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

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312 SIX DAYS OF WA R

Jerusalem, as Israelis call it, regarding the event as the most significant of the

war and assigning it almost messianic ramifications, came about largely through

chance. The vagaries and momentum of war, far more than rational decision

making, had shaped the fighting’s results. Had Egypt accepted the cease-fire

after the first day’s fighting, had the Jordanians refrained from seizing Govern-

ment Hill or had Dayan stuck to his opposition to conquering the Golan (to

cite only a few “if”s), the region would have looked much different. Its subse-

quent history—the upheavals and the breakthroughs, the grueling search for

peace—would probably have evolved differently as well.

A similar capriciousness characterized the process leading to the outbreak

of the war. This book opened with the well-known image of the butterfly,

which, with a mere flap of its wings, triggers a thunderstorm. Starting in No-

vember 1966, the Middle East would witness many such “flaps.” Take, for ex-

ample, Ambassador Barbour’s tardiness in conveying King Hussein’s condolence

letter to Eshkol, and the subsequent Samu‘ raid in which Jordanian and Israeli

soldiers inadvertently clashed. There was Jordan’s attempt to save face from

that defeat by accusing Egypt of “hiding behind UNEF’s skirts,” and Egypt’s

resultant interest in ousting the force. Nasser’s complex relationship with ‘Amer,

the political machinations that weakened Eshkol and brought Dayan to the

Defense Ministry, elements of honor and chauvinism and fear—each would

influence events in profound and unanticipated ways. The last-minute cancel-

lation of Operation Dawn—Egypt’s one chance to do to Israel what Israel would

soon do to Egypt—poignantly illustrated the process’s randomness.

Yet even that chaos had its context. Only within the unique milieu of the

Arab-Israeli conflict could elements as diverse as Syrian radicalism and Is-

raeli politicking, inter-Arab rivalry and America’s preoccupation with Viet-

nam, Soviet fears and Egyptian aspirations, combine in a chain reaction

culminating in war. And once the war started, that same context allowed for a

succession of unexpected events, from the retreat of Arab armies to Israel’s

attack on the Liberty, from the Security Council’s paralysis to the Soviets’

failure to intervene.

The context facilitated the war, but had the war, in turn, transformed the

context? Did it leave the region more or less unchanged, or did it establish an

entirely new set of rules and rulers? Were those six explosive days really an act

of creation, producing a modern Middle East fundamentally distinct from the

old one?

There had not been just one but several ceremonies held in the newly rededi-

cated Hebrew University amphitheater atop Mount Scopus. Leonard Bernstein

had conducted Mahler’s 2nd Symphony—the “Resurrection”—and the Men-

delssohn Violin Concerto, with solo performances by virtuoso Isaac Stern.

Aftershocks 313

“Jerusalem of Gold” was repeatedly rendered. Now, on June 29, overlooking

the Judean desert and the Dead Sea coast so recently occupied by Israeli forces,

Yitzhak Rabin received an honorary Doctorate of Philosophy.

Accepting the degree in the name of the entire IDF, Rabin contrasted the

exaltation of the home front with the somberness of frontline soldiers “who

had seen not only the glories of victory but also its price—the friends who fell

next to them, covered in blood.” Those soldiers, “aware of the righteousness of

our cause, of their deep love of the homeland, and the difficult tasks imposed

on them,” had demonstrated their moral, spiritual, and psychological worth

under the hardest conditions. Many had given their lives to preserve what Rabin

called “the right of the people of Israel to live in its own State—free, indepen-

dent, in peace and tranquillity.”

Peace and tranquillity would become a lifelong and elusive goal for Rabin.

While political rivals would continue to criticize his performance before and

during the war—his breakdown, his inability to stand up to Dayan—the public

generally credited him with victory. Riding on that crest, he would soon leave

the army and serve successfully as Israel’s ambassador in Washington and then,

with less aplomb, as Israel’s prime minister (1974–77) in the dreary aftermath

of the Yom Kippur War. His greatest achievement was to conclude a separa-

tion-of-forces agreement in Sinai and so lay the foundation for Israel’s subse-

quent peace treaty with Egypt.

