Oren Michael B. Six Days of War. June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

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302 SIX DAYS OF WA R

jeeps with bullhorns sped around urging the people to stand and fight, the

defense of Damascus was left to a single brigade—the 70th, known for its loy-

alty to the regime

Following full-tilt on the Syrians’ heels, the Israelis descended on Quneitra

from three directions—from Mas‘ade and Buq‘ata in the north, east from Qala‘,

and northeast from Tel Abu Nida’. Other units headed south to Khushniya

and north into the foothills abutting the Lebanese border. At the southern tip

of the Sea of Galilee, a concentrated artillery barrage on Tawafiq at 1:00

P.M.

preceded a paratrooper assault to take the fortress. Thereafter, gambling on the

possibility that few, if any, Syrian troops remained in the field, 800 paratroopers

were flown by helicopter first to Kafr Harb, then to el-‘Al, and finally to Butmiya.

So quick was this leapfrogging that commanders often had no idea where they

were, only that they had to keep advancing before the cease-fire took effect. The

Syrians retreated even more swiftly; most of their positions were deserted.

Yet progress remained relatively slow. The two o’clock deadline was ap-

proaching, and even the lead Israeli elements had yet to reach their objectives.

Many, believing a cease-fire was imminent, saw no reason to rush. Driving past

Nafakh, Yigal Allon halted his jeep and asked one loitering officer—Ron Sariq,

a reconnaissance company commander—what he and his men were doing.

“Waiting for orders,” came Sariq’s reply.

“Don’t just stand there, run! Now!” shouted Allon. “Quickly take

Quneitra!”

Quneitra was taken at 12:30 P.M. Mendler deferred to a request from Bar-

Lev and allowed the Golani Brigade, in honor of its nineteen-year defense of

the northern border, to enter the city first. What they found were entire neigh-

borhoods almost completely deserted, their stores and markets full, lunches

still hot on the tables. “We could have continued on to Damascus,” recalled

Col. Benny Inbar, commander of Golani’s 51st Battalion. “The road was to-

tally open before us. They [the Syrians] had fled.”

Meeting in the Syrian Officers’ Club, Elazar urged Rabin to authorize an

armored thrust deep into Syria. A 1964 IDF contingency plan, Hatchet (Garzen),

called for two divisions to conquer the enemy’s capital within eighty hours. But

Rabin rejected the idea, insisting that there be no more seizure of Syrian terri-

tory. The sole exception was Mount Hermon, described by Motti Hod, who

was also present at the meeting, as “the eyes of the nation.” Part of its summit

would be captured as soon as possible and transformed into Israel’s highest

observation post, with a view of downtown Damascus.

Absent from this crucial consultation was Moshe Dayan. The defense minister

was preparing for his rendezvous with Odd Bull. In a rather crude maneuver to

gain time, Dayan had arranged for the meeting to be held in Tiberias. But when

the chief UN observer arrived there, he found that the venue had been moved to

Tel Aviv. The two met, finally, at 3:00

P.M., an hour later than scheduled.

Day Six, June 10 303

Bull opened by stressing the need to break the cycle in which Israeli forces

advanced and the Syrians defended themselves, thus providing the Israelis with

a pretext for advancing further. The logic found no sympathy with Dayan,

however. The Syrians were still shelling Israeli settlements, he reported; if they

stopped, the IDF offensive would halt immediately. “We are not after mile-

age,” he said. Dayan described the cease-fire as absolute—“we are not negoti-

ating and we will agree to no conditions”—but then added major conditions of

his own. Israel would accept no excuses for violations, for example, that some

Syrian units had yet to receive the order. Moreover, the wording of the cease-

fire accord could in no way evoke the General Armistice Agreements of 1949.

No UN observers would be allowed near the cease-fire line; Bull would simply

have to accept Israel’s word that the fighting had indeed halted.

