not granted, they might act recklessly, i.e., shoot Israeli vessels".Kandil2012p77
2. - Egyptian intelligence estimates supplied to Nasser some months earlier to the effect that the removal of UNEF would lead to war. Golan1990p63
3. In the end of May 1967, Nasser claimed in a public speech to have been aware of the Straits of Tiran closure implications: "Taking over Sharm El Sheikh meant confrontation with Israel. It also means that we ready to enter a general war with Israel. It was not a separate operation" (Shlaim2012p63)
4. "On 26 May he declared, ‘The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel’.”
5. -The same day Hasanayn Heyical, a close associate of Nasser, wrote an article in Al-A ahram explaining why war with Israel was inevitable: ‘The closure of the Gulf of Aqaba... means first and last that the Arab nation represented by the UAR has succeeded for the first time, vis-a-vis Israel, in changing by force a fait accompli imposed on it by force
6. "Following Nasser's speech of May 26, one of his close allies, Mohammed Heykal, wrote in the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram that an armed clash between Israel and Egypt was `inevitable' " (gilbert, Israel – A History,a chapter of this book)
7. -According to a book review, the Egyptian historian, Muhammad al-Jawadi cite [1]:
   1. General Aboul-Aez as Egyptian Air Force Chief: "Eleven days before the 1967 Six-Day War, Nasser asked Aboul-Aez, then governor of Aswan Province, for his opinion of the Egyptian Air Force. The general candidly warned Nasser on several tactical issues why Egypt could not wait for an Israeli first strike, and that Nasser’s saber rattling would lead to an Israeli response"
   2. General Mohammed Sadek—Director of Military Intelligence : "Amer and Nasser both felt that by sending a massive amount of forces ((into Sinai))would scare the Israelis and create a massive feint that would drive Tel-Aviv towards a course of action."
8. -According to Sami Sharaf, Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, ...the decision (the closure of the Tiran straits) was known (to Nasser) to make war inevitable" .ShlaimLouis2012p64
9. -in fact Sadat reports that he said: 'If we close the Straits war will be a one hundred per cent certainty. On 23 May Egypt ... The Russian Ambassador in Cairo woke Nasser at 3 a.m. on 27 May and begged Egypt to hold back (Hopwood2002p73)
10. ...For reasons known only to him, Nasser single-handedly dismissed all rational analysis of the situation and took a series of irrational decisions. The compounded effect of these decisions was that events acquired a momentum of their own, and it became impossible for Nasser to slow down or back out. The result was that war broke out with the Israeli preemptive strike on 5 June, leading to a quick Egyptian debacle. (Fahmy2013p19)
11. "the prominent historian and commentator Abd al-Azim Ramadan,...—Nasser— repeated its mistakes when it decided to expel the international peacekeeping force from the Sinai Peninsula and close the Straits of Tiran in 1967. Both decisions led to a state of war with Israel, despite the lack of military preparedness" (PodehWinckler2004p105)
12. Jihan El-Tahri "The day after he said he would close the Straits of Tiran...Nasser knew that closing the Straits to Israeli shipping meant war was inevitable" (El-Tahri1998p89)
13. Mutawi
    1. To Israel this is the most dangerous aspect of the current situation — who can impose the accomplished fact and who possesses the power to safeguard it. Therefore it is not a matter of the Gulf of Aqaba but of something bigger. It is the whole philosophy of Israeli security. Hence I say that Israel must attack.”7 He went on to say that the international situation was such that Egypt would have to allow Israel to strike the first blow and concluded, ‘Let Israel begin. Let our second blow then be ready. Let it be a knockout.’5’ " (Mutawi, p. 95 )
    2. On 25 May Israel declared total mobilization..the Israeli economy ground to a standstill. ..soon Israel open a war because ...Israel could not tolerate such a total stoppage for very long (mutawi p. 111
    3. any military analyst should have recognized that the arrival of large numbers of Arab troops and Iraqi planes in Jordan would inevitably make Israel anxious swiftly to act against Jordan before these new forces were fully deployed. Therefore, Jordan should have realized that it was absolutely essential to avoid giving Israel any excuse to launch an offensive against it before those troops had reached their battle stations". mutawi p. 150