Rabin returned to the prime minister’s office in 1992, and embarked on a

strategy no less risky than the Six-Day War, seeking a historic reconciliation

with the Palestinian people under the leadership of Yasser Arafat—the same

Arafat whose guerrilla attacks had helped precipitate the war. The process

launched by Rabin and Arafat would earn them each a Nobel Prize (Shimon

Peres, Israel’s foreign minister, received one as well), but also the enmity of

Israelis and Arabs who opposed the process. Palestinian terrorists killed dozens

of Israeli civilians and Israeli extremists branded Rabin a traitor. On November

4, 1995, one of those extremists shot and killed the prime minister. Rabin had

been addressing a Tel Aviv peace rally. Found in his pocket were the blood-

stained lyrics to “The Song of Peace.”

The 1967 war, Rabin concluded, had changed the context of the Arab-

Israeli conflict, not by making Israel any less repugnant to the Arabs, but by

convincing them that it could never be eliminated by force of arms. Many Is-

raeli leaders shared his conviction, and some went even further, believing that

for the first time peace was attainable, if purchased with Arab territories.

Ten days before the Mount Scopus ceremony, on June 19, the Cabinet

had secretly decided to exchange Sinai and the Golan Heights—some areas

would be demilitarized, and free passage through Tiran guaranteed—for peace

treaties with Egypt and Syria. Of the territory seized from Egypt, only the

Gaza Strip would be incorporated into Israel, and its refugees resettled as part

of a regional plan. Fiercely debated, the motion passed by a single vote. But no

314 SIX DAYS OF WA R

decision could be reached regarding the future of the West Bank, where many

ministers still hoped to create an autonomous Palestinian entity. A consensus

was achieved only on Jerusalem, which was to remain Israel’s united and sover-

eign capital.

Prominent among the supporters of the June 19 decision was Abba Eban.

He, too, was present at Mount Scopus that day, notwithstanding his reserva-

tions about Rabin. The previous week, he had advised his ambassadors: “There

is a new reality and it points at talks on peace and security. Those aspects, it

must be emphasized, have a territorial dimension. The world and the Arab

world must know that there’s no turning back the clock to 1957 or 1948.” At

the same time, he indicated that “everything is fluid, flexible, and open.” Eban

would adhere to those principles throughout his tenure as foreign minister,

until 1974. Originally opposed to creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank

and Gaza, he later embraced the idea, warning that the annexation of nearly

two million Palestinians would undermine Israel’s Jewish majority. Ultimately,

Eban would be reconciled with Rabin and with the Israeli public that had so

often scoffed at him. In 2001, aged but still erudite, he received the Israel Prize

for Life Achievement.

After the 1967 war, Eban described himself as one of the “politicians” in

Israel’s leadership who was willing to take advantage of the altered context on the

chance that the Arabs would trade territory for peace. Like-minded ministers

such as Zalman Aran and Haim Moshe Shapira expressed their willingness to

return virtually all the captured land, except Jerusalem, and received support

from an unlikely quarter: David Ben-Gurion. Never again to play a significant

role in Israeli politics, permanently consigned to his bungalow in Sde Boker, the

once-feared martinet cautioned against the demographic dangers of annexation

until his death in December 1973, in the shadows of the Yom Kippur War.

But while some decision makers favored far-reaching concessions, others—

“security men,” Eban dubbed them—doubted the Arabs’ readiness to negoti-

ate and, for strategic and ideological reasons, insisted on keeping most of the

territories. In the Cabinet, they were led, as previously, by Yigal Allon. The

labor minister—later foreign minister—voted against the Cabinet’s June 19

resolution, and lobbied for the creation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

These would form a new defense line down the Jordan Valley, around Jerusa-

lem and southward to the Hebron Hills, delineating “an agreed, independent

Arab State, surrounded by Israeli territory.” Though Allon would die, aged

sixty-two, in 1980, the “Allon Plan” would remain Israel’s unofficial policy until

the advent of Rabin’s negotiations with Arafat.

