View: Six Days of War: New look at old war

WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- Trying to explain the origins of the half-century-old Arab-Israeli conflict is, by any stretch of the imagination, an intricately complex and sensitive task, especially when the narrator is directly concerned by the events.

Yet, Michael B. Oren manages to accomplish this feat quite masterfully in his latest book, "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East." (Oxford University Press, 446 pages, of which, more than 100 pages are dedicated to notes, extensive bibliography and index, $30).

Oren drew his material for this highly informative work on extensive and, what was without a doubt, exhaustive research. Using recently declassified documents from a wide range of sources and interviews, he includes papers from the official archives of the United States, Canada, Britain and Israel, as well as documents from Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential library and former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's archives to explain the facts and events that led up to the war.

He reveals secret documents, such as an unsigned letter from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to Jordan's King Hussein, and reports on minute-by-minute conversations between leading actors of that conflict; Nasser, Hussein, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and Army Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, among many others.

Oren points out, that while archives in the Arab world remain closed to researchers, he did manage to access private collections, as well as to conduct interviews with several participants of the June 1967 war.

The author, who previously served as director of Israel's Department of Inter-Religious Affairs in the government of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and later as an adviser to the Israeli delegation at the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

In Oren's words, the Six-Day War had an impact on much of the events that followed in the Middle East since those fateful 132 hours of war that claimed the lives of about 15,000 Egyptian soldiers, 700 Jordanians, (6,000 wounded or missing) 450 Syrians and about 800 Israelis.

The war of attrition, the Yom Kippur (or October 1973) War, the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, Black September, the Lebanon War, the controversy over the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the future of Jerusalem, the Camp David Accords and the Intifada, "all were the result of six intense days in the Middle East in June 1967," says Oren.

Rarely in modern times," he writes, "has so short and localized a conflict had such prolonged, global consequences." THAT was the mother of all Middle Eastern battles.

Explaining that it may be useless to try to pinpoint the cause, or causes, of the 1967 war, Oren tries to describe the context in which that war became possible. Everything that has occurred in the Middle East since then has in one way or another flowed from that conflict.

"Much like the hypothetical butterfly that, flapping its wings, gives rise to currents that eventually generate a storm," so, too, might small, seemingly insignificant events spark processes leading ultimately to cataclysm."

Oren cites as examples: "The introduction of Zionism into the maelstrom of Middle East politics galvanized what was already a highly unstable environment into a framework for regional war." Additionally, he points out "... the Palestinian Arabs regarded the Yishuv as a tool of Western imperialism, an alien culture inimical to their way of life."

Compounded to that, was the problem faced by the Arabs leaders who tended to follow the sentiments and opinion of the Arab street instead of trying to lead it. "The street was fulminating against Zionism and the Arab regimes became deeply embroiled in Palestine."

The rest, as the book adequately points out, is history; a history that led to the tragic war of 1967, and the conflict that continues unabated to this day.

From the early days of the Arab-Israeli dispute, all the ingredients for disaster were gradually building up. As Ralph Bunche, the U.N. official who received the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the armistice between Israel and its Arab neighbors pointed out, that armistice, signed in the aftermath of Israel's independence in 1948, in fact, "perpetuated the conflict and prepared the ground for war."

Oren points out, in painstaking details, how Nasser's belligerence, Egypt's military build-up in the Sinai, the removal of U.N. Emergency Force troops, and ultimately, the closure of the Straits of Tiran, all eventually led to Israel's pre-emptive strikes on Egypt, Syria and Jordan. What followed was the capture of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt, Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria, and the setting for the next (October 1973) war.

The most depressing aspect in Oren's study is how little has changed in the Middle East over the last 40 years. He describes that, "Israeli civilians were more like permanent soldiers on temporary leave." With the calling up of thousands of army reserves as the Palestinian Intifada continues, and Israel's re-incursion in several West Bank towns and villages in the last few weeks, it would appear that statement could still hold true, and that history is repeating itself. The major difference is that the death toll today is higher (barring the casualties of the 1967 war itself).

In the seven-year period between 1949 and 1956, hostile fire killed 486 Israelis. Compare that to more than 500 Israelis and about 1,500 Palestinians who have died in only two years, since the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000.

We learn that Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon's hard-line stance on the Arabs is not new. Firing 6,000 artillery shells on Egyptian positions in Umm Qatef, in the Sinai, in less than 20 minutes, Sharon, then an army commander was reported to have uttered, "Let everything tremble."

A similarity can also be drawn to today's activities by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, armed and trained by Iran and Syria, to those of the Palestinian Fedayeen in the early 1960s -- Fatah and al-Asifa (the storm) -- who were armed and trained by Egypt and ... Syria.

Israeli retaliation on Jenin for terror attacks carried out by Palestinians, for example, is deja vu. Similar incidents occurred as early as 1965. We also learn that the destruction of 28 Arab homes in the village of Rafat by Israeli paratroopers as a punitive measure did little to deter Palestinian groups with names such as "Youths for Revenge" and "Heroes of the Return."

Those who lived through this war will remember the false communiqués issued by Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the early hours of the war, claiming multiple victories against Israel, and the claim to have downed scores of Israeli warplanes, when in fact nearly the entirety of Egypt's air force was destroyed on the ground in the first several hours of hostilities. What is particularly revealing in the book is how Nasser lied even to his ally King Hussein, misleading him to believe that Egypt was still engaged and advancing.

Above all, we learn of the same shortsightedness by the U.S. governments in its Middle East policies. President Bush's statement that Sharon is a "man of peace," is not without precedent, either. Vice President Hubert Humphrey called Israel "a beacon to all peoples in the Middle East and elsewhere."

There are no good guys in Oren's book. While the Arabs are portrayed as ill-trained, undisciplined, disorganized and pushing "The Big Lie," (that the United States and Britain were involved in the initial assaults on Egypt) the Israelis don't go without blame either. He depicts them as eager to teach Nasser and Syria a lesson, and just itching to go after the Golan. He describes, in detail, conversations between Dayan and David Elazar, the northern commander who could hardly be restrained from attacking the Golan. He unfolds details of Israel's delaying tactics in order to allow their troops to conquer more territory before accepting a cease-fire.

Field Marshall Abd al-Hakim Amer, Nasser's right hand man, who ran the army proved inadequate for the job. His troops received no training, were constantly moved about aimlessly, and although Egypt had practically put itself on a state of war, he allowed the armed forces to be caught in the opening hours of the conflict with its entire air fleet on the ground. Nasser later said that Egypt had expected the Israelis to attack from the east, but they attacked from the west instead.

Oren quotes an Egyptian officer as saying that while the Israelis knew the name of every Egyptian soldier serving on the front lines, they, the Egyptians, did not even know where Dayan lived.

Oren writes: "Needed was the balanced study of the military and political facets of the war... a book intended for scholars but also accessible to a wider readership." In that, he has succeeded. Some of the most interesting reading is actually the parts that cover the mediation, the diplomacy and the breathtaking behind-the-scene efforts that occurred in the few crucial days leading up to the war.

Only a day before the outbreak of hostilities, Gen. Indar Jit Rikhye, the Indian commander of UNEF, made the following prophetic prediction to U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, "I think you're going to have a major Middle East war and I think we will still be sorting it out 50 years from now."

Thirty-five years later we are still trying to sort it out.

(The Culture Vulture is a weekly column written by UPI's Life and Mind editor, and reflects on current trends or events. Comments may be sent to claude@upi.com.)