• General

1. - these considerations suggest that despite the seemingly inevitability of war after June 1, had Nasser indeed pursued an alternative strategy in the final days of the crisis, war might have been averted. Brooks2008p99
2. - Nasser responded by taking three successive steps which made war virtually inevitable: he deployed his troops in Sinai near Israel's border, he expelled the United Nations Emergency Force from Sinai, and, on 22 May, he closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping.Woods-Shlaim1996p219
3. - it was Nasser who, for all intent and purposes, fired the first shot on 22 May 1967 by illegally closing the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. In doing so, he put the match to the barrel of gunpowder. ShlaimLouis2012p54.
4. -Nasser responded on 18 May, demanding full withdrawal of UNEF forces. After that, the rush to war was unavoidable'....(4 June) Iraq joined the Egyptian= Jordanian defense alliance and other front line states- Algeria, Libia, the Sudan and Kuwait- reportedly began mobilizing troops to join the coalition. Gordon2012p68
5. -The dynamics of the situation- the mass psychosis, concentration of forces and Egyptian blockade of the Tiran straits- rendered war inevitable- Gluska2007page-xv
6. -When Nasser insisted on the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces from Sinai on I 6 May fears of a major attack appeared to be confirmed. Nasser ... His determination to crush the Israelis was further demonstrated by his blockade of the Straits of Tiran on 23 May after the UN forces had left, which made an Israeli response unavoidable'; hence the surprise Israeli attack on Egyptian and Syrian airfields. YoungKent2013p265
7. -Yet in taking this step, Nasser and other Egyptian leaders understood that it would be considered a casus belli by Israel. ... Indeed, a number of senior Egyptian officials rightly concluded at the time that closing the strait to Israel made war inevitable.Tessler1994p392
8. -... Nasser's decision to blockade the Straits of Tiran seemed to have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Shalom2012p123
9. -By demanding recall of the UN Emergency Force, declaring a blockade of the Straits of Tiran, and moving his army into Sinai, Nasser had made "the war nobody wanted" almost inevitable Kerr1975p273
10. -Later on at the ... In the course of the discussion it became known that the closure of the straits applied specifically to tankers transporting oil to Israel. The General Staff rapidly came to the conclusion that this Egyptian step required Israel to declare war at once, without waiting for further developments. Assuming that war was inevitable, the DMI was immediately requested to. RoiMorozov2008p126
11. -It just so happened that the bluff President Gamal Abdel Nasser commenced on May 13, 1967, ensured that the inevitable war would commence sooner rather than later. By the time Nasser decided, and from then on, all the rest was byplay. Hammel2001p29
12. -In closing the strait to Israeli shipping, Nasser turned an increasingly dangerous situation in the Middle East into a full-blown diplomatic crisis and probably made a third Arab-Israeli war inevitable.Kaufman1996
13. -UNEF was not an international security guarantee, but a trip-wire. Removal of that trip-wire signaled Israel that it was on its own. War was inevitable; the only question remaining was who would strike first. Dombroski2007p67
14. "It was obvious to everyone, and Nasser was no exception to this, that the withdrawl of UNEF would eventually lead to a war". Rikhye1980p179
15. (p. 147) The sequence of events that led to the Israeli pre-emptive sttrike did indeed create a situation where an armed attack seemed unavoidable. (p. 148 )
16. -On 23 May Nasser seized Sharm al-Sheikh and closed the Straits of Tiran. War looked inevitable.. Shapira2007p309

Nasser crossed another red line

-Avi Shlaim|author2=William Roger Louis,Laura M. James ,The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences, 2012, p.70