Also opposed to the June 19 decision was Menachem Begin, whose Gahal

(later Likud) party rejected the very notion of territorial concessions. “In my

opinion, the concept of autonomy [in the West Bank] will lead to a Palestinian

State,” he told the Cabinet. Ten years later, though, as prime minister, Begin

would welcome Anwar Sadat, Nasser’s successor, to Israel, and thereafter agreed

Aftershocks 315

to return all of Sinai to Egypt and to institute Palestinian autonomy in the

West Bank and Gaza. He would resign, his spirit sapped by another Arab-

Israeli war—in Lebanon—and die a recluse in 1992.

Seated beside Allon and Begin in the Hebrew University amphitheater

were members of the IDF general staff. Among them were those more sympa-

thetic to the “politicians’” stance, generals such as Uzi Narkiss and Yeshayahu

Gavish, both of whom went on to become active in public affairs, and Israel

Tal, later known as the father of Israel’s own battle tank, the Merkava (Chariot).

None, however, would have the impact on Israeli policy made by the military

leaders associated with the “security” school.

David Elazar, for example, was adamant about retaining the Golan Heights

he had lobbied so hard to capture. When, shortly after the 1967 war, Palestin-

ian guerrilla attacks resumed from Lebanon and northern Jordan, Dado swore

to “make life unbearable” for those countries. “IDF actions are more condu-

cive to quiet than extended constraint is,” he said. Forbidden by the govern-

ment of Golda Meir from launching a preemptive strike on the massing Egyptian

and Syrian forces in 1973, Elazar, as chief of staff, was blamed for Israel’s early

setbacks in that war and ordered to resign. Literally brokenhearted, he died

four years later.

Another outspoken opponent of territorial concessions was Ezer Weizman.

Leaving the army for politics, he naturally gravitated to Begin’s government,

in which he served as defense minister. Yet, like Begin, Weizman agreed to

Israel’s total withdrawal from Sinai. He later switched allegiance to the Labor

party and refashioned himself a champion of peace. Elected as Israel’s honor-

ific president in 1993, he held the post for seven years, before resigning amid

financial scandals.

Finally, there was Ariel Sharon, later to gain fame for his performance in

the 1973 war and notoriety as the defense minister who promoted Israel’s 1982

invasion of Lebanon. Held indirectly responsible for the massacre of Palestin-

ian refugees by Israel’s Lebanese allies the following year, he resigned his post

but remained a rigorous foe of forfeiting land, even in return for peace. Yet the

same Sharon who promoted the construction of dozens of new settlements in

the West Bank and Gaza also uprooted Israeli settlements in Sinai, prior to

returning it to Egypt. In 2001, after his election as prime minister, Sharon

formed a national unity government with Shimon Peres and other Laborites

committed to the near-total withdrawal from the territories.

Israelis were divided over the degree to which the context had changed,

whether peace was possible or whether another war lay ahead. In the course of

the following decades, many would vacillate between one conclusion and the

other. But of all the leaders gathered on Mount Scopus that day in 1967, only

one, Moshe Dayan, succeeded in espousing both ideas simultaneously.

“I’m waiting for the phone to ring,” Dayan was widely quoted as saying,

implying that Israel would be willing to return territories if the Arabs came

316 SIX DAYS OF WA R

forward for talks. But in the Cabinet debate on the June 19 resolution, Dayan

argued that there was no use discussing the terms for peace since the Arabs

would never accept Israel. He protested the decision, saying, “We cannot with-

draw from Sinai and the Golan on the basis of a single vote!” Dayan promoted

Jewish settlement of the West Bank, but was not averse to establishing a Pales-

tinian state there or to preserving Jordan’s status as protector of its Muslim

shrines. In Sinai, he opposed settlement building but pushed for the construc-

tion of Yamit, the peninsula’s largest Jewish town. He stressed the need for

Israel “to sit tight and keep ruling” the territories, but in 1970, proposed an

Israeli pullback from the Suez Canal as the first step toward nonbelligerency.

Six weeks after the end of the Six-Day War, according to the British embassy’s

count, Dayan voiced no less than six different opinions on peace.

