released 28 aug 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* Through late 1966 and into 1967, tensions continued to rise between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Although nobody really wanted a war, events began to spiral out of control, and by late May 1967 war was inevitable. The only question was who would hit first.
* King Hussein did not get any sympathy for the disastrous confrontation with the Israelis at Samu from the Egyptians and Syrians. They held the incident up as an illustration of his weakness and called for his downfall. Hussein tried to make contact with them and bury their differences, calling for a pan-Arab meeting in Cairo on 15 December to talk things out. They met, but the session consisted of nothing but non-stop recriminations. Relations between the Jordanians on one hand, and the Syrians and Egyptians on the other, reached a low.
Hussein was particularly bitter at Nasser. Nasser had once been seen as a man of great vision and grand goals, and now there seemed to be little more to him than pointless games and trickery. Jordanian propaganda blasted Egypt's timidity in confronting the Israelis. Nasser was feeling insecure on that score and began to consider ways of restoring face. His long-time friend and rival for power, Field Marshall Amer, was pushing for throwing UNEF out of the Sinai and closing the Straits of Tiran to the Israelis again. Nasser hesitated, as well he might, since the Israelis had made it perfectly clear that closing the Straits of Tiran would be regarded as an act of war.
For the moment, Nasser made do by bitterly attacking the Americans. US Ambassador Battle reported dryly that a speech made by Nasser on 22 February 1967 "gathered up all the anti-American themes of the past few years and rolled them into one." Battle regarded Nasser as off his head and believed he would do something dramatic in the near future.
* The Syrians remained quiet for a time after signing their military cooperation treaty with Egypt in November, but in mid-January the artillery duels over the northern border with Israel began to ramp up again, along with more attacks on Israel by Palestinian infiltrators. The Soviets seemed to waffle, providing the Syrians with plenty of support but trying to restrain them to an extent. The USSR wanted to keep the pot simmering in the Middle East but not let it boil over. In the unstable environment, this was an unrealistic, foolish, and downright dangerous policy: the Soviets could encourage a war or discourage it, but they couldn't do anything in between those extremes.
The Israelis grew agitated. The US State Department made it clear to the Israelis that if a certain, not unlimited, number of bad things happened to the Syrians, who one State Department official called "sons of bitches" to his Israeli counterparts, there wouldn't be much complaint from Washington. The problem was that Moscow wouldn't be as cheerful about the matter.
Despite the fear of the Soviets, the Israelis would only restrain themselves for so long. On 1 April 1967, Palestinian infiltrators blew up a water pump at a kibbutz on the Lebanese border. That was the last straw for Eshkol, since one of his major accomplishments as a public official had been to set up the national water system, and attacking the water system was making things personal. He told Rabin that it was time to punish the Syrians.
The punishment came on 7 April. That morning, the Syrians fired on two Israeli tractors entering the DMZ, the IDF fired back, and by early afternoon a battle was in progress. Eshkol still hesitated to authorize air strikes, but in mid-afternoon he gave the go-ahead. The IDF-AF attacked Syrian installations and tangled it up with the Syrian Air Force. Two MiGs were shot down over the Golan and then the IDF-AF chased the Syrians back to the sky over Damascus. There was a huge dogfight over the city, involving an estimated 130 aircraft. Four more MiGs were shot down and Israeli Mirages did a victory loop around the city to rub it in.
Syrian propaganda claimed a victory but it was an absolutely mad lie -- everyone in Damascus had a front-row seat to the air battle over the city. The Syrians had been given a good thrashing, and despite the Syrian-Egyptian mutual defense pact, the Egyptians had done nothing about it. Jordanian propaganda broadcasts were quick to point out this uncomfortable fact.
Nasser sent his prime minister, Sidqi Suliman, and the commander of the Egyptian Air Force (EAF), General Sidqi Mahmud, to Damascus, where they publicly condemned the Zionists -- as well as the Americans and the reactionary royalist Arab regimes -- while working behind the scenes to persuade the Syrians to stop goading the Israelis. The Syrians had no intention of doing so. The humiliation handed out by the Israelis only seemed to make them more obstinate, and the border fighting and raids continued.
In the meantime, Hussein was beginning to feel very isolated, and the Samu raid led him to worry that the Israelis were thinking of taking the West Bank from him. It was time to try to mend fences with Nasser again. Hussein toned down the anti-Nasser propaganda; at Hussein's invitation, at the end of April Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad visited Jordan. However, the meeting did not come close to bridging the gap between the two nations, and within days the propaganda was as poisonous as ever.
* In short, the pot was now coming to a full boil. The Syrians hadn't taken the hint on 7 April, and Eshkol was under public pressure to do something more decisive about them. David Ben-Gurion was strongly critical of Eshkol, sometimes well beyond what the facts justified. It was like unjust reprimands from a father and Eshkol was deeply wounded.