Nasser’s small concessions do not suggest that he was making a concerted effort to avoid war. The appearance of reasonableness kept the international community from turning against him, while every delay was to his advantage because it gave Egypt rime to complete its military preparations and coordinate with the other Arabs. Israel, by contrast, could not afford to sustain total mobilization for long. Nasser made use of belligerent rhetoric to escalate the situation still further, by making the issue in his public speeches about the rights of Palestine — and thus, implicitly, the existence of Israel. On 22 May, he suggested that peace could not mean ignoring “the rights of the Palestinian people” and announced to the Jews: “you are welcome, we are ready for war. Although all of these threats were explicitly conditional on Israeli aggression, this could have been small comfort when Nasser was also stating that “the existence of Israel is in itself an aggression. Moreover, Nasser crossed another of Israel’s “red lines” on 30 May, when he signed a Joint Defence Agreement with Jordan, which Shimon Peres said was the key factor in Israel’s decision to fight because it raised the prospect of encirclement: “we were flow surrounded by a sort of banana filled with Russian weapons." ShlaimLouis2012p70

chance of war- Nasser ,Heykal, Hussein

-The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences books.google.com/books?isbn=1107002362 Avi Shlaim, ‎William Roger Louis,Laura M. James - 2012 - ‎H According to two of those present at the 22 May meeting, Nasser said then that the blockade would make war 100 percent certain – although in his speech of 23 July, Nasser claimed his actual estimate at that time was 50 percent to 80 percent. ShlaimLouis2012p64

-http://www.sixdaywar.co.uk/nassers_challenge-martin-gilbert.htm Following Nasser's speech of May 26, one of his close allies, Mohammed Heykal, wrote in the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram that an armed clash between Israel and Egypt was `inevitable. It would come because of the inexorable logic of the situation:

- Jeremy Bowen,Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East, 2012,pages=66,67; (p.66 )"He tried to convince Amer and Nasser that Israel was too strong and that they were risking a disaster. Don't worry, they told him. We know what we're doing. Nasser and Hussein were fatalistic. Both of them said, apparently sincerely,that whether, the battle was lost or won, they could not shy away from the fight. Arab dignity demanded nothing less. (The CIA commented that 'dignity has unquestionably become an overriding priority in the scale of Arab considerations'.)...(p.67)... Hussein, though, was not deluded by his new fans ... 'I knew that war was inevitable. I knew that we were going to lose." Bowen2012p66

(Hussein) regarded Nasser as "behaving like a mad man" in closing the straits of Tiran and thus precipitating the war". ShlaimLouis2012p16

- Hazem Kandil,Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt's Road to Revolt, 2012,

"Amer raised the stakes once more. On May 21, he demanded the closing of the Strait of Tiran to Israeli navigation. When Nasser alerted him that Israel might consider this blockade a casus belli, Amer retorted that his troops in Sinai could not sit on their hands as Israeli flags flashed before them, and that if his wish was not granted, they might act recklessly, i.e., shoot Israeli vessels". Kandil2012p77

-"discussed closing the Strait of Tiran to Israeli Shipping...Nasser cautioned that this action would increase the likelihood of war to 50 percent, but his senior military commanders assured him that the armed forces were prepared for war". Gawrych p.8

Alert before the war

"The crisis itself prompted the general staff to take precautions, and both Anwar as Sadat and Gamasy note that Nasser was certain by 2 June that Israel would attack and so placed Egyptian forces in the Sinai on alert on 3 June". Pollack-p62

Jordan

Israel was desperate to avoid war with Jordan. It wanted only to fight Egypt and, before the outbreak of the hostilities, made several secret overture to Jordan (pollack, p 297)

"Jordan ranked low in Israeli priorities. The conquest of the West Bank was an unintended consequence of the war." Shlaim 2012, p. 233

The fighting on the eastern front was initiated by Jordan, not by Israel. King Hussein got carried along by a powerful current of Arab nationalism. On May 30 he flew to Cairo and signed a defense pact with Nasser. On June 5, Jordan started shelling the Israeli side in Jerusalem. This could have been interpreted either as a salvo to uphold Jordanian honour or as a declaration of war. Eshkol decided to give King Hussein the benefit of the doubt. Through General Odd Bull, the Norwegian commander of UNTSO, he sent the following message the morning of June 5: "We shall not initiate any action whatsoever against Jordan. However, should Jordan open hostilities, we shall react with all our might, and the king will have to bear the full responsibility of the consequences." King Hussein told General Bull that it was too late; the die was cast. Shlaim, 2000, pp. 243–244.