Unpredictable, enigmatic, Dayan would generate further controversy in the

1973 war when he suffered a breakdown similar to Rabin’s in 1967, and was forced

by popular pressure from the defense ministry. He returned three years later as

Begin’s foreign minister, and in that capacity spearheaded the negotiations—at

first secret and later, at Camp David, overt—with Sadat. Then, angered by Begin’s

alleged foot-dragging on the Palestinian issue, he quit the government to form his

own party dedicated to unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank. The effort was

cut short in 1981, however, by Dayan’s death from cancer.

Caught between the “politicians” and the “security men,” grappling with

the protean positions of Dayan, was Israel’s prime minister, Eshkol. He had

been overshadowed by the military men and haunted by his alleged indecisive-

ness in the weeks preceding the war. The man who had stood up to the entire

general staff, who had bargained with Johnson and called Kosygin’s bluff, whose

determination to wait three weeks had won much of world opinion and given

his army much-needed time to prepare—that man sat unheralded among the

Mount Scopus guests.

Eshkol, too, distinguished between Israel’s “security” and “political” inter-

ests. The former, he maintained, could be satisfied by creating demilitarized

zones and forward IDF posts in sensitive areas of the occupied territories, and

the latter, by peace treaties with Egypt and Syria on the basis of the prewar

borders. Peace could also be reached with Jordan according to the UN Parti-

tion lines, and by compensating and resettling the Palestinian refugees.

The linchpin of Eskhol’s plan was the Palestinians’ willingness to set up a

“protected” and potentially independent regime in the West Bank. But his vision

could not be realized. Of the eighty West Bank notables interviewed by Israeli

fact-finders that summer, few could agree on the nature of Palestinian self-rule,

while Palestinians outside the territories violently opposed the concept. Hussein,

fearing the threat the proposed state would pose to his kingdom, worked to un-

dermine Eshkol’s efforts, and Nasser rejected any arrangement that failed to

restore all the occupied territories, including Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, Eshkol refused to give up. He continued to seek Palestinian

partners in the West Bank and Arab leaders willing to negotiate directly. He

Aftershocks 317

persisted in the belief, as he told Lyndon Johnson, that “the Six-Day War may

have possibly, for the first time, stirred in the Middle East the beginnings of a

process leading to peace.”

The meeting between the president and the prime minister, their first in

four years, took place at Johnson’s Texas ranch in January 1968. Eshkol stressed

the changes that the war had wrought in the region, and the opportunities it

had opened. “Our policy is direct negotiations leading to peace treaties. We

take this line not because of any obstinate adhesion to any particular formula,

but because we believe that face-to-face contact and reasoning together will

create a new psychological reality.” He continued to evince the dichotomous

self-image of Israeli strength and helplessness, praising the IDF while com-

plaining that “one defeat in the field can be fatal for our survival . . . Israel could

be exterminated in one day”—still “Samson the nerd.” But, at base, Eshkol

remained nothing but magnanimous:

Mr. President, I have no sense of boastful triumph nor have I entered the struggle

for peace in the role of victor. My feeling is one of relief that we were saved

from disaster in June and for this I thank God. All my thoughts now are turned

toward getting peace with our neighbors—a peace of honor between equals.

Just over a year later, Eshkol was dead, the victim of heart failure brought

on—Col. Lior persistently believed—by the stresses of the Six-Day War.

Strangely, one of the primary sources of that tension, Moshe Dayan, rushed to

the foot of the prime minister’s deathbed, cried “Eshkol!” and burst sobbing

out of the room. Indeed, all of Israel was stunned. The Ha’aretz editors, who

had once demanded Eshkol’s resignation from the Defense Ministry, praised

his “ability to run the state with a staff of refinement rather than the stick of

wrath,” and his “roots as a Jew, an Israeli, and man experienced in the ways of

life far beyond politics.” Another daily, Ma‘ariv, acknowledging his leadership

in the 1967 war, speculated that, “perhaps only Eshkol, whose personality com-

bined audacity, obstinacy, and weakness, could have weathered the most seri-

ous crisis Israel ever faced.”

