Conclusion • 325that they imported most of their oil from the Arab world, had cooled to¬
ward Israel since the Suez