Chapter 12: We are alone
Six Day War: Prelude
"In the meantime a number of events had occurred in the Middle East which were to place Israel’s future in far greater jeopardy than Labour disunity at home could ever have done. In 1966 preparations were already being made by the Arabs for another round of war. The symptoms were all familiar. As a matter of fact, in a way the prelude to the Six Day War of 1967 was identical with the prelude to the Sinai Campaign. Terrorist gangs —as actively encouraged and supported by President Nasser as the fedayeen had been in the 1950s —were operating against Israel both from the Gaza Strip and Jordan. They included a new organization, founded in 1965, known as Al Fatah which, under Yassir Arafat’s leadership, subsequently became the most powerful and well-publicized element in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Also, a united Egyptian—Syrian high command had been established and vast sums of money were allocated at an Arab summit conference for the express purpose of stockpiling weapons to be used against Israel —and, of course, the Soviet Union was still pumping both arms and money into the Arab states. The Syrians seemed bent on an escalation of the conflict; they kept up an endless bombardment of the Israeli settlements below the Golan Heights, and Israeli fishermen and farmers faced what was sometimes virtually daily attack by snipers. I used to visit those settlements occasionally and watch the settlers go about their work as though there was nothing at all unusual in ploughing with a military escort or putting children to sleep —every single night - in underground air-raid shelters. But I never believed them when they said that they had got quite used to living under perpetual fire. I don’t think parents ever get ‘used’ to the idea that their children’s lives are in danger.
Then, in the autumn of 1966, the Soviet Union suddenly began to accuse Israel of readying her forces for a full-scale attack against Syria. It was an absurd charge, but it was duly investigated by the United Nations and, naturally, found to be without any basin The Russians, however, kept on making the same accusations and talking about the Israeli ‘aggression’ that was bound to cause a third round of the Arab—Israel war, while the Syrians, receiving arms and financial aid from the Soviet Union, kept up their raids on our border settlements. Whenever the Syrian terror reached an intolerable point, Israel’s air force would go into action against the terrorists, and for a few weeks the border settlements could relax. But by the early spring of 1967 these periods of relative relaxation were becoming fewer and shorter. In April 1967, the air force was sent up in an action that turned into an air battle and resulted in the downing by Israeli planes of six Syrian MIGs. When this happened, the Syrians, egged on as always by the Soviet Union, once again screamed that Israel was making preparations for a major offensive against Syria, and an official complaint to this effect was even made on Syria’s behalf to Prime Minister Eshkol by the Soviet ambassador to Israel, Mr Chuvakhin. Not only was this one of the most grotesque incidents of the period, but it actually helped to trigger off the war that broke out in June.
‘We understand,’ Chuvakhin said very unpleasantly to Eshkol, ‘that in spite of all your official statements, there are, in fact, extremely heavy concentrations of Israeli troops all along the Syrian borders.’ This time, Eshkol did more than merely deny the allegation. He asked Chuvakhin to go up north and look at the situation along the border for himself and he even offered to accompany Chuvakhin on the trip. But the ambassador promptly said he had other things to do and refused the invitation, although all that was involved was only a few hours’ drive, Of course, had he gone he would have been forced to report to the Kremlin —and to the Syrians —that no Israeli soldiers were massed on the border and that the supposed Syrian alarm was absolutely unjustified. But this was exactly what he didn’t want to do. By refusing to take that trip, he successfully breathed new life into the lie that helped set in motion Nasser’s entry into the picture, and therefore the Six Day War.
At the beginning of May, responding to what he termed the ‘desperate plight’ of the Syrians, Nasser ordered Egyptian troops and armour to mass in Sinai, and just in case anyone misunderstood his intentions, Cairo Radio shrilly announced that ‘Egypt, with all its resources... is ready to plunge into a total war that will be the end of Israel.’
On 16 May, Nasser moved again - only now he gave orders not to his own army but to the United Nations. He demanded that the UN Emergency Force that had been stationed both at Sharm el-Sheikh and in the Gaza strip since 1956 get out at once. Legally, he had a right to evict the UNEF because it was only with Egypt's consent that the international police force had been stationed on Egyptian soil; but I didn't for a minute believe that Nasser actually expected the United Nations to do his bidding meekly. It was against all rhyme or reason for a force that had come into existence for the sole purpose of supervising the ceasefire between Egypt and Israel to be removed at the request of one of the combatants the very first moment that the ceasefire was seriously threatened, and I am sure that Nasser anticipated a long round of discussions, arguments and haggling. If nothing else, he almost certainly reckoned that the United Nations would insist on some kind of phasing-out operation. However, for reasons which have never been understood by anyone - least of all by me - the UN secretary-general, U Thant, gave in to Nasser at once. He didn't refer the matter to anyone else. He didn't ask the security council for an opinion. He didn't even suggest a delay of a few days. Entirely of his own accord, U Thant instantly agreed to the immediate withdrawal of the UNEF."