Reactions in the Arab world were less laudatory, of course. Cairo Radio

welcomed the demise of a “leader of the gang that built Israel on the body parts

of Arab victims,” while an Iraqi spokesman eulogized “the cleverest personality

ever to conduct war crimes in our captured land.” In a communiqué issued

from Damascus, al-Fatah claimed credit for killing Eshkol with a surface-to-

surface missile. Arafat declared, “our primary goal now is the liberation of Pal-

estine through armed force, even if the struggle continues for tens of years.”

For all appearances, Arab opinion on Israel had only been hardened by the war.

There could still be “no peace with Israel, no survival of the influence of imperi-

alism and no existence in our land of the Zionist state,” according to an official

318 SIX DAYS OF WA R

Egyptian broadcast. “The Arab masses will never let any responsible Arab person

remain alive who would dare negotiate with Israel.” The depth of the animosity,

the anger, and the shame was expressed by Hazem Nuseibah, a Princeton gradu-

ate, a Palestinian who had once served as Jordan’s foreign minister. “If the United

States believes that because of the enormity of our catastrophe we will forget Pal-

estine and there will be peace in the Middle East, you are making a major mistake,”

he told Findley Burns. “There will be no peace in the Middle East.”

Arab politics, too, appeared to have emerged from the war every bit as

implacable as before. On the day that Israel decided to exchange the Golan

Heights for peace, the Syrian regime executed twenty officers for sedition, and

offered to collaborate with Baghdad in overthrowing King Hussein. Salim

Hatum, the former mutineer still living in Amman, was offered amnesty and

lured back to Damascus, where Intelligence Chief Jundi personally tortured

and killed him. “Nasser is an arch intriguer and a bogus leader,” King Faisal

told Britain’s ambassador to Jidda. “If I’d been in the Jews’ place, I’d have done

exactly the same thing to him,” swore the Saudi monarch who, in 1975, would

be shot dead by his own nephew.

The Arab world remained the same, or so it seemed on August 29, when

Nasser stepped onto the hot tarmac in Khartoum. The president had arrived in

the Sudanese capital for the first pan-Arab summit since 1965, and Nasser’s

first meeting with Arab leaders since the disaster three months before. Thou-

sands of people thronged the streets to greet him, but Nasser, nervous and

pale, still reeled from the summer’s events. “I cannot forget those first few days

in June,” he admitted to his ministers before departing. “I felt a great and inde-

scribable pain. No doubt those days affected all of us, psychologically, materi-

ally, spiritually.

Nasser’s goal was to regain the lost Arab territories. Any diplomatic solu-

tion, he knew, would have to involve cooperation with the United States, but as

yet unwilling to accord Israel even oblique recognition, much less peace, Nasser

still needed a military option. He had to rebuild his army, and for that he turned

to the USSR.

The Soviets, however, were hesitant. Too much of their weaponry had

been lost or had fallen into Western hands, and they feared that renewed fight-

ing now, with the Arabs still weak, could result in nuclear war. Visiting Cairo

on June 22, President Podgorny agreed to meet Nasser’s requests for hundreds

of jets, tanks, and advisers, but in return he demanded a port for the Soviet fleet

and—more unpalatable for Egypt—a political solution to the Arab-Israeli con-

flict. “Are you asking for more aircraft with the intention of ultimately annihi-

lating Israel?” inquired Podgorny, and Nasser curtly replied, “any discussion

on political concessions is only a reward for aggression and that is illogical both

politically and mentally.”

The request for arms was reiterated the following month in Moscow by

president ‘Aref of Iraq and Algeria’s Houari Boumedienne, acting as Nasser’s

Aftershocks 319

emissaries. Brezhnev again demanded a quid pro quo of a land-for-non-

belligerency arrangement. “Let Israel withdraw and then interpret the resolu-

tion the way you want,” the party chairman advised them. “Then, when you

become strong, do whatever you want.” The deal would involve neither peace

nor recognition, but again Nasser held firm, declaring, “That which was taken

by force will be returned by force,” and “the price [of nonbelligerency] will

turn our defeat into a double defeat.” In the end he got his way: The Soviets

agreed to rearm Egypt completely and without preconditions.

