Trolling the Israelis at the Wrong Time
In the lead to the Six Day War (June 5th – 10th, 1967), the temperature of the Arab-Israeli dispute rose steadily. Raids from Palestinian guerrillas based in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, increased, and elicited 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. Now, however, he faced criticism for his failure to aid other Arab states against Israel. He 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 he sought to regain his stature in the Arab world by bluster and bluff. He broadcast increasingly heated speeches that threatened Israel, and sought to convey his seriousness with demonstrations short of war. However, Nasser got carried away with his own rhetoric, and escalated the demonstrations beyond the point of prudence. He massed Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and a few days later, requested the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers separating the Israeli and Egyptian forces. Shortly thereafter, he closed to Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. A week later, Jordan’s King Hussein arrived in Egypt to ink a mutual defense pact, followed soon thereafter by a defense treaty with Iraq.