"On June 5 on 9:30AM, Jordanian artillery started shelling Israeli ...west Jerusalem. This could have been interpreted either as a salvo to uphold Jordanian honor or as a declaration of war. Eshkol decided to give King Hussein the benefit of the doubt. Through General Odd Bull, the Norwegian commander of UNTSO, he sent the following message the morning of June 5: "We shall not initiate any action whatsoever against Jordan. However, should Jordan open hostilities, we shall react with all our might, and the king will have to bear the full responsibility of the consequences." King Hussein told General Bull that it was too late; the die was cast." ShlaimLouis2012p45

King Hussein, acting on erroneous reports sent to him by Gamal Abdel Nasser about Egypt "success" on the battlefield, and ignoring a warning from Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol to stay out of the fighting, ordered his army to begin an artillery barrage of Israeli positions. CashmanRobinson2007p155

inevitably

any military analyst should have recognized that the arrival of large numbers of Arab troops and Iraqi planes in Jordan would inevitably make Israel anxious swiftly to act against Jordan before these new forces were fully deployed. Therefore, Jordan should have realized that it was absolutely essential to avoid giving Israel any excuse to launch an offensive against it before those troops had reached their battle stations". mutawi p. 150

American pressure on Israel

on May 26...For more than a week diplomats shuffled fruitlessly back and forth among Jerusalem, New York, Washington, and Cairo. Washington, though still pressing Israel to hold its fire

Israeli considerations

Israeli military considerations

In the first days of June ... as did the sense that the Arab states might launch an attack within days There was particular fear of a limited Jordanian or Jordanian-Egyptian offensive against Eilat.

On 25 May Israel declared total mobilization..the Israeli economy ground to a standstill. ..soon Israel open a war because ...Israel could not tolerate such a total stoppage for very long (mutawi p. 111

any military analyst should have recognized that the arrival of large numbers of Arab troops and Iraqi planes in Jordan would inevitably make Israel anxious swiftly to act against Jordan before these new forces were fully deployed. Therefore, Jordan should have realized that it was absolutely essential to avoid giving Israel any excuse to launch an offensive against it before those troops had reached their battle stations". mutawi p. 150

Israeli diplomatic and political steps

"In private, Eshkol had sent Nasser secret messages urging deescalation. In public, he continued to assert Israel’s peaceful intentions, call for international mediation, and avoid criticism of Egypt. This reinforced the existing image of Egyptian military superiority — if Israel wanted to avoid war, it was presumably because Israel thought it would lose"

Nasser seems to have been encouraged by the fact that Israeli rhetoric condemning the Tiran blockade and subsequent developments was relatively mild. Even the fact that the United States counselled restraint was interpreted as an attempt to protect Israel from Arab wrath — and therefore as further evidence of her need for protection.

Although Eshkol denounced the Egyptians, his response to this development was a model of moderation (Mutawi)

the leaders of the confrontational states were caught by complete surprise when Israel took their threats at face value (Shlaim,Louis)

Nasser appeared to challenge Israel to a duel (Shlaim,Louis)

"In May–June 1967 Eshkol's government did everything in its power to confine the confrontation to the Egyptian front. Eshkol and his colleagues took into account the possibility of some fighting on the Syrian front. But they wanted to avoid having a clash with Jordan and the inevitable complications of having to deal with the predominantly Palestinian population of the West Bank.