The cease-fire was to go into effect at 6:00 P.M. “Nobody’s to say their

radio’s not working,” Dayan instructed Elazar. He ordered Weizman and Ze’evi

to draw up a map of Israel’s new borders with Syria, scolding them, “and con-

trol yourselves!” The Northern Command nevertheless ignored Jerusalem’s

directives and stretched the deadline by another few hours in order to improve

Israel’s defensive position. Every unit, every soldier, was pressed into taking

strategically valuable hilltops and road junctions. Intelligence officer Ahuvia

Tabenkin stuck helmets on his cooks and supply clerks and sent them to sit

atop the al-Ruqada cliffs, north of Khushniya. Helicopters continued to ferry

troops into the hinterland northeast of Butmiya.

Not all these operations went unopposed, as scattered resistance occasion-

ally reappeared. At one point, the helicopter carrying Elazar was pursued by a

Syrian MiG, and was forced to dive sharply through a ravine. The helicopter

landed safely, however, at Kibbutz Ein Gev on the southern shore of the Sea of

Galilee. Dozens of kibbutz members ran out to greet the general. “That re-

union between Dado and the members of Ein Gev was absolutely unforget-

table,” recalled Yitzhak Hofi, chief of the operations staff, who, along with

Bar-Lev, had also been aboard. “Men, women, children, crying, laughing, fall-

ing all over him, hugging and kissing him. It must have been their exhilaration

over what had happened, relief that the nightmare was now over.”

News of Dayan’s meeting with Bull, followed by the advent of the cease-fire,

defused the volatile situation in the UN. “Israelis played for a time in political

maneuvers in the Security Council to a hair-raising proximity to the brink,” noted

Barbour, and that brinkmanship had clearly paid off. Though Federenko contin-

ued to rant against Anglo-American and Israeli imperialism, no resolution was

passed condemning Israel. Nor was there a reaction, Arab or Soviet, the follow-

ing day when Col. Pinchas Noi of the 13th Golani Battalion and his radio opera-

tor flew by helicopter to Mount Hermon and planted Israel’s flag on the peak.

The focus at the UN was no longer the military situation on the ground

but the postwar settlement. Goldberg went from delegation to delegation can-

vassing their attitudes toward Arab-Israeli negotiations. These, he assumed,

304 SIX DAYS OF WA R

would be face-to-face and direct with an option for UN mediation, and result

in initial agreements on forces separation and freedom of passage through the

Straits. With prophetic understatement, he wrote, “The issue of a simple with-

drawal as opposed to withdrawal as part of an overall settlement will be the

main and somewhat tricky problem as soon as [the] cease-fire firms up.”

World leaders, too, were already looking beyond the battlefield to the sub-

sequent, diplomatic phase. The contentiousness of that stage was evident in

Kosygin’s subsequent hot line message: “If today all military actions are con-

cluded, it will be necessary to proceed to the next step of evacuating the terri-

tory occupied by Israel and the return of troops behind the armistice line.” The

Soviet leader nevertheless ended on a positive note—“I consider that we should

maintain contact with you on this matter”—holding out the possibility for fu-

ture superpower cooperation. Johnson, for his part, was thinking not only of

troop disposition and withdrawal, but also the fundamental question of ending

the Arab-Israeli conflict—of changing its context. “It now appears that military

action in the Middle East is being concluded,” he replied to Kosygin. “I hope

our efforts in the days ahead can be devoted to the achievement of a lasting

peace throughout the world.”

Aftershocks 305

AFTERSHOCKS

Tallies, Postmortems, and the

Old/New Middle East

NE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO HOURS: That was the duration of the

war, one of the shortest in recorded history. In that brief period, the

Egyptians lost between 10,000 and 15,000 men, among them 1,500

officers and forty pilots; thousands more were wounded. An additional 5,000

Egyptians were listed as missing. Seven hundred Jordanian soldiers had died,

and over 6,000 were wounded or missing. Syria’s losses were estimated at 450

dead and roughly four times that number wounded. Israel admitted to 679

dead and 2,563 wounded, though IDF fatality figures were later placed as high

as 800—the equivalent, in per capita terms, of 80,000 Americans.

