Michael S. Doran
22 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
independence by others but won it on
the battleÄeld. This demonstration o
strength did not change any ocial
minds, however, and the Arabist camp
continued to see the United States’
commitment to Israel as a strategic
liability—a sentimental luxury that inter-
fered with serious policy. In 1956,
Egypt lost a second war to Israel, which
was joined in the Äghting by France and
the United Kingdom, and the Israelis
captured the Sinai Peninsula. Reluctant
to be identiÄed with either Zionism or
imperialism, the administration o U.S.
President Dwight Eisenhower hastily
stepped in to force its European allies
to back down and Israel to withdraw,
quickly and nearly unconditionally. For
Eisenhower, at least, the decision was
business, not personal. He was trying to
Äght a regional and global Cold War,
and the oil-rich Arabs had a lot to oer.
Weak little Israel, in contrast, had to
take one for the team.
A decade later, things heated up again.
Moscow encouraged the Egyptian
leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to start a
crisis with Israel, as explained in a ¬
summary o intelligence from a Soviet
ocial, “to create another trouble spot
for the United States in addition to that
already existing in Vietnam.” Moscow
even passed him fake intelligence
claiming that Israel was massing troops
on its northern border in preparation
for an attack against Syria. Nasser
quickly learned the intelligence was false
but decided to act on it anyway, choos-
ing to see Moscow’s move as an invita-
tion to heat up Israel’s southern border
in the name o Arab solidarity.
So in 1967, purporting to come to
Syria’s aid, Nasser expelled the £
peacekeepers separating the former
belligerents, placed the Egyptian mili-
tary on high alert, moved troops into
the Sinai, cut o Israel’s maritime
access to Asia, and linked up with the
militaries o Jordan and Syria. Israel
responded with a preemptive strike
against its enemies and gained another
victory, a lightning triumph that left it
in control o territories captured from
all three: Egypt (the Sinai and Gaza),
Jordan (Jerusalem and the West Bank),
and Syria (the Golan Heights).
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson now
faced the same dilemma as Eisenhower:
Should he let Israel keep what it had
won? Some ocials might have pined
for the traditional policy o appeasing the
Arabs at Israel’s expense, but the case
was increasingly hard to make. Israel
had now won three straight wars against
its supposedly stronger Arab oppo-
nents, the last one a blowout. The
defeat o powerful Soviet proxies by an
underdog American proxy had embar-
rassed the Soviet Union and boosted
the United States’ regional standing
along with Israel’s. Egypt and its Soviet
patron had been recklessly provocative,
and Israel had made them pay for it,
dearly. Stepping in once again to punish
the victor and reward the vanquished
was unthinkable.
Yet i forcing Israel to disgorge the
conquered territories was not an option,
neither was allowing it to annex them
outright, which appeared to risk provok-
ing yet another war. So the Johnson
administration chose a third course,
turning the crisis into an opportunity by
linking the settlement o this particular
war with the broader regional conÁict.
Its plan was sensible: the Arab
combatants would get back much o the
territory they had lost, but only in