With his replenished arsenal, Nasser was able to wage a three-year war of

attrition against Israeli forces in Sinai, and so sustain his claim that the June

War was merely the first stage in a more protracted struggle. But while Egyp-

tian and Israeli guns pounded one another across the Suez Canal, the super-

powers, both in and outside the UN, strove to reach a modus vivendi on the

Middle East. Nasser could not ignore those efforts. “To my mind the solution

of peace, whether Soviet or American, is the way of surrender,” he said. “The

only way open to us is the road to war.” Pursuing that path, he explained to

Arab foreign ministers in July, would necessitate a degree of deception:

We need a period of 2–3 years before we are ready to launch a far-reaching

operation to remove the traces of the aggression, but we must hide our prepa-

rations under political activity that will convince our friends, and first and

foremost the USSR, that we did everything possible within the UN frame-

work and in international negotiations.

The sole exemption to this plan was Jordan, which, dependent on Ameri-

can arms, could not hope to mount a military initiative by 1970. “There is no

choice but to give him [Hussein] the freedom to maneuver to regain the West

Bank,” Nasser confided to Heikal. As long as he refrained from reaching a

separate peace agreement with Israel, Hussein was free to explore ways of re-

trieving the West Bank through American mediation.

Preparing for war and maneuvering around peace—Egypt’s “security” and

“political” goals; Nasser, too, made the distinction—meant maintaining the

level of Arab unity achieved on the eve of the war. A way had to be found of

ending the Yemen conflict, of healing the rifts between revolutionary and con-

servative regimes. In the weeks leading up to Khartoum, Nasser endorsed the

resumption of Arab oil shipments to the West; he offered to cease all subver-

sive activity against Arab monarchs and, in return, asked that they aid in salvag-

ing Egypt’s economy. To King Hussein, Nasser wrote, “We have entered this

war together, lost it together, and we must win it together . . . Egypt is willing

to tie its fate completely to that of the brave Jordanian people.” In al-Ahram,

Heikal made the case for Arab co-existence: “It is in the national interest to

permit other experiments and different political and social opinions.”

Nasser’s prodigious efforts succeeded in preserving at least the semblance

of Arab unity, but greater energy still would have to be expended to keep his

own country united.

320 SIX DAYS OF WA R

Since his resignation, ‘Abd al-Hakim ‘Amer had secluded himself with sym-

pathizers, chanting “there is no commander but the field marshal” and peti-

tioning for his reinstatement. Fearing widespread sedition, Nasser had offered

to restore his former post as vice president, but ‘Amer would settle for nothing

less than commander in chief. He began to hoard arms, to mobilize officers

soon to be cashiered for their failures in the war. A date was set for the coup—

September 1, while Nasser was away in Khartoum—but a week before, Nasser

determined that his longtime best friend constituted “a danger to peace, the

army, and the homeland,” and decided to act.

A handpicked battalion followed Gen. Fawzi to ‘Amer’s villa in Giza. Nasser

followed the troop with tears in his eyes. “He felt that processions such as this

happen only in Greek tragedies and not in the real life of politicians,” Heikal

wrote. Fawzi confiscated piles of weapons and arrested 300 officers. But the

purge was only beginning. Over 1,000 people would be incarcerated, including

Generals Murtagi and Sidqi Mahmud, Shams Badran and Salah Nasr, and sev-

eral hundred members of ‘Amer’s family. Many would be sentenced to lengthy

prison terms, often with hard labor. Yet even those acquitted continued to

suffer disgrace. “People would throw bricks through my windows. When I went

outside they would curse me bitterly,” confessed Gen. ‘Abd al-Hamid al-

Dugheidi, a senior air force commander who moved from Cairo to Alexandria

in order to escape the shame. “Even my own nephew, a child of five, said to me,

‘You’re a coward, uncle. You ran and abandoned us.’”