The glaring disparity of the casualty rates—approximately 25 to 1 in Israel’s

favor—proved even more lopsided in the numbers of prisoners of war. Israel

held at least 5,000 Egyptians, including 21 generals, 365 Syrians (of whom only

30 were officers), and 550 Jordanians. Two Soviet advisers also fell prisoner,

the IDF claimed. Israeli POW’s totaled 15. Though accusations of beatings

and even executions were traded by both sides, prisoners were generally well

treated. Their exchange, however, dragged on for months. Israel held out for

the release of Egyptian Jews imprisoned on spying charges since 1954, and for

the remains of several executed agents, among them Eli Cohen. Egypt and

Syria were reluctant to repatriate their embittered prisoners, and refused to

negotiate directly with Israel.

The widest gap of all, however, was not in human but in material terms. All

but 15 percent of Egypt’s military hardware, $2 billion worth, was destroyed, and

vast stores—320 tanks, 480 guns, 2 SAM missile batteries, and 10,000 vehicles—

306 SIX DAYS OF WA R

became Israeli booty. The Jordanian list was also painfully long: 179 tanks, 53

APC’s, 1,062 guns, 3,166 vehicles, nearly 20,000 assorted arms. Of the Arab

forces, the Syrians emerged from the war the least impaired, losing 470 guns,

118 tanks, and 1,200 vehicles; another forty tanks were abandoned to the Israe-

lis. In all, the IAF destroyed 469 enemy planes, fifty of them in dogfights, in

3,279 sorties. The figures included 85 percent of Egypt’s combat aircraft and

all of its bombers. “Never in the history of military aviation has the exercise of

air power played so speedy and decisive a part in modern warfare,” observed R.

Goring-Morris, Britain’s air attaché in Tel Aviv, but that part came at a price.

Thirty-six planes and eighteen pilots, roughly 20 percent of Israel’s air power,

had been lost. And while the Soviet Union swiftly replenished Egypt’s and

Syria’s MiG’s, Israel’s orders for French Mirages and American Skyhawks re-

mained suspended.

Though military casualty rates were, even by contemporary standards, high,

those among civilians were remarkably low. Apart from the bombardment of

Jerusalem, Israeli border settlements, and Palestinian neighborhoods in Gaza

and the West Bank, much of the fighting took place far from major population

centers. Nevertheless, large numbers of noncombatants suffered and suffered

acutely. Between 175,000 (Israeli estimates) and 250,000 (Jordanian estimates)

Palestinians fled the West Bank for Jordan, many of them second-time refu-

gees who were once again billeted in wretched camps. While Israel did little to

precipitate this flight, neither did it do anything to stop it or, indeed, to en-

courage the refugees to return. Rather, initially, the IDF laid ambushes along

the banks of the Jordan River to prevent “infiltrators” from crossing back into

the West Bank. The ambushes were removed only after Dayan, observing them

a week after the war, deemed them inhumane.

Similarly, on the Golan, the exodus of the civilian population was neither

impelled nor inhibited by Israel. Though IDF war plans had made no provi-

sion for Syrian civilians, the general staff did issue a specific order (No. 121330)

stating: “There is to be no expulsion of villagers from the Syrian Heights or

from occupied territories in Syria.” Damascus later claimed that the villagers

had been expelled en masse, but in fact few Israelis even came into contact with

civilians, most of whom had fled with the Syrian command, well in advance of

the attackers.

After the cease-fire, Israel insisted that the 1967 refugee problem, like that

of 1948 before it, would have to be solved within the framework of a compre-

hensive peace treaty. The Arab states uniformly rejected this demand, and in-

sisted on unconditional repatriation and compensation for the refugees. When,

later that summer, Israel was pressed to permit at least some of the Palestinians

back into the West Bank, few in fact availed themselves of the offer.