The fighting on the eastern front was initiated by Jordan, not by Israel. King Hussein got carried along by a powerful current of Arab nationalism. On May 30 he flew to Cairo and signed a defense pact with Nasser. On June 5, Jordan started shelling the Israeli side in Jerusalem. This could have been interpreted either as a salvo to uphold Jordanian honour or as a declaration of war. Eshkol decided to give King Hussein the benefit of the doubt. Through General Odd Bull, the Norwegian commander of UNTSO, he sent the following message the morning of June 5: "We shall not initiate any action whatsoever against Jordan. However, should Jordan open hostilities, we shall react with all our might, and the king will have to bear the full responsibility of the consequences." King Hussein told General Bull that it was too late; the die was cast. Shlaim, 2000, pp. 243–244.

Aftermath

The USA

William B. Quandt, "once hostilities were under way, the United states imposed en embargo on new arms agreements to all countries of the Middle East, including Israel. The embargo remained in force through the end of the year, despite urgent Israeli requests to lift it."

Israel- peace for territories

Shlaim: The Israeli decision was to be conveyed to the Arab nations by the United States. The U.S. was informed of the decision, but not that it was to transmit it. There is no evidence of receipt from Egypt or Syria, and some historians claim that they may never have received the offer.(Shlaim 2001, p. 254.)

Egypt

Shlaim; Louis : Anwar Sadat implied that Nasser used this deliberate conspiracy in order to accuse the United States as a political cover-up for domestic consumption (Shlaim; Louis (2012) p. 75)

"meet his discharged field marshal on June 15 (1967)....defamation Campaign that Amer’s men launched against the president, ... Nasser was presented as a psychologically disturbed would be political virtuoso who always failed to measure up to his image of himself. And it was the presidents personal grandiosity that brought about the May 1967 escalation against Israel and the subsequent defeat. The argument went as follows: sensitive to criticism from other Arab leaders, Nasser embarked on a dangerous game of brinkmanship to maintain his prestige, failing to recognize that he was unwittingly playing into Israel’s hands. The defeat ‘as therefore presented to Egyptians as the result of a reckless adventure intended to raise Nasser’s standing." kandil p. 85

The Soviets

the Soviet leader held Nasser solely responsible for this catastrophe. He claimed that the reckless closing of the Tiran Straits to the passage of Israeli ships provoked Israel to conduct a wider military campaign against its Arab neighbors. brezniev1967

The war explanation- Israeli Vs Arab versions

kent-young-p265-israel-arab

Israeli version

The first formal statement of the Arab states’ intention to bring about the destruction of Israel was made in a joint statement at the summit and confirmed by the first Palestinian National Council in early 1964. Guerrilla attacks on Israel, conducted from Syria, emphasized the insecurity of Israeli farmers around the Sea of Galilee. Moreover, with a more radical Ba’athist government in Damascus from February 1966, the support and training given to Palestinian groups operating from Jordan increased. In August 1966. after a fierce skirmish when Israeli forces were attacked around the Sea of Galilee, growing Arab hostility led to Syrian threats to strike targets within Israel. Israel was under siege and its retaliatory raids were failing to provide a deterrent. its J insecurity was heightened in November 1966 by the Egyptian— Syrian mutual defence pact In April 1967, when the Syrians began shelling Israeli settlements the Israeli air force was called into action and clashed with its Syrian counterpart. It began to look as if Israel was about to face a major military challenge.

On 13 May the Soviets falsely claimed that Israeli troops were amassing on the Syrian frontier. When Nasser insisted on the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces from Sinai on 16 May fears of a major attack appeared to be confirmed. Nasser was keen to respond to the Soviet information designed to lead to Cairo joining with Damascus in a combined assault on Israel. His determination to crush the Israelis was further demonstrated by his blockade of the Straits of Tiran on 23 May after the UN forces had left, which made an Israeli response unavoidable— hence the surprise Israeli attack on Egyptian and Syrian airfields. t

The Arab Version

The Arab view of the war’s origins is very different. It says that after 1965, having received offensive arms (which?), the Israelis were determined both to crush Arab resistance to the illegal occupation of Palestine and to ensure that further expansion of the state of Israel took place(any proof.?) With these goals in mind they sought the right moment to seize an opportunity to justify an attack on their Arab neighbours. Their military superiority would be total if an air strike was made in a surprise assault on Arab airfields, which would enable them to exploit the absence of 70000 Egyptian troops in the Yemen.