The cruelest fate, however, awaited ‘Amer. After a prolonged interroga-

tion, the former field marshal and contender for Egypt’s leadership became

violently ill and died. An official autopsy discovered that the cause of death was

aconite poisoning—a dosage of the drug was found taped to ‘Amer’s stom-

ach—though rumors persisted that he had been shot while trying to escape or

executed for threatening to disclose the government’s role in the debacle. Nasser,

nevertheless, was crushed, confessing, “It would have been far better for me if

I had died rather than witness this defeat. And greater even than the defeat

itself is my disappointment in my lifelong friend, ‘Abd al-Hakim.” Others, how-

ever, were far less aggrieved. “[It] was the best decision ‘Amer ever has taken,”

Sadat concluded. “If I were him I would have done it on June 5.”

These events took a further toll on Nasser, who arrived in Khartoum a

physically sick but politically secure ruler, determined to “restore Arab dignity

and honor.” King Hussein, by comparison, was both ailing and deeply afraid

for his crown.

“I have to admit that once June was over, it took me a long time to under-

stand, digest and face up to what had happened,” the king confessed in his

memoirs. “It was like a dream or worse yet, a nightmare.” He, too, had taken

steps to repair his army, not so much purging its ranks as reshuffling them to

give greater power to royal family members, filling the void left by ‘Atif al-

Majali, the general who insisted on defending Jerusalem and who collapsed

Aftershocks 321

and died shortly after the city’s surrender. Hussein had tried to integrate hun-

dreds of PLO fighters now stationed on Jordanian territory, and to shelter

hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Yet he had also mustered the

resources to tour Arab and Western capitals, there to deliver hard-line speeches

while secretly seeking a “just and honorable peace.” At a clandestine meeting

in London, he replied to Ya‘akov Herzog’s question—“Is Your Majesty ready

to sign a peace treaty with Israel?”—saying, “Certainly, yes, but . . . I must

move together with the entire Arab world.”

Peace, Hussein believed, could be achieved only through a summit that

authorized him to negotiate for the West Bank’s return while protecting him

from the Arab radicals. Hussein then convinced an initially skeptical Nasser

that a formula could be found for political latitude that did not mean recogniz-

ing Israel. Now, together in Khartoum, the two former enemies faced onerous

challenges: Algerian and Iraqi demands for continuing the oil embargo and

nationalizing Western companies, and Shuqayri’s clamoring for guerrilla at-

tacks and a popular uprising in the territories. Syria’s delegates described the

summit as the springboard for a new military offensive and, finding little sup-

port for the initiative, promptly flew back to Damascus.

But Nasser was unfazed. As in his heyday, he dominated the conference,

telling participants that Soviet and American plans for ending the state of war

“will lead us to surrender and humiliation,” while stressing, “There is a differ-

ence between political action and the liquidation of the [Palestine] issue.” He

warned of the danger of creeping Israeli annexation of the West Bank, and

urged support for Hussein’s efforts to redeem the area, indirectly, through the

Americans. Nasser’s imprint was discernible in the final communiqué that com-

mitted the Arab states to stand united on “political action” to retrieve Arab

territories and realize Palestinian rights, while conceding “no recognition of

Israel, no peace and no negotiations with her,” and taking “all steps necessary

to consolidate military preparedness.”

Western observers would later debate whether Khartoum was a victory for

Arab moderation or radicalism. True, it vetoed any interaction with Israel, but

it appeared to open doors to third-party arbitration and the demilitarization of

the occupied territories. Hussein claimed the conference had Arab extremists

“put on ice,” and compelled the Israelis “to prove that they really mean to live

in peace . . . and be accepted in this world on which they have encrusted them-

selves like a scab.” Yet, when presented with a Yugoslavian scheme in which

Israel would vacate Sinai in return for guarantees of free passage, Nasser turned

his back. He reminded his ministers that “our primary intention is to continue

to pursue the political solution road in order to gain time for military prepara-

tion and to persuade the Soviets to supply us with all the weapons we need.”

For the Israelis, the “three no’s” of Khartoum effectively closed the door on

the June 19 resolution. Said Eshkol, “This stand of the Arab Heads of State

reinforces Israel’s decision not to permit the return of such conditions that