The refugees’ plight, however tragic, was soon overshadowed by the per-

secution of Jews in Arab countries. With news of Israel’s victory, mobs at-

tacked Jewish neighborhoods in Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Tunisia, and

Aftershocks 307

Morocco, burning synagogues and assaulting residents. A pogrom in Tripoli,

Libya, left 18 Jews dead and 25 injured; the survivors were herded into deten-

tion centers. Of Egypt’s 4,000 Jews, 800 were arrested, including the chief

rabbis of both Cairo and Alexandria, and their property sequestered by the

government. The ancient communities of Damascus and Baghdad were placed

under house arrest, their leaders imprisoned and fined. A total of 7,000 Jews

were expelled, many with merely a satchel.

Apart from Tunisia’s Bourgiba

and King Hassan of Morocco, no Arab statesman condemned these outrages.

Attempts by both the UN and the Red Cross to intercede on the Jews’ behalf

were rebuffed.

By comparison, the 1.2 million Palestinians now under Israeli rule were

spared systematic persecution. While looting was widespread and acts of van-

dalism recorded—nearly half the houses in Qalqilya were reportedly damaged,

though later repaired by Israel—a military administration was rapidly estab-

lished for the West Bank and Gaza and a combination of Jordanian and martial

law imposed. Palestinian community and religious leaders were, for the most

part, retained in their prewar positions, including the Muslim waqf atop the

Temple Mount—a decision for which Moshe Dayan was criticized by Israeli

hawks. Israel nevertheless deviated from its tolerant policy in the Old City of

Jerusalem, where hovels of the Mughrabi neighborhood were cleared away to

create a prayer plaza in front of the Western Wall. The most controversial

decision, however, was the destruction of three villages—Yalu, Beit Nuba, and

Imwas—located at a strategic junction in the Latrun Corridor. The Israelis

accused the three of abetting the siege of Jerusalem in 1948 and billeting Egyp-

tian commandos in their recent attack on Lod, but even then several troops

refused to carry out the demolition order. Ultimately, it was executed, and the

Arab inhabitants, though offered compensation, were not allowed to return.

No further acts of retribution were taken against Arabs who, only days

before, had celebrated Israel’s demise. The revelation that Jordan had destroyed

the Old City synagogues and had paved roads and even latrines with Jewish

tombstones from the Mount of Olives did not dissuade Dayan from joining

4,000 Muslim worshipers for Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Casualties, prisoners, refugees—all were ultimately dwarfed by the war’s

most tectonic outcome. Israel had conquered 42,000 square miles and was now

three and a half times its original size. Exceedingly vulnerable before the war,

its major cities all within range of Arab guns, the Jewish state now threatened

Damascus, Cairo, and Amman. Its own capital, Jerusalem, was united. Though

ties had been severed with the Soviet Union and permanent strains left in its

relations with France—and in spite of the Liberty incident—Israel had earned

the solid respect of the United States. “The spirit of the army, indeed of all the

people, has to be experienced to be believed,” Harry McPherson reported to

his president, relating how he had seen a jeep with two Israeli women soldiers,

“one with a purple spangled bathing cap on her head, the other with an orange

308 SIX DAYS OF WA R

Aftershocks 309

turban,” riding in the Negev. “After the doubts, confusions, and ambiguities of

Vietnam, it was deeply moving to see people whose commitment is total and

unquestioning.”

Moribund before the war, Israel’s economy suddenly flourished as tourists

and donations flooded the country, and oil was extracted from Sinai wells. Emi-

gration all but ceased, and thousands of new immigrants hastened to partake of

the glory.