Eshkol had no deep roots in military matters and relied heavily on Yitzhak Rabin in that domain, but though Rabin was pushing for hitting Syria much harder, Eshkol was reluctant to go down that path. However, Eshkol's options were narrowing. He asked Washington to accelerate sales of tanks and combat aircraft to Israel as a means of showing that America backed the security of Israel, but Lyndon Johnson wouldn't have it. When Eshkol told an American reporter that Israel expected the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean would assist Israel if attacked, setting off indignant broadcasts all over the Arab world, the US State Department quickly announced that the Sixth Fleet would remain neutral if a new Mideast war broke out.
The Israelis did manage to get UN Secretary General U Thant to denounce Syrian provocations against Israel at a press conference on 11 May, but the only result was a round of squabbling in the UN general assembly. Rabin publicly warned the Syrians that Israeli patience was running out, and reluctantly Eshkol backed him up. The Syrians were unimpressed and kept up the provocations.
Now the Soviets helped turn up the temperature on the boiling pot. On 29 April Anwar Sadat, the Speaker of the Egyptian National Assembly and a close confidant of Nasser's, went off on a trip through several Eastern Bloc nations that ended up in Moscow. High-level officials there told Sadat that Soviet intelligence had determined the Israelis were massing for an attack on Syria, to jump off sometime from 16 to 22 May.
No such decision had been made in Israel at that time, and to this day nobody is exactly sure why Soviet leaders gave Sadat information with such potentially explosive consequences. Many theories have been proposed that give the Soviets various devious motives for it, but it was probably just a bureaucratic bungle, a misreading of KGB intelligence reports. In any case, Sadat got back to Cairo in the small hours of the morning on 14 May and went straight to Nasser's house to relay the intelligence provided by the Egyptians.
Nasser already knew, the Soviet embassy having passed the intelligence on to him, and Nasser and Field Marshall Amer were up discussing it. Nasser paid no attention to any claims the Syrians might make about what the Israelis were up to, but receiving such information from the Soviets was another matter. Egypt had to do something. Nasser conferred with Egyptian military leadership about the matter the next day.
Nasser still didn't believe that he could win a fight against the Israelis. He knew that the Egyptian military was in a wretched state of preparedness, with most of the troops badly trained and much of the equipment in poor condition. Worse, many of the officers had been chosen for political reliability and had few or no military leadership skills. For all that, there was still a faction in the Egyptian military that thought Israel could be beaten simply by superior numbers. Nasser wasn't so sure, but he had to do something.
The final decision was to mobilize forces and move into the Sinai. The whole thing would be a propaganda exercise, done without secrecy to send a warning to the Israelis, with the subtext that Egypt had no real intention of attacking. Nasser wanted UNEF to consolidate in Gaza and Sharm al-Sheik. If Egyptian troops occupied Sharm al-Sheik, Egypt would have to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping or the theatrical nature of the exercise would become much too obvious. If Egypt did close the straits, the Israelis would respond. The fact that the Americans backed the Israelis was another factor that worried Nasser.
Egyptian troops moved into the Sinai that afternoon. It was all done in great haste and confusion, with few in the government or for that fact in the military having any clear idea of what was going on. It was also, by chance, Israeli Independence Day, 14 May. An Independence Day parade was performed, though without tanks or heavy weapons to make sure it didn't inflame tensions. Some military officials called it a "boy scout march".
The Soviets had already come forward to once again accuse the Israelis of preparing to invade Syria, leading once more in turn to strong denials from Eshkol and other senior officials. Eshkol suggested that Soviet Ambassador Sergei Chuvakhin go to the northern border and check for himself. Chuvakhin replied that his job was to communicate Soviet truths and not to test them. This must have made the Israelis bite their tongues; to be sure, in bureaucracies policy statements always tend to take precedence over the facts, even when the facts are obvious, but Soviet embassies always had a strong intelligence-gathering function anyway.
When Eshkol was told of the Egyptian move into the Sinai, he didn't quite know what to make of it. He knew Nasser was fond of theatrics and assumed correctly that it was all for show, and only ordered a prudent increase in the state of IDF military alert to keep an eye on events. Still, everyone was nervous. The screws were beginning to tighten.
* In hindsight, by the middle of May 1967 the fuze had been lit for another Arab-Israeli War, but at the time confusion prevailed on both sides. Although the initial Israeli reaction to the Egyptian military occupation of the Sinai was that it was probably just posturing, by 15 May Israeli military intelligence had become alarmed at the scale of the operation. Nobody would go through so much trouble and expense just for propaganda purposes. Arab rhetoric was extremely hostile, though that was nothing new. The Israelis began to quietly call up reserves while keeping their own rhetoric muted for the moment.
By this time, Nasser had learned that the reports about Israeli forces massing in the north of the country for an attack on Syria were bogus. The Egyptian leader had sent the chief of the general staff, General Muhammed Fawzi, to Damascus on 14 May to figure out what was going in Syria. Fawzi, apparently a common-sense sort, had the presence of mind to take a private airplane and fly along the border with Israeli, and informed Nasser: "There is nothing there. No massing of forces. Nothing." Furthermore, the Syrian military was not under any state of alert. The only thing that was going on in Syria was a lot of public excitement over an anti-religious article that had been published in the country's military magazine. Tens of thousands of protestors were on the streets, and the unlucky author of the article ended up in prison.
