17. Stumbling Into Unintended War
Tensions between Israel and her Arab neighbors climbed steadily in the runup to the Six Day War (June 5th – 10th, 1967). Raids from Palestinian guerrillas based in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, increased, eliciting massive Israeli reprisals. That put Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in a bind. He was the Arab world’s most popular politician, a hero of the masses for his defiance of Britain, France, and Israel during the Suez Crisis of 1956. However, he was now being criticized for failing to aid fellow Arab states against Israel. Nasser was also accused of hiding behind a UN peacekeeping force stationed on the Israeli-Egyptian border. Nasser knew that the Egyptian military was in no shape to fight Israel, but tried to regain his stature in the Arab world by bluster and bluff. He broadcast increasingly heated speeches threatening Israel, and sought to convey his seriousness with demonstrations short of war.
Nasser got carried away with his own rhetoric, and escalated the demonstrations beyond the point of prudence. He began by massing Egyptian forces in the Sinai. A few days later, he requested the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers separating Israeli and Egyptian forces. A few more days, and he closed to Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. A week later, Jordan’s king arrived in Egypt to ink a mutual defense pact, followed soon thereafter by Iraq. Unfortunately, what might have been intended as bluff seemed all too real from an Israeli perspective. Moreover, the Israelis, who actually were prepared for war, had long been itching for an excuse to cut Nasser down to size. So on June 5th, 1967, they launched preemptive air strikes that destroyed 90 percent of the Egyptian air force on the ground, and put paid to the Syrian planes as well.
