RESCUING AND REARMING THE USSR’S ALLIES IN JUNE 1967for the UNGA and for the subsequent Glassboro summit with Johnson.^65 The Soviet
premier frustrated the US president repeatedly when “each time I mentioned [intercon-
tinental] missiles, Kosygin talked about Arabs and Israelis.”^66
The next day—17 June—Brezhnev, “very concerned and much affected by the
events,” informed Shelest by telephone to Kiev that it had already been decided to
send Podgorny urgently to Cairo, as “the situation has to be saved; everything must
be done to shore up support for and trust in Nasser.”^67 On 19 June at 11 a.m., when
yet another Politburo meeting began about the “Near Eastern issue,” Shelest still
recorded that
everyone was in a depressed mood. After Nasser’s warlike and boastful declarations, we had
not expected the Arab army to be routed so quickly ... Everything had been staked on
[Nasser] as the leader of the “progressive Arab world,” and this “leader” was now on the
brink of an abyss. Political influence was lost. ... Most of the military equipment had been
captured by Israel.However, Shelest added, Brezhnev had already resolved that “‘one battle in the
campaign is lost but the political struggle of the Arab people against the US and Israel
will continue.’ We apparently will have to start everything from scratch: policy, tac-
tics, diplomacy, arms ... this was not going to be inexpensive.”^68
This—19 June 1967—was the same day that the Israeli cabinet, also in secret,
adopted a far-reaching proposal to return nearly all of the territory it had captured in
exchange for peace and recognition.^69 The staff of the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv,
which was formally closed when Moscow broke off diplomatic relations on 10 June,
had left Haifa on a Soviet ship on the 18th, and the Israeli proposal could not be
presented formally to the USSR. In retrospect, this was the only point in the entire
1967–73 period when a proactive peace initiative might have had any chance of
altering the Soviet or Eg yptian course, before it was firmly cemented in both declara-
tions and actions. But even at this early stage, the prospect was slim: Moscow had
already moved in both principle and practice toward containment, then reversal of
the Israeli gains by military means. In an analysis that runs counter to most conven-
tional Western accounts, David Kimche stressed that whereas for Nasser, “the Six-Day
War had become a national disaster which had to be overcome, for Brezhnev it was a
personal humiliation which had to be avenged.”^70
The course had been set before the Central Committee convened in closed session
on 20 June, and its propaganda cover had already begun. The same day, after analyz-
ing foreign media reports, the retired “dean of Israeli military historians,” Col. El’azar
Galili, felt it was his duty to alert Foreign Ministry Director-General Arye Levavi.
His conclusion (“not certain but very possible”) was that
the Soviet government has resolved to prepare a “fourth” Arab–Israeli war—and is already
acting toward this purpose; not only by reestablishing the political and mental starting