Egyptian military intelligence also obtained reports from Israeli Arabs who said there was no military buildup in northern Israel near the Syrian border. Nasser might have then concluded that his military occupation of the Sinai was pointless, but he didn't. He was getting good propaganda value out of the exercise and there was no point in publicly embarrassing himself by reversing his course abruptly. Besides, if the Israelis weren't preparing to attack Syria, then there was no immediate prospect of a war and no reason to stop. In fact, Field Marshall Amer was even considering an attack on Israel. Many of the officers below him wondered how this could be done, with the army in no good condition and many of the troops stuck in Yemen, but Amer seemed too enthusiastic to pay much attention to such petty details.
There was the matter of UNEF to attend to. On the evening of 16 May 1967, two Egyptian military officers gave the commander of UNEF in the Sinai, an Indian named General Indar Jit Rikhye, a letter requesting that UNEF withdraw from several locations in the Sinai, including Sharm al-Sheik. General Rikhye had judged Egyptian movements to this time as posturing and had not taken them very seriously, but the letter was a shock. He asked his Egyptian visitors if they were aware of the consequences of this act. One replied: "Oh yes, sir! We have arrived at this decision after much deliberation and are prepared for anything. If there is war, we shall meet next in Tel Aviv."
Rikhye was not reassured, and stalled for time. He informed his visitors that modifying the UNEF deployment in such a way was a political decision and basically had to be worked out between Nasser and the UN Secretary General, U Thant of Burma. Rikhye then telegraphed the letter to UN headquarters in New York and phoned his field commanders to tell them to stay where they were but not resort to force, even if they were evicted by the Egyptian Army.
In New York, U Thant spoke with the Egyptian ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Awad El Kony, and told him in effect that the Egyptians could not be selective in displacing UNEF. If the UN force could be moved around in the Sinai to suit the whims of the Egyptians, then its presence was meaningless. Nasser could either agree to keep UNEF in the Sinai or tell it to leave, but no half-measures would be considered. Nasser shrugged and the order quickly went to General Rikhye to get all of UNEF out of the Sinai.
U Thant didn't want a war, but he did not seriously try to convince the Egyptians that they were taking a dangerously risky move. He did speak to the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gideon Rafael, the next day, 18 May, proposing that UNEF redeploy into Israel. This notion had been floated as far back as the creation of UNEF, and the Israelis hated it. It would give very little control over the actions of the Egyptians, and some of the contingents in UNEF were from countries that were not sympathetic to Israel. Rafael rejected the idea and criticized UNEF and U Thant: "Before shooting at them at least you could have shouted at them." Rafael described U Thant as "bewildered" and "perplexed".
Early on the morning of 19 May, Rikhye told his people: "Pick it up, it's time to go." By the evening the Egyptians were in charge in the region, and in fact were trading a few shots with the Israelis. U Thant was blasted in the West for his spinelessness, but nobody made a fuss about the matter in the UN.
* The exit of UNEF kicked Israeli anxieties up another notch. The Israelis had been alarmed two days earlier, on 17 May, when two Egyptian MiG-21 supersonic fighters dodged into Jordanian airspace, turned around, lit their afterburners, and zoomed over the Israeli nuclear reactor site at Dimona at low altitude and high speed. The Israelis were extremely sensitive to threats to the reactor, and the army had gone to second-highest alert while the air force went to highest alert. Hawks in the military and government began to seriously consider hitting the Egyptians before the Egyptians struck first.
Levi Eshkol was very anxious, simultaneously ordering improvements in military readiness while counseling restraint. American President Johnson made it clear to Eshkol that the US would not look kindly on a preemptive strike against the Egyptians. Eshkol replied that Israel would try to exercise restraint, but that it would be much easier to do if Washington publicly provided security guarantees for Israel. Johnson was reluctant to do anything to inflame the crisis and really didn't have the authority to commit to such a step without Congressional approval. The effect of American waffling was that the Israelis became even more insecure and unstable.
Yitzhak Rabin feared, correctly, that Israel's refusal to take any stand against the Egyptian occupation of the Sinai only made the Egyptians bolder. He told Eshkol that the Israeli Defense Forces could beat the Egyptians, but Eshkol replied: "We pursue our diplomatic options to the end." Rabin grew more stressed. He was surviving on nicotine and caffeine.
The big question was whether Nasser was going to close the Straits of Tiran. That would be war. Nasser's reoccupation of the Sinai had gone over very well with his public, but he was reluctant to take the step of closing the straits. Field Marshall Amer assured Nasser that the Egyptian army was prepared to take on the Israelis. That tipped the balance for Nasser. On 22 May, he announced that the straits were to be closed to the Israelis. The public reaction in Egypt and the Arab world to the announcement was wildly enthusiastic. Nasser was a hero who had walked up to the Zionists and given their noses a nice hard twist.