In 1964 the Israelis were enabled to justify attacks on their neighbours in retaliation against Palestinian freedom fighters, which were far in excess (not true?) of retaliatory raids and enabled Israeli Defence Forces to undertake operations in preparation for the more serious conflict that was being planned (not true?). The Israelis also began to attempt provocative settlements(not true?) in the Demilitarized Zone bordering Syria. Clashes with Syria became more serious in 1966 as air and ground forces on both sides became involved.(Syrian responsibility for the clashes?) In particular. the Israelis tried to prevent Syrians accessing the waters of Lake Galilee (not true?) from its northern shore, and attacked Arab workers trying to complete works that would regain the vital water of the River Jordan now being used for Israeli irrigation projects. (this water were allocated to Israel by a U.N plan. Syria did not need the water)) Significant military battles were fought in August 1966 and April 1967. On the latter occasion six Syrian MiGs were shot down by Israeli fighters. Barely a month later, General Rabin announced that it was about time Israeli forces marched on Damascus.(if Syria won't stop attacks)

When the Soviets confirmed that Israeli troops were amassing on the Syrian border on 12 May. Nasser believed the danger to Syria was so acute that something had to be done to try and deter further Israeli aggression. In an effort to deter the Israelis by aiding the Syrians. which he could barely afford to do with his commitments in the Yemen. Nasser asked for the UN forces to be partially(not true) withdrawn, thus exposing part of Israel to attack from Egypt. When the UN insisted that all of its forces or none would have to be withdrawn Nasser reluctantly agreed to the former and then decided to try and regain the Arab position in the Straits of Tiran by closing them to Israel on 23 May. Had the Israelis also been keen to avoid war they would have accepted the troops on the Israeli side of the border . The Arab world now tried to mobilize to deter an Israeli attack on Syria but more hawks came into the government in Tel Aviv. The Arab efforts were therefore in vain and the Israelis launched an unprovoked (not true) attack on 5 June.

irrational

"the prominent historian and commentator Abd al-Azim Ramadan, In a series of articles published in AlWafd, subsequently compiled in a hook published in 2000, Ramadan criticized the Nasser cult, …. The events leading up to the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, as other events during Nasser’s rule, Ramadan wrote, showed Nasser to be far from a rational, responsible leader. … His decision to nationalize the Suez Canal was his alone, made without political or military consultation. … The source of all this evil. Ramadan noted, was Nasser’s inclination to solitary decision making… the revolutionary regime led by the same individual—Nasser— repeated its mistakes when it decided to expel the international peacekeeping force from the Sinai Peninsula and close the Straits of Tiran in 1967. Both decisions led to a state of war with Israel, despite the lack of military preparedness" (PodehWinckler)

Nasser had taken the decision to request the UN forces to leave Sinai without consulting anybody in the Foreign Ministry. In fact, he had simply instructed the Minister of War to pass the request on to General Rikki. the chief United Nations observer. General Rikki refused to comply with the Egyptian demand unless it was transmitted to him by the Secretary General of the United Nations. Then Nasser decided to ask instead that the UN forces be withdrawn only from specific locations. ...For reasons known only to him, Nasser single-handedly dismissed all rational analysis of the situation and took a series of irrational decisions. The compounded effect of these decisions was that events acquired a momentum of their own, and it became impossible for Nasser to slow down or back out. The result was that war broke out with the Israeli preemptive strike on 5 June, leading to a quick Egyptian debacle. (Fahmy)