332 • 18 WAR AND THE QUEST FOR PEACEal-Arish. Israel did issue an apology to the US government and paid com¬
pensation to the Americans.Reasons for the Outcome
The 1967 war indeed discredited Arab nationalism. Beforehand the Arab
forces had seemed superior on paper: Egypt alone had more men under
arms than Israel, even if Israel mobilized all its reserve units; the Arabs had
2,700 tanks compared to 800 for Israel, 800 fighter planes to Israel's 190,
and 217 ships to Israel's 37, and the population ratio was about 25 to 1.
The Arabs enjoyed cautious support from the communist bloc and most
Asian and African nations, at a time when Washington's position (to quote
a State Department spokesman) was "neutral in thought, word, and deed."
The White House promptly changed "neutral" to "non-belligerent." With a
half-million troops in Vietnam the US could not easily have intervened,
even if Israel had asked it to do so.
Why then did Israel win? One obvious reply is that Israel attacked first,
destroyed most of the Arab fighter planes, and then kept complete control
of the air. Another is that Egypt's best troops were still fighting in the
Yemen civil war. The New York Times reported during the war that Israel
probably had more troops on the field than its enemies, deployed better
firepower, and used greater mobility in battle. Israel also had rapid internal
transport and communication. The technical sophistication of Israel's sol¬
diers helped. Israeli culture encouraged improvisatory thinking under
pressure and egalitarian camaraderie between officers and fighting men.
We do not claim that the Israeli soldiers were better than their Arab coun¬
terparts in strength, motor skills, or even bravery, but they did cooperate
with their comrades-in-arms. Arab armies were riven by factionalism, and
their governments did not trust one another. These factors contributed to
the Arab defeat in 1948. In 1967, even after most anachronistic monarchies
and landowning elites had fallen from power, even after some fifteen years
of pan-Arabism and social reform in Egypt and Syria, and even after bil¬
lions of dollars worth of Soviet and Western arms had poured into the
Arab world, the Arabs' divisiveness led to a swifter, more devastating defeat
in 1967 than in 1948. Small wonder that Nasir, the Arab nationalist leader,
tried to resign at the end of the war!
The War's Aftermath
By the time the guns fell silent on 10 June, Israel had expanded its land area
to three times what it had been six days earlier, having occupied the Gaza