Israel's Justification for Preemptive Assault

Dueling Perspectives on the 1967 Six Day War: Why Popp Provides the More Convincing Argument

Introduction

The Six Day War remains a controversial event in Arab-Israeli history not only because of the considerable expansion of Israel’s territory that resulted from the War but also because of how the circumstances of the War have been interpreted by scholars and historians. Louis and Shlaim contend that the War was not something Israel’s government had wanted (26); yet, Popp shows that Israel’s government was adamant in arguing to Washington that a war was imminent even as McNamara insisted that Israel was misinterpreting the extent to which the Arab states posed a serious threat to Israel’s security (301). It is true that the Israel’s IDF was notorious for its hawkish rhetoric and that the Arab states had taken the IDF’s words of provocation—particularly those of Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin—as inflammatory: “Rabin’s strong language was widely interpreted in the Arab world as a signal of Israel’s intent to overthrow the Syrian regime by force” (25). Thus, if the rhetoric of Rabin was of this nature, the argument of Shlaim that Israel was seeking to avoid war is unconvincing. More convincing is the argument of Popp that Israel was maneuvering for a great victory and was using the supposed threat of attack by the Arab states as a pretext for its own rapid expansion.

Background

Shlaim argues in “Israel: Poor Little Samson,” that Israel had “no agreed policy and no coherent strategy regarding how to deal with Syria” (25). The government held a defensive position while the IDF maintained an offensively-minded stance. In other words, the IDF sought an escalation of conflict, while the government sought to prevent an outbreak of war (Shlaim 25). Yet Louis and Shlaim also contend that in-fighting on the Arab side, especially between Nasser and the Syrians, led to the defeat of the Arab armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six Day War. But if a lack of a coherent strategy on one side made a significant difference in that side’s defeat, why did it impact the Israeli side less so? Popp shows, on the contrary, that the Israeli government was attempting to convince Washington that Egypt was planning a serious “imminent attack”: “One of these warnings was even sent into a meeting of Eban with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Earle G. Wheeler on May 26” (Popp 301). Washington had surmised that Israel was seeking to show to the US that war was unavoidable and had landed upon a preemptive strategy as grounds for a proper response. Yet as Popp notes, “McNamara had already cautioned Eban that ‘the issue before us should not be a preemptive attack by Israel but how to prevent hostilities’” (301). As Popp explains, Washington remained skeptical of the Arab threat to Israel in the days leading up to the attack. Even President Johnson viewed the Arab states’ military posturing as non-threatening in the face of Israel’s superior military might: “Our best judgment is that no military attack on Israel is imminent, and, moreover, if Israel is attacked, our judgment is that the Israelis would lick them,” said Johnson (Popp 304). If, as Louis and Shlaim also contend, the Arab states were disorganized and suspicious of one another’s aims, and that in less than a week Israel was able to quadruple its size by taking the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, how is one to interpret the War as anything other than a calculated nexus on the part of Israel’s government and IDF to expand its borders with the same swiftness and decisiveness as it had demonstrated for nearly two decades during its establishment of settlements over Palestinian villages? If the rivaling Arab states were the trigger for the Six Day War, as claim Louis and Shlaim (7) the Arab states certainly bungled badly whatever initiative they believed themselves to have.

Louis and Shlaim also point out that the superpowers did little in the days leading up to the War (7). Louis and Shlaim state plainly that “America did not plan the war” and that the Soviet Union did little more than provide misleading information to Egypt about Israel’s intentions (6-7). Mobilization of troops on both sides of the Syrian-Israeli border had occurred leading up to the War—but Louis and Shlaim again point out that “the Syrians did not, however, anticipate an actual war. They were unprepared” (11). If, then, Syria was unprepared for war, and Egypt was mismanaged by Nasser, what was the true state of things in 1967 when in just six days Israel achieved the largest expansion of its territory in the state’s history? Popp implies that in spite of an apparent lack of coherent strategy between the Israeli government and the IDF, a plan had been formulated to seize the territories that were obtained and to use the build-up of troops by Syria and Egypt on Israel’s borders as a pre-text for swift action (305). This argument is all the more convincing in the light of Israel’s victory. The fact is that Israel had been pursuing an informal policy of expansion since its establishment, and the Six Day War afforded it the opportunity to expand a great deal all at once under the auspices of a defensive military action.