"That delusion was further strengthened on 22 May when Nasser, intoxicated by the success of his dismissal of the UNEF, made another test of the world’s reaction to his stated intention of entering an all-out war with Israel. He announced that Egypt was reimposing her blockade of the Straits of Tiran, despite the fact that a score of nations (including the United States, Britain, Canada and France) had guaranteed Israel’s right of navigation through the Gulf of Aqaba. It was without any question another deliberate challenge, and Nasser waited to see how it would be met. He didn’t have to wait very long. No one was going to do much about that either. Of course, there were protests and angry reactions. President Johnson described the blockade as ‘illegal’ and ‘potentially disastrous to the cause of peace’, and suggested that an international convoy, including an Israeli vessel, sail through the straits to call Nasser’s bluff; but he couldn’t persuade the French or British to join him. The Security Council met in an emergency session, but the Russians saw to it that no conclusions were reached. The British prime minister, my good friend Harold Wilson, flew to the States and to Canada to suggest that an international naval task force be organized to police the Straits of Tiran, but he also got nowhere with his suggestion. Even U Thant —realizing at last what a terrible mistake he had made —finally bestirred himself sufficiently to go to Cairo and try to reason with Nasser, but it was too late."
"The Soviet minister of defence brought Nasser a last-minute message of encouragement from Kosygin: the Soviet Union would stand by Egypt in the battle that lay ahead. So the stage was set. As for war aims, to the extent that Nasser felt obliged to explain anything to the Egyptian people —who were already in the first throes of war hysteria —it was enough to go on repeating the phrase ‘We aim at the destruction of the State of Israel’ and to tell the Egyptian National Assembly, as he did in the last week of May, ‘The issue is rut the question of Aqaba, the Straits of Tiran or the UNEF. . . The issue is the aggression against Palestine that took place in 1948.’ In other words, the war that was now in the making was to be the ultimate Arab war against us, and on the face of it, Nasser had every reason for thinking that he would win it."
"From the beginning, there was no question in anyone’s mind that war had to be averted —at almost any cost. There was no question that if we had to fight, we would do so —and win —but first every possible avenue had to be explored. Eshkol, his face grey with weariness and tension, set in motion a search for some kind of diplomatic intervention. That was the sum total of his requests; needless to say, we never asked for military personnel. Eban was sent on a round of missions to Paris, London and Washington...Eban came back with nothing except the worst possible news. Our gravest fears had been confirmed. London and Washington were sympathetic and worried, but still not prepared to take any action. It was too bad, but maybe the Arab frenzy would wear itself out. At all events, they recommended patience and self-control. There was no alternative other than for Israel to wait and see. De Gaulle had been more direct: whatever happened, he told Eban, Israel must not make the first move until and unless the Arab attack actually began. When that happened, France would step in to save the situation. To Eban's question: 'But what if we are no longer there to be saved?' de Gaulle chose not to reply, but he made clear to Eban that France's continued friendship with us depended entirely on whether or not we obeyed him."
Six Day War: Aftermath
"More than that, world Jewry looked on, saw our extreme peril and our isolation and asked itself, for the first time I think: what if the State of Israel ceases to exist? And to this question there was also only one possible and short answer: no Jew anywhere in the world would ever feel free again if the Jewish state were to be eradicated. "
"I asked my friends in New York to arrange a meeting for me with at least some of the 2500 younger Jews from that city who had volunteered to go to Israel during the war.
It wasn't easy to arrange the meeting within twenty-four hours, but it was done, and over 1000 of those youngsters came to talk to me. 'Tell me,' I asked them, 'Why did you want to come? Was it because of the way you were brought up? Or because you thought it would be exciting? Or because you are Zionists? What did you think about when you stood in line last month and asked to be allowed to go to Israel?' There wasn't a uniform answer to my question, of course, but it seemed to me that one young man spoke for all of them when he got up and said: 'I don't know how to explain it you, Mrs Meir, but I do know one thing. My life will never be the same again. The Six Day War, and the fact that Israel came so close to being destroyed, has changed everything for me - my feelings about myself, my family, even my neighbours. Nothing will ever be quite the same for me as it was before.' It wasn't a very coherent reply but it came from his heart, and I knew what he was talking about. It was about his identity as a Jew and about the larger family to which he suddenly knew he belonged, for all of the differences between us. The threat we were experiencing, to be very blunt, was the threat of extinction, and to that Jews respond in the same way, whether they go to synagogue or not, whether they live in New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Moscow, or Petah Tikvah. It is a deeply familiar threat, and when Nasser and his associates made it, they doomed their war to failure because we had decided - all of us - that there was to be no repetition of Hitler's 'Final Solution', no second Holocaust."