Israel indeed basked in that glory as its press for weeks afterward praised

the army’s audacity, its ingenuity and power. Ha’aretz informed its readers of

the minting of a new victory coin, and supplied a recipe for “victory cakes” to

be baked for homecoming soldiers. “From the podium of the UN, I proclaimed

the glorious triumph of the IDF and the redemption of Jerusalem,” Abba Eban

told a riveted audience in Lod. “Never before has Israel stood more honored

and revered by the nations of the world.” Less decorously, Haim Bar-Lev told

the Cabinet, “We have screwed every Arab country.” Always popular, Dayan

and Rabin were now elevated to icon-status, and not only among Israelis but

throughout the Diaspora where the war had enabled Jews “to walk with their

backs straight.” To the chief of staff was given the exceptional honor of actually

naming the war. Among the titles proposed—The War of Daring, the War of

Salvation, the War of the Sons of Light—Rabin chose the least ostentatious,

the Six-Day War, evoking the days of creation.

For a moment, the apocalyptic aspect of the Israeli self-view appeared to

have been eclipsed by that of the indomitable, the invincible Israeli—but only for

a moment. Michael Hadow, the British ambassador, noting the absence of mass

celebrations, found “something very inspiring and yet rather terrifying” about

the dispassionate way the Israelis went to war, won, and returned home to busi-

ness as usual. The discomfort many Israelis felt with their victory, the guilt and

pain of their losses, poured out in a postwar collection of interviews with kibbutz

members, entitled fittingly, The Seventh Day. “We weren’t especially excited or

happy about killing Arabs or knowing that we’d won,” recalled Shai, a twenty-

seven-year-old member of Kibbutz Afikim, who had led paratroopers at Umm

Qatef. “We just felt that we’d done what we had to do. But there’s a big differ-

ence between that and feeling happy.” Similarly, Gal, from Givat Haim, a tank

gunner, said, “What have I got against an Arab? Even if I can see that he’s got a

gun? You shoot at him, you know he’s a man, that he’s got a family . . . It all goes

fine right up to the moment you see someone dead. That’s when we began to

curse the war.” The diary of Rivka Niedt, of Kibbutz Usha, records her feelings

upon arriving at al-‘Arish: “There’s a heavy, thick blackness outside, and an aw-

ful noise . . . shots, screams, and short frightening booms . . . Your throat chokes,

your eyes cloud over and you run outside . . . but the wind . . . only brings in great

gusts of stench from the dead and the clouds of black flies.”

Following “Jerusalem of Gold,” the most popular Hebrew song to emerge in

the years after the war was “The Song of Peace,” a threnody of the recently dead:

310 SIX DAYS OF WA R

No one can bring us back

From the dark depths of our grave

Here the thrill of victory means nothing

Nor do songs of praise

Therefore, sing a song for peace

Do not merely whisper a prayer

Better to sing a song for peace

Shouting it loudly.

For Arabs, though, there could be no such ambivalence toward the war.

Even the “Six-Day” epithet, with its image of lightning conquests, proved odi-

ous to them, and they resorted to more reticent titles—The Setback, The Di-

saster, or the anodyne June War. No sooner had the shooting stopped than the

Arab world embarked on what one Middle East historian called “an audit dur-

ing a moment of great stress and clarity,” examining how “a small state had

displayed their historical inadequacy, had seized massive chunks of land, and

had devastated the armies whose weapons and machismo had been displayed

with great pride for the last decade or so.” Intellectuals would evince intense

disillusionment with Arab nationalism—as a mass movement, it would never

revive—and stress the need for modernization and democracy. Others would

advocate an even more militant radicalism on the Vietnamese or Cuban model,

or a return to the rigorous fundamentals of Islam. Painful examinations would

be made of Arab society, its inherent propensities and weaknesses, and of the

Arab personality and psyche.