The Facts of the Matter

Israel argued that Egypt had mobilized in the Sinai Peninsula, prompting it to take pre-emptive action. Israel justified its attack on the Egyptian air force using pre-emptive warfare principles (Kurtulus 220). Nasser had invaded the northern border of Israel from Jordan and Syria—but it is also important to note the Arab perspective was that Israel was supported with Western military technology and was viewed as being a wing of Western imperialism (Crosbie). This perspective is not difficult to understand; after all, Communist influence in the Middle East had grown since World War 2, and the West was eager to counter that influence. The creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 put control of the West Bank and Gaza squarely in the matrix of the superpowers’ hegemonic pursuit. The purpose of to the PLO was to be the “national organization of the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere that would take part in joint Arab action to regain the stolen land of Palestine and participate in the mission of Arab nationalism” (Sayigh 104). With Fateh and Arafat leading the push for the PLO to strike out against Israel from their bases in Jordan and Syria, and Egypt’s Nasser pledging support, combatants were in place.

The Arab States’ Motive for War

In support of the argument of Louis and Shlaim is Filiu who notes that Israel had been primarily concerned with its own defenses in the build-up to war (247). National defense is certainly one of the principles of pre-emptive war (Kurtulus 220). And it can certainly be argued that the Arab states had a motive for war: indeed, it was this motive that Louis and Shlaim see as the basis for the IDF’s insistence upon swift action (25). Yet the Arab states were contentious with one another: Nasser sought to further the aims of Egypt, and the Syrians had their own aims, which made unification of purpose difficult (Louis, Shlaim 19). Outside of a common enemy (Israel), the Arab states had little in common in nationalistic terms. Notwithstanding that point, Israel understood well that Arabs were a majority of the population of Palestine by a factor of 2 to 1 in 1948 and had held 90% of land. Those numbers had declined at an exponential rate from 1948 onward as Israel, supported by foreign states, expanded its borders and Arabs emigrated north to Syria and south to Egypt or were forcibly expelled from their land by Israeli forces (Khalidi 1). Knowing this, Israel was always concerned about blowback and maintaining its own security. Indeed, Louis and Shlaim suggest that this insistence upon its own national security may have influenced its decision to preemptively attack Egypt in 1967 (15).

The Arab view of Israel is best described by Khalidi and can help one understand the position of the Israeli government in terms of its sense of having to maintain its own security: “The degree of harm done to Palestinian society in 1948 is hard to convey. Over a few weeks in the spring of 1948, Jaffa and Haifa, the cities with the largest Arab populations in Palestine, which were the most dynamic centers of Arab economic and cultural life throughout the Mandate period, were conquered by Zionist militias” (2). Those same militias then went on to serve as the core of the Israeli army and continued to disperse the Arab people and take possession of the land. Lydda, Ramleh, Acre, Safad, and other towns and cities that had been Arab were subsumed into Israel. Even in Jerusalem, approximately 30,000 Arabs had been expelled, leaving a tremendous crater in Arab society, where “the most highly educated, the wealthiest, and the most culturally active, had lost their property and become refugees” (Khalidi 2). The purge of Arabs of their land continued in the hundreds of villages throughout the territory, with four hundred of the five hundred Arab villages taken over by the Irgun or the Israeli army and other militias (Khalidi). Israel knew that this purge had created bitterness among the Arab states. That is why it maintained a defensive posture.