"There are two other general comments I must make about the Six Day War. The first should go without saying, but I have learned not to take anything for granted, and there may still be people who do not understand that we fought that war so successfully not only because we were made to fight it, but also because we most profoundly hoped that we would achieve a victory so complete that we would never have to fight again. If the defeat of the Arab armies massed against us could be made total, then perhaps our neighbours would finally give up their ‘holy war’ against us and realize that peace was as necessary for them as for us and that the lives of their Sons were as precious as the lives of our sons. We were wrong about that. The defeat was total, and the Arab losses were devastating, but the Arabs still couldn’t, and didn’t, come to grips with the fact that Israel was not going to accommodate them by disappearing from the map.
The second point of which I would like to remind my readers is that in June 1967 Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem were all in Arab possession, so that it is ludicrous to argue today that Israel's presence in those territories since 1967 is the cause of tension in the Middle East or was the cause of the Yom Kippur War. When Arab statesmen insist that Israel withdraw to the pre-June 1967 lines, one can only ask: if those lines are so sacred to the Arabs, why was the Six Day War launched to destroy them?"
"There was also Hussein, who had measured Eshkol's promise that nothing would happen to Jordan if he kept out of the war against the message he had received from Nasser that very morning informing him that Tel Aviv was being bombed by the Egyptians - never mind that Nasser didn't have a single bomber to his name by then. Like his grandfather before him, Hussein had carefully weighed the odds and made a mistake...As soon as the Jordanian shelling began, the IDF struck at Hussein also, and although the fighting on the Jerusalem front cost the lives of very many young Israeli's - who fought hand to hand and street by narrow street, rather than resort to the mortars and tanks that might have damaged the city and the Christian and Moslem holy places - it was already clear that night that Hussein's greed was going to lose him his hold on eastern Jerusalem, at the very least. At the risk of repeating myself, I must emphasise, at this point, that just as in 1948 the Arabs had hammered at Jerusalem without the slightest regard for the safety of its churches and holy places, so in 1967 Jordanian troops didn't hesitate to use churches and even minarets of their own mosques for emplacements. This may explain why we resent the fears that are sometimes expressed for the sanctity of Jerusalem under Israeli administration, to say nothing of what we discovered when we finally entered East Jerusalem; Jewish cemeteries had been desecrated, the ancient synagogues of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City had been razed to the ground and Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives had been used to pave Jordanian roads and Jordanian army latrines. So let no one ever try to convince me that Jerusalem is better off in Arab hands or that we cannot be trusted to take care of it."
"It was all over. The Arab states and their Soviet patrons had lost their war. But this time, the price for our withdrawal was going to be very high, higher than it had been in 1956. This time the price would be peace, permanent peace, peace by treaty based on agreed and secure borders. It had been a lightning war, but it had also been a cruel one. All over Israel there were military fhncrals again, many of them the funerals of boys whose fathers or older brothers had fallen in the War of Independence or the fighting that had plagued us ever since. We were not going to go through that anguish again if we could possibly help it. We were not going to be told what a wonderful people the Israelis are —they win wars every ten years, and they have done it again. Fantastic! Now that they have won this round, they can go back where they came from, so that Syrian gunners on the Golan Heights can again shoot into the kibbutzim, so that Jordanian Legionnaires on the towers of the Old City can again shell at will, so that the Gaza Strip can again be a nest for terrorists and the Sinai Desert can again become the staging ground for Nasser’s divisions.
‘Is there anybody,’ I asked at that rally in New York, ‘who is bold enough to say to us: “Go home! Start preparing your nine- and ten year-olds for the next war.” I am sure that every decent person in the world will say “no”, and —forgive me for being so blunt —most important of all, we ourselves say “no”.
'We had fought alone for our existence and our security and paid for them, and it seemed to most of us that a new day was really about to dawn, that the Arabs —trounced on the battlefield —might agree at last to sit down and thrash out the differences between us, none of which ever were, or are, insoluble."
Three nos
"But if the Arabs had learned nothing, we had learned something. We were not prepared to repeat the exercise of 1956. Discuss, negotiate, compromise, concede - all of these, yes! But not go back to where we had been on 4 June 1967. That accommodating we couldn't afford to be, even to save Nasser's face or to make the Syrians feel better about not having destroyed us! It was a great pity that the Arab states felt so humiliated by losing the war which they had started that they just couldn't bring themselves to talk to us, but on the other hand, we couldn't be expected to reward them for having tried to throw us into the sea. We were bitterly disappointed, but there was only one possible reply: Israel would not withdraw from any of the territories until the Arab states, once and for all, put an end to the conflict. We decided - and, believe me, it was not a painless decision - that whatever it cost us in terms of public opinion, money or energy, and regardless of the pressures that might be brought to bear on us, we would stand fast on the ceasefire lines. We waited for the Arabs to accept the fact that the only alternative to war was peace and that the only road to peace was negotiation."
242
"It will be noted that it does not say that Israel must withdraw from all territories, nor does it say that Israel must withdraw from the territories, but it does say that every state in the area has a right to live in peace within ‘secureand recognized boundaries’ and it does specify the ‘terminationof belligerency’. Furthermore, it does not speak of a Palestinian state, while it does speak of a refugee problem."