U Thant was at a stopover in Paris on the way to Cairo on a belated mission to calm things down. When he heard the news he was so insulted that he considered going back to New York. He swallowed his anger and went on to Cairo, arriving on 23 May. U Thant and General Rikhye spoke to Nasser and high Egyptian officials that day and got nowhere, with the Egyptians proclaiming the rightness of their actions and Nasser engaging in a tirade against the Americans. Despite the bluster, Rikhye found Nasser uncertain. Rikhye observed, astutely: "I think you're going to have a major Middle East war and I think we will still be sorting it out fifty years from now." U Thant left empty-handed.
* With the closure of the straits, the pressure on Eshkol increased massively. Senior IDF generals proposed a preemptive strike, while Lyndon Johnson sent messages to Eshkol pushing restraint. Johnson did at least publicly denounce Egypt's action as "illegal" and "potentially disastrous to the cause of peace."
Eshkol's cabinet met on 23 May and was bitterly split on the issue. Foreign Minister Abba Eban managed to calm down the quarrel for the moment by raising a proposal he had received from Washington for a multinational convoy to pass through the straits in defiance of the Egyptian blockade. Eban was given time to travel to Washington and play the diplomatic card. In the meantime, the generals refined their plans and chafed. Rabin was in such a state of stress that he simply collapsed that evening. Operations chief Ezer Weizman took control in Rabin's absence. Weizman was much more of a hawk than Rabin and wanted to go forward with the preemptive strike, but much to Weizman's frustration Eshkol continued to insist on restraint.
In the meantime, Egyptian Field Marshal Amer was pushing forward on his own plan to attack Israel, codenamed OPERATION DAWN. Many senior officers were shocked at the idea. A political demonstration was one thing, real fighting was absolutely another, and any officer with military competence knew that the Egyptian army wasn't ready for a real fight. Men were being thrown into the Sinai without guns and many weren't even being fed, arguably the most basic organizational task of an army.
Nasser went along with Amer's plans for the moment. The Israelis seemed paralyzed, the Americans were doing little to back the Israelis up, and there seemed to be no reason not to continue with the game as it was being played. Egypt was riding on a bubble of excitement and everyone was being caught up in it. Nasser still worried about what the Americans might be up to behind the scenes and wanted to get clarification from Moscow on what the Kremlin thought of matters, but OPERATION DAWN moved forward. The assault would begin at daybreak on 27 May.
Israeli intelligence saw that the Egyptians were moving into an offensive posture. On the evening of 25 May, Eshkol was told that Egyptian MiG-21s had once more overflown Dimona, this time at high altitude, evading Israeli fighters and missiles. He had a tense conversation with Rabin, who had returned to work though he remained very unsteady and depressed, and Weizman. Weizman was blunt: "All the signs indicate that the Egyptians are ready to strike. We have no option but to attack at once."
* Everything hung on what Abba Eban could achieve in Washington. Not everyone in the Israeli government trusted Eban, considering him impractical, more high-flown talk than substance, but he was highly respected as an international diplomat. He took the long route to America, stopping in Paris and London first to sound out French and British leadership. French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle was curt, telling Eban directly that Israel should not start a war and making it clear that France felt little obligation to help Israel. Oddly, the French were still shipping munitions to Israel, apparently because the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, in contrast, was supportive, though he couldn't offer Israel much in the way of practical help, and was privately cautious about getting mixed up a Middle East conflict. Eban went on to New York, to be greeted with a message from Eshkol claiming the Egyptians were preparing to attack Israel. Eban was angry with the message, since he didn't believe Nasser was willing or able to attack Israel. He was wrong about Nasser's willingness, though possibly not so wrong about his ability, but in any case Eban saw the message as a hysterical ploy to get the US to commit to help Israel.
The Johnson Administration was in a state of confusion. Administration officials had played down the crisis as not much different from business as usual in the Mideast until Nasser told UNEF to get out, and then the Americans realized they had real trouble on their hands. Lyndon Johnson was on the phone to Cairo and Moscow, while his people tried to figure out how to defuse the crisis without getting the US caught up in it. Then, on 22 May, Nasser's closure of the straits threw Johnson and his people further off balance. Lucius Battle, who had just returned to the US after leaving his post as ambassador to Egypt, commented that Nasser "either has more Soviet support than we know of or he's gone slightly insane."
At the time, Washington was clinging to the proposal floated by the British called the "Red Sea Regatta" or just "Regatta", which involved sending an international convoy of ships through the Straits of Tiran to Israel as a challenge to Nasser. Feelers went out to potential participants and the idea seemed to go over well at first, but hesitations then began to emerge.
Eban met with US Secretary of State Dean Rusk in Washington DC that 25 May. Eban passed on Israel's warnings about an imminent Egyptian attack but suggested the warning not be taken too seriously. Rusk didn't, since the White House had already heard about the matter directly from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and American intelligence services had discounted it. Rusk told Eban that Nasser would be "irrational" to invade Israel, which was what Eban believed anyway.
In fact, Eban remained very calm through his discussions with Rusk, having no problems with the fact that President Johnson could not make security guarantees to Israel without Congressional approval, which was unlikely to be forthcoming. Rusk said that the president could make his concerns about the crisis known publicly and press for restraint, and Eban was grateful with that. Eban was probably too calm, since he seemed so relaxed that Rusk and others got the impression the whole crisis was overblown. The Americans continued to waffle.
Tel Aviv saw nothing constructive being done in Washington while the clock ticked away and sent Eban a stiff message insisting that Israel needed American security guarantees immediately. Eban was annoyed with the message, but he was also becoming annoyed with the dithering of the Americans, calling Rusk and telling him hostilities could break out in a week. Eban might have been calm; Tel Aviv wasn't.
The dithering in Washington went to the top. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a complicated person, a powerhouse of energy and drive but full of conflicted motives, sometimes trying to do two contrary things at once, often shaking someone's hand while trying to bully him. He had idealistically wanted to build a "Great Society" at home, but this was going up in smoke as the conflict in Vietnam escalated out of control. Johnson was annoyed with American Jews for their support of the antiwar movement -- he did not take being crossed casually -- and also irritated with Israel for not being more forthright in support of the American war in Vietnam. Johnson once complained: "Israel gets more than it's willing to give. It's a one-way street."
Johnson still remained basically pro-Israel, but he was floundering. In the early afternoon on 26 May he held a meeting of his senior advisors to see could be said. They gave him conflicting advice, some saying the US needed to come to Israel's aid, others counseling restraint. The president left the meeting no wiser than he had been when it started.
Johnson had a poor story and wasn't eager to talk to Eban, but Eban's friends in Washington pushed the president, and Johnson spoke to Eban that evening. Johnson emphasized his moral support for Israel, emphasized even more strongly that Israel shouldn't initiate hostilities, and promised to push through the Regatta idea. Eban's impression of the talk was that Johnson was "paralyzed" and "defeatist". Eban returned home on 27 May, convinced that the Israel leadership would take matters into their own hands soon.
* While Eban was spinning his wheels in Washington, the Egyptian defense minister, Shams Badran, was in Moscow, trying to get the Soviet view of things. Soviet propaganda had been strongly backing the Arabs and blasting the Israelis, but Nasser had not notified the Kremlin that he intended to close the Straits of Tiran. Soviet leadership clearly saw this as step beyond any that they had expected would be taken.
Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin told Badran that Egypt had scored a propaganda coup and suggested he leave it at that. The Soviet Foreign Ministry backed up Kosygin, telling Badran that it was time to defuse the crisis. The message was: Quit while you're ahead. However, Soviet Defense Minister Andrei Grechko expressed confidence that Egypt would beat Israel if it came to a fight. Badran grasped at Grechko's remarks as something approximating official Soviet approval of Egypt's actions.
Then, on the dark hours of the morning of 27 May, the Kremlin received a cable from Washington that included Israel's warnings about an imminent Egyptian attack. Premier Kosygin was shocked. Badran hadn't come out and exactly said that Egypt was going to attack Israel and this confirmed Kosygin's fears, which were aggravated by the fact that the Israelis were wise to the plan and so now had good reason to strike first. Something had to be done fast to prevent a war. Well before daybreak, Ambassador Chuvakhin was pounding on Eshkol's door, rousing the Israeli prime minister out of bed in his pajamas. Chuvakhin told Eshkol what the Soviets knew and demanded to know if Israel planned to attack. An unsurprisingly irritable and unprofitable exchange followed.
In the meantime, the Soviet ambassador to Egypt, Dmitri Pojidaev, was going through a similar routine with Nasser, telling the Egyptian leader what the Kremlin knew about Egyptian plans and raising concerns about the possible consequences of an Egyptian attack on Israel. Nasser's response was smooth and composed, saying Egypt would not attack, even though he knew H-hour for OPERATION DAWN was a few hours away. Nasser's calm was superficial. The doubts he had suppressed over OPERATION DAWN now came to the surface, pushed there mainly by the realization that the Israelis knew about the operation and that Egypt had lost the element of surprise.
After Pojidaev left, Nasser went to supreme headquarters and spoke with Amer, warning him that Egyptian plans had been compromised. Amer dithered for a while, and then, shortly before H-hour, sent out the order: Stand down. Egyptian pilots were even in their planes, ready to take off, when they were told the operation was cancelled. They were bitterly disappointed. Later that morning, five Egyptian officers who knew about the plan strayed over the Israeli border and were taken prisoner. OPERATION DAWN was now completely dead.
It is an interesting and unanswerable might-have-been of history to think what would have happened if OPERATION DAWN had gone ahead. Given the poor preparedness of the Egyptian military, it seems unlikely that it would have gone well. On the other hand, even at that, things might well have gone better for Egypt than they actually did.
* Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban returned from his foreign tour that evening of 27 May. Although Eban made comforting noises about his discussions in Paris, London, and Washington DC, nobody had perceived that he had obtained anything of value. Even Israeli newspaper headlines announced the trip was a bust. Nervous Israeli government officials kept harassing US Ambassador Wally Barbour for something of substance. Barbour asked Washington to send a military liaison, which he felt would reassure the Israelis at least to the extent of showing them someone in the US government cared, but nothing was done.
The armies of Jordan and Lebanon were moving onto a war footing, and Iraqi forces were deploying in Syria near Damascus. Eban argued for restraint and calm in a cabinet meeting that night, but not everyone was operating on such a serene and lofty plane. Labor Minister Yigal Allon led the charge against Eban, saying Israel should not wait for the enemy to strike first, and that if the IDF was unleashed it would beat both the Egyptians and the Syrians. Both Rabin and Weizman agreed, Weizman even taking some offense at the idea that the IDF might lose: "We'll beat the Arabs because we're better!"
Still, many government officials backed Eban, arguing that Israel should not stake its survival on a throw of the dice. Levi Eshkol remained torn and stressed. The meeting broke up at 4:00 AM on 28 May, adjourning to allow everyone to get a little rest before reconvening and putting matters to a vote.
In the interim, secret cables arrived from Washington, saying that the US was pursuing the Regatta convoy concept and that Israel should not attack first. This was not very reassuring, but it was enough to deadlock the vote when it was taken that afternoon. The only decision made was to give the matter a few weeks' further consideration. Rabin worried that such a delay was reckless and possibly fatal.
* Now both Egypt and Israel had considered starting the war and both had decided against it. The situation remained explosive, but since there was no commitment to military action for the moment, actions being taken by a number of parties stood a chance of defusing the crisis. UN Secretary General U Thant suggested appointment of a UN mediator and asked the parties to take steps to reduce tensions. Eshkol complied by ordering the demobilization of as many as 40,000 reservists.
The only problem with Eshkol's gesture was that the IDF didn't obey, and continued to mobilize for war. As if to undercut Eshkol from both sides, Washington then informed him that the assurances they had sent him to be kept secret, denying him any public leverage. In the meantime, Egyptian Foreign Minister Shams Badran returned from Moscow, having sifted out of the mixed signals he had been given some notion that the Soviet Union was prepared to provide direct military support if war came.
One of Badran's colleagues, a diplomat named Salah Bassiouny, thought that the foreign minister was reading a great deal into what Bassiouny judged "normal Russian expressions while tossing back vodka and bidding Badran farewell." Cairo Radio, in contrast, broadcast and wildly played up the "assurances" Badran had been given. If Moscow was aware of the broadcasts, nothing was done to disavow them. In fact, the Soviet ambassador to the UN, Nikolai Federenko, continued to loudly denounce the Israelis, even all but calling them Nazis, and blocked all attempts to push motions to deescalate the crisis through the UN Security Council. Nothing was happening in the UN that might avert a war.
* Levi Eshkol wasn't the only Mideast leader who was not sleeping well because of the crisis. Jordan's King Hussein was in worse shape, caught in a three-way bind between the Israelis, Egypt and Syria, and his own restless Palestinian population. Hussein had been trying to placate the Israelis, discreetly providing them with intelligence on West Bank terrorists. Similarly, in response to discreet hints from the Israelis, he toned down Jordanian propaganda broadcasts that criticised Nasser for his timidity at taking on Israel.
Hussein's own intelligence had told him from the outset that the reports that the Israelis were preparing to attack Syria were false, but that didn't make Israel seem less threatening to him. Egypt and Syria were hostile to his regime and could hardly be counted on to come to his aid if Jordan were attacked, and the Americans seemed to be willing to back Israel at the expense of Jordan -- though senior Israeli officials grasping at straws from Washington might well have wondered where Hussein got such an idea. Hussein also feared an Egyptian attack on Israel. If Egypt won, there was no reason that Egyptian tanks might not continue into Jordan; if Egypt lost, Hussein might be blamed, possibly provoking a popular uprising. Events held many possibilities, and not one of them was any good.
Egypt's closure of the Straits of Tiran was a shock to Hussein. He found the action "lacking in thought and consideration", felt it would "lead to disaster", and believed Nasser was "acting like a madman". However, Jordanian radio broadcasts still praised the action, and no complaint was made to the Egyptians when a US freighter, loaded up with ammunition for the Jordanian Army, was forced to turn back at the straits out of fear of mines. Hussein also put the army on a war footing, deploying tank units at forward positions in the West Bank. Still, Hussein reassured the Americans that this was only being done to placate public opinion, and then asked them to pass his reassurances on to Israel. He further warned the Americans that Nasser was working very hard to establish to the Arab world that the US was completely in bed with Israel, which would destroy American credibility in the region.
Hussein's fears continued to grow. He needed more insurance, even if the price was steep. On the morning of 28 May he met with the Egyptian ambassador to Jordan, Uthman Nuri, and asked to meet with Nasser in 48 hours. The ambassador consulted with Cairo, and after midnight Nui replied that Nasser was willing to meet with Hussein. However, there were stiff conditions: Jordan was to resist any Israeli attack on Syria through Jordanian territory; Iraqi troops were to be allowed into the West Bank; Jordan was to recognize Ahmad al-Shuqayri and the PLO as legitimate representatives of the Palestinians; and Jordan was to join in the boycott against West Germany for their support of Israel.
Hussein no doubt swallowed hard, but he swallowed, replying he would fly into Cairo on the dawn of 30 May. Hussein, an enthusiastic and skilled pilot, flew his own Caravelle airliner to Egypt and got off in his field marshal's uniform, armed with a 0.357 magnum revolver. Nasser and other senior Egyptian officials were there to meet him. Nasser shook his hand and asked: "Since your visit is a secret, what would happen if we arrested you?"
Hussein didn't bat an eyelash: "The possibility never crossed my mind." The two leaders quickly got down to business. Hussein's proposal was straightforward: he wanted a mutual defense treaty with Egypt that would declare any attack on one an attack on the other, and he was willing to admit troops from other Arab nations into Jordan as part of the deal. Nasser was agreeable, though he added another condition: Jordan's crack Arab Legion was to be put under the command of an Egyptian officer, General Abd al-Munim Riyad. Hussein agreed.
The rest of the days was spent on tours of military facilities and discussing war plans. Hussein warned Nasser that the Israelis might launch a surprise air attack, but Nasser waved the warning away, saying the Israelis couldn't pull it off and the Arabs would be victorious in days. What Hussein made of such remarks is not known.
In any case, Hussein returned home to Amman to a wild welcome. The trip hadn't been much of a secret, being loudly broadcast by Cairo Radio, and the public was wild in the streets. Hussein was beaming, believing that he had finally obtained a reasonable degree of security. Not all of his advisors agreed, worrying that the rash Egyptians might drag Jordan into a disastrous war that might have otherwise been avoided. The Americans also halted a major arms shipment to Jordan, fearing the weapons would fall into Egyptian hands. The opportunities for a peaceful settlement had died away quickly. The US ambassador to Jordan, Findley Burns, perceptively told Washington that events were "alarmingly reminiscent of August 1914."
* While Hussein courted Nasser, the pressure towards action in Israel rose. On the evening of 28 May, after the Israeli cabinet had voted to wait on the US, Eshkol delivered a public radio address to reassure the public. It was a disaster, since he was so worn out that he barely made any sense, and few found his pitch -- that Israel was working through with the United States to resolve the problem peacefully -- reassuring at all. After the address he spoke to the generals and they criticised him mercilessly, all but demanding that he authorize a preemptive strike on Egypt.
The next day, 29 May, the newspapers gave Eshkol an even worse savaging, and his political enemies began to maneuver behind the scenes. Hardliners pushed to install Moshe Dayan, a solid hawk, as defense minister, which for the time being was part of Eshkol's brief. In the meantime, all Israelis were preparing for war, digging trenches, donating blood. There was an exchange of fire with the Egyptians in the Sinai, and Egyptian aircraft probed into Israeli airspace on reconnaissance missions.
When the news arrived on 30 May of Hussein's mutual defense treaty with Egypt, it was the last straw. The Israeli cabinet now backed the appointment of Dayan as defense minister. Further communications with Washington showed that nothing of substance was forthcoming, though in fact LBJ was doing his best to push the Regatta plan, only to run into resistance in his own government and abroad. Whatever the case, the Israelis felt they were on their own. Dayan was sworn in as defense minister on the afternoon of 1 June, though Eshkol was careful to specify strict limits on his powers; in particular, Dayan was not to authorize any attack without approval from the prime minister. Some American officials thought that the appointment of Dayan as defense minister might reassure the Israelis, but Lucius Battle saw it correctly, stating that "it increases the likelihood of an eventual resort to military action."
* There was ambivalence in Israel over the appointment of Dayan as well. One of his colleagues summed him up as "a liar, a braggart, a schemer, a prima donna -- and in spite of that, the object of deep admiration." Dayan was a real-life action hero and looked the part, with his rugged features and distinctive eyepatch. Women threw themselves at him and he took every advantage of it. He was a warrior who soldiers followed with confidence, but he did his best to provoke and exploit confusion in councils of government. Sometimes it hardly seemed his left hand knew what his own right hand was doing.
Both of Dayan's hands were now working together, preparing to crush the Egyptians and do it soon. The IDF was fully mobilized. One IDF officer described it vividly: "The army was bolted and locked. We only had to pull the trigger."
Still, Eshkol had not committed to war. He was hoping for a diplomatic solution, and he worried that the Soviets might actually come into the fight to rescue the Arabs if the Israelis seemed like they were winning. He had been receiving threatening warnings from Kosygin that seemed to back up this notion.
Unfortunately for the prospects of peace, the confidence of Israeli officials that a diplomatic solution was possible was disintegrating by the hour. The Americans seemed immobile, inert, indifferent. Abba Eban was getting feedback from some of his Washington contacts, including Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas and US UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, both Jewish, that America would not directly help Israel in the crisis but would turn a blind eye if the Israelis took matters into their own hands. Eban was reading a bit too much into things, though by this time that was where American policy was headed by default, whether LBJ liked it or not. Eban was now turning from a dove into a hawk.
Whatever the civilian officials decided, Dayan was setting up his war plans. This time around, he believed, Israel should give Egypt a crushing defeat that they could not pretend had never happened, as they had in 1956. The war would begin with a massive, coordinated air strike that would smash Egyptian air power on the ground, and then a three-pronged ground offensive would drive into the Sinai. No actions would be taken against Jordan and Syria if at all possible. The IDF would try to hold the line against them while the Egyptians were being pounded into the ground. If it became necessary, Jordan and Syria could be dealt with once Egypt had been taken care of.
Deceptions were already being implemented, with the IDF-AF flying misleading reconnaissance sorties, and troops moved around in a confusing manner. Pictures were published of throngs of reservists on leave, enjoying the sunny beaches, and Dayan lied through his teeth to reporters that he was open to a negotiated solution, that peace should be given every chance.
The pressure continued to build. De Gaulle announced an arms embargo against Israel on Saturday, 3 June, brusquely cutting off the Israeli ambassador when he protested. There was a meeting of senior Israeli officials at Eban's home that night. A colonel who recorded the minutes of the meeting said: "The tension was unbearable." Dayan dominated the discussion: "It's total lunacy to wait!" He was confident: "In one or two hours the air force will have achieved its major objectives, as will the land forces on the first day. By the second day we'll be on our way to the Canal. Egypt won't have an air force for at least half a year."
Eshkol, battered and exhausted, had finally turned around: "I'm convinced that today we must give the order to the IDF to choose the time and the manner to act." In short: fire when ready. It came to a vote: ten for, two against. The war would begin after 0700 hours on Monday, 5 June 1967.
* The Israeli mobilization on the southern border and IDF-AF reconnaissance flights had not gone unnoticed by the Egyptians. At a meeting at Supreme Headquarters on 2 June, Nasser told the generals that Israel would attack by 5 June at the latest. And yet he didn't seem to really believe it, having faith that Egyptian forces would be able to repel any assault, that the Israelis wouldn't have the nerve, that there would be a political solution that would allow him to keep all his winnings in the game of brinkmanship.
If Nasser was wavering, Amer was steadfast in his belief that the Arabs should jointly take the initiative and crush the Israelis, even as his troops were shuttled around the Sinai in incomprehensible ways, sometimes unfed and unarmed. In the previous few days he had set up a new multilayered command structure, staffed with his cronies, that made getting things done even more difficult.
Amer was mad, but the madness was becoming infectious. King Hussein was actually beginning to seem enthusiastic about cooperating with Egypt to bring down Israel. The Syrians, however, remained just as obtuse and uncooperative as ever, though they were pushing forward on their own offensive plans against Israel. How well such plans could be conducted with a military whose officer corps had been all but literally been bled dry by purges was another good question. Still, all across the Arab world there was wild enthusiasm over the prospect of dealing with the Zionist entity for good.
Lyndon Johnson had a different view of things. Central Intelligence Agency reports indicated the Israelis were preparing to act. The CIA estimated that Israel would defeat the Arabs within days. LBJ became resigned to it: the US would have to accept the war, though America would not provide Israel with any help beyond diplomatic sympathy. The president was already shifting the discussion among his advisors to consideration of a postwar settlement. At dinner on 4 June he was quietly informed that the war would start within 24 hours. LBJ simply looked sad.
Others knew the balloon was going up soon as well. General Rikhye of UNEF was in Cairo, arranging the removal of his force, and realized that war would start within a day, though ironically he was led to his belief by blustering communiques from Egyptian generals. King Hussein received intelligence that Israel was about to attack, put his forces on maximum alert, and had a short and fitful night's sleep. He claimed later to have sent a warning to the Egyptians.
How much Soviet intelligence knew remains unclear. In Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko called the Israeli ambassador, Katriel Katz, to the Kremlin and criticized the "war frenzy" in Israel. Katz replied indignantly, registering his outrage at criticisms of Israel when Damascus and Cairo were broadcasting threats and murder. Gromyko, notoriously emotionless himself, replied: "Do not let your emotions get the better of you."
Israeli soldiers and pilots knew exactly what was going to happen come the morning and were excited with anticipation. Yitzhak Rabin said later: "The IDF was wound up like a mighty spring." Dayan passed out the final directives. Israeli forces would not attack Syria or Israel and would do their best to resist provocations. The shooting would begin at 0745 hours when the IDF-AF began OPERATION FOCUS, the preemptive airstrikes on the Egyptian Air Force. The codeword "Red Sheet" would then be broadcast and the ground forces would roll forward into the Sinai. Israel's military might, consisting of a total of 275,000 troops, 1,100 tanks, and 250 combat aircraft, would be committed to war.
Some officers and officials managed to get a few hours of sleep. Levi Eshkol wasn't one of them. He spent the night writing two letters. One was a plea to Kosygin that Israel had been forced to act and that the Soviet Union should not directly intervene against the Jewish nation. The second was for Lyndon Johnson, detailing the rationale for Israel's actions, and embellishing the facts of the case somewhat; asking for "energetic support" of Israel's "largest friend", specifically to pressure the Soviets for nonintervention; and reassuring LBJ that Israel's ambitions were limited: "We want nothing but to live peacefully in our territory and to enjoy our legitimate maritime rights."