From 1948 onward, the situation remained one of perennial tension throughout the territory and neighboring states. The Palestinians described this loss as “the catastrophe”—al-Nakba—and it served as the foundation for their motivation to fight back against a state they viewed as illegitimate. Ramzy Baroud describes his own father’s experience as a villager, forced from his land and into the ranks of the Arab freedom fighters opposing Israeli occupation from 1948 onward. The personal narrative is situated within the context of Ben Gurion’s 1948 statement on Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine: “Not one refugee will return. The old will die. The young will forget” (Baroud xi). The Arab states were shocked by the exodus of Palestinians in 1948, as mass immigration always has a destabilizing effect on countries that end up hosting refugees. For the Arab states, the forced emigration due to Israel attacks and intense insecurity brought about by Israeli expansionism was a genuine motive for war (Khalidi).

Were these Arabs able to obtain nuclear weapons, Israel would be in a very insecure position. To protect itself, Israel had invested in nuclear armament (Filiu 248). Indeed, some have speculated that Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Egypt was in part driven by a fear (rational or not) regarding “a possible Egyptian surprise attack on the Dimona nuclear reactor” (Kurtulus 229). Certainly the desolation experienced by Palestinians at the hands of Israeli and Western imperialists served as all the motivation needed for the Arab states to find a way to mount a resistance. However, in spite of the Arab states having a motive for war, their position was viewed by Washington as being far inferior, militarily, to that of Israel. The Arab states may have desired a fight with Israel—but they were not in a position to give it a serious one. At the same time, Israel had shown a willingness to expand its borders well beyond the UN charter. A war with the weaker, disorganized Arab states would allow it to achieve that aim of expansion even more fully.

An Inadvertent War?

The sweeping defeat of the Arab states in the Six Day War was stunning to say the least. Louis and Shlaim pinned blame on the in-fighting among Arab leaders as well as failure on the part of Nasser in Egypt to mount sufficient counter-attack following Israel’s pre-emptive strike on Egypt’s air force in 1967. However, their perspective is flawed by their argument that Israel had no master plan of attack leading up to the Six Day War. As a superior military strength, it would have had contingency plans in place at any rate. Moreover, Popp shows clearly that “the United Arab Republic’s (UAR) military actions were limited in size and were without aggressive intentions” (281). On the other hand, the Israeli pre-emptive strike that triggered a mostly futile response from the Arab states was purposeful and engineered for a specific reason that often goes unstated: “The Israeli decision to strike was taken not for military reasons but rather to prevent a diplomatic solution which might have entailed disadvantages for the Israeli side” (Popp 281). In other words, the Six Day War was Israel’s way to negate any possibility of a two-state solution brokered by the various stakeholders of the time.

The Six Day War gave Israel command of the region through its territorial expansion. At the end of a week, Israel possessed all of Mandatory Palestine, the Golan Heights (which had belonged to Syria), and the Sinai. Over the course of a week it quadrupled its territory. Had the Arab states actually been planning an assault on Israel it could not have gone more disastrously—but the fact that Israel was able to acquire so much strategic ground in so short a time is highly suggestive of the state’s true intent: this was a planned acquisition made all the more striking due to the “special relationship” that emerged between Israel and the US in the wake of the attack (Popp 281). Indeed, that relationship existed well before the attack—although Kennedy in the White House had done his best to disrupt it; the Kennedy Administration “had established a working relationship with Nasser through personal diplomacy and food aid to the UAR” (Popp 291). With Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and Johnson in the White House in 1967, it was a much different environment for Israel: Johnson completely ignored the attack on the USS Liberty and the US gave no support to the Arab states like what had been the case under Kennedy. Shlaim’s contention that Nasser’s blunders in executing Egypt’s attack on Israel are what led to a quick victory for Israel is only half-convincing: Shlaim leaves out the other half of the story, which is Israel’s expansionist program. It would be like the US blaming Iraq for its own collapse following the US invasion in 2003 without addressing its own role in the matter: perhaps Iraq suffered from poor leadership, but the role that the US played also had to be considered. Israel’s pre-emptive assault justification is no different from the US’s own pre-emptive assault justification used for the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq. Pre-emptive war is a formal excuse for taking action against an enemy. Popp contends that historians like Shlaim have argued that the Six Day War was an inadvertent war caused by the plotting of the United Arab Republic (UAR) in an attempt to attack Israel (Popp). The claim is that Israel saw itself as about to be under attack and responded by attacking first and then in all directions.