Arab politicians, on the other hand, persisted in avoiding any responsibility

for the defeat, much less engage in introspection. Nasser continued to blame the

insubordinate Egyptian officers and the Anglo-American cabal for Egypt’s de-

feat in what he curiously called “Bunche’s war.” King Hussein waxed fatalistic,

telling his people that “I seem to belong to a family which . . . must suffer and

make sacrifices for its country without end . . . If you were not rewarded with

glory it was not because you lacked courage, but because it is Allah’s will.” The

deepest denial came from Syrian leaders, criticized throughout the Arab world

for having done so much to start the war and then so little to fight it. “The

Israelis’ objective was not to conquer a few miles from Syria but to topple its

progressive government,” explained Gen. Suweidani. “This they did not accom-

plish. Therefore we must view ourselves as the victors of this war.” The point

was refined by Foreign Minister Makhous: “Were Damascus or Aleppo to fall,

they could be rebuilt. But there could be no compensation for the loss of the

Ba’th, for it is the hope of the Arab nation.” Hafez al-Assad declared that “Syria,

alone, fought for six days, without letup, with all our might.” When one junior

officer demanded an investigation of the debacle, Assad reportedly had him shot.

Not until after the 1973 war, with their army’s honor restored, did Egyp-

tians begin to speak out about the causes of 1967. Thus, Salah al-Hadidi, chief

justice in the trials of officers held accountable for the defeat, wrote that, “I can

state that Egypt’s political leadership called Israel to war. It clearly provoked

Aftershocks 311

Israel and forced it into a confrontation.” Gen. Fawzi singled out “the individu-

alist bureaucratic leadership” and “‘Amer’s collapse,” while Muhammad Sadiq

spoke of “promotions on the basis of loyalty, not expertise, and the army’s fear of

telling Nasser the truth.” Murtagi credited the Israelis with having better weap-

ons, command, and organization; they seemed to have a stronger will to fight.

Sidqi Mahmud pointed his finger at the hasty decision to oust UNEF, to occupy

Sharm al-Sheikh, and to weather Israel’s first strike. “We were totally dependent

on Russian equipment,” he testified. “The field marshal was not committed to

the army’s affairs.” Lack of intelligence was the problem, according to Zakkariya

Muhieddin: “While the Israelis knew the name of every Egyptian on relief, and

his wife’s name too, we didn’t even know where Moshe Dayan’s house was.” ‘Ali

Sabri faulted the army’s refusal to investigate its failures in the Suez and Yemen

wars, and to oust the officers responsible. Shams Badran blamed Nasser: “He

took the decisions that placed the army in a trap. Without consulting with any-

one, he led us into the ambush that Israel had laid with American help.”

How had it happened? No shortage of pundits rushed to answer that question,

noting the Israelis’ superior training and motivation, the Arabs’ lack of opera-

tional unity and inability to understand their foe. Hadow stressed the personal

element, the stark disparity between the Israeli and the Arab soldier:

These were not elite professional troops lavishly equipped with the most mod-

ern equipment, but for the most part civilian reservists, with comparatively

limited training behind them, who were carried into battle in civilian trans-

port, and were supplied and supported by essentially civilian services. By com-

parison, the professional Arab armies showed a total lack of appreciation of

the essential elements of modern warfare, and an almost equal inability to use

the sophisticated weapons and equipment provided by their Russian quarter-

masters. Their leadership on almost all fronts was inept to a degree which

hardly seems possible after 10 years of preparation and training for a war

which was to bring about Israel’s annihilation.

Moshe Dayan proved less complimentary. His final report to the general

staff criticized Israel’s misreading of Nasser’s intentions, its overdependence on

the United States and hesitation to act the minute Egypt closed the Straits. Yet

Israel had “ended the Six-Day War with maximum lines on all fronts,” in spite of

these shortcomings, he wrote. The reason was that Egypt had failed to appreciate

the advantages of launching a first strike, had failed to gauge the enemy’s power

and his willingness to use it. Lulled into arrogance by these errors, the Israelis

would repeat them six years later, in their next major war with the Arabs.

Such analyses perhaps explained how Israel won the war; they could not

account for its outcome. Beyond the goals of eliminating the Egyptian threat and

destroying Nasser’s army, no other stage of the conflict was planned or even

contemplated, not the seizure of the entire Sinai Peninsula, not the conquest of

the West Bank, nor the scaling of the Golan Heights. Even the “liberation” of