However, the 1967 war was neither planned by the Arab states nor inadvertent (Popp 303). On June 5, 1967, Egypt had reason to believe Israel was planning on attack on Syria on May 17, based on Soviet intelligence (Popp 298). Acting on this belief, Nasser mobilized forces on May 14 into Sinai. The Straits of Tiran were closed to Israeli shipping on May 23 by the UAR. Israel struck Egypt’s air force on June 5 in response (Popp 298). What is unclear is whether the Soviet intelligence was mistaken or whether it was ever even communicated in the first place (Popp 298). The Soviet Union later denied that it delivered any intelligence, perhaps out of embarrassment. Regardless, US intelligence was aware of Soviet intervention by June 9 (Popp 299). The Johnson Administration had been eager to revamp Middle Eastern policy, altering the trajectory initiated by the Kennedy Administration. Kennedy had resisted pursuing a policy of containment, evidenced by his détente with Khrushchev. Johnson was pro-containment and viewed Nasser’s engagement with the Soviets as antithetical to US interests in the Middle East (Popp 300). This explains Johnson’s reluctance to hold Israel accountable for its attack on the USS Liberty.

Nasser’s mobilization of forces in Sinai can be viewed as a rational response to the report (whether real or mistaken) of Israeli forces on the Syrian border in May. However, once it appeared incorrect that Israel had indeed amassed troops on the border, Egypt continued to moves forces into place (not an uncommon posturing tactic), but the Israeli theory for this preparation was that Egypt was plotting an attack (Popp 298). What is important to note is that the UN had denied the existence of a significant build-up of Israeli forces on May 15, and the Chief of Egyptian General Staff General Fawzi had returned from Syria with the same affirmation that no build-up of Israeli forces was evident (Popp 298). Nonetheless, Egypt moved ahead with his own readiness of forces and the UAR next expelled UN forces. Further complicating the situation is that Nasser wanted the UN forces to remain in Gaza, but his Vice President ‘Amer called for complete removal, which led Nasser to close the Strait in a political rather than a military gambit (Popp 297). ‘Amer’s intent was to use the supposed provocation as a pretext for claiming a moral victory so as to build up political support at home, and Nasser became a pawn in the ambitions of his Vice President (Popp 297). Israel responded to the expulsion of UN forces by initiating the pre-emptive strike on Egypt.

Upon inspection of diplomatic cables from the time, Popp notes that the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Rabin, head of the IDF, who goaded Prime Minister Eshkol into taking military action, was the main driver of the conflict: “It is quite obvious, then, that the claim of an impending Egyptian first strike was devised in order to convince both the civilian leadership in Israel as well as the main ally, the United States, of the necessity for a military solution to the crisis. Any theory about an Egyptian master plan in 1967 to surprise a guileless Israel does not withstand available evidence about the actual military balance on the ground” (298). US intelligence had already informed Johnson on May 23 that the Israeli position was under no serious threat from Arab forces, in spite of the mobilization of troops in Sinai. Johnson was also convinced that in event of an open conflict the Israelis would prevail without problem (Popp 301).

The point that Popp makes is that the Six Day War was a “war of choice” for Israel and that the state could not have viewed itself as under any serious military threat given the size of the forces mobilized vs. its own military strength (307). This view is supported by Kurtulus, who posits that the necessary conditions were not met for a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Egypt (220). Those conditions are: “acute crisis combined with high alert levels; vulnerable offensive weapons; and strategic parity as regards to offensive capabilities” (Kurtulus 220). From this point of view, no valid argument can be made that there was an acute crisis that put Israel’s military components at risk or that there was strategic parity in regards to the opposition. The closing of the Strait and the build-up of Egyptian troops as well as the removal of the UN forces did not meet those conditions, but they did serve as pretext for Israel to claim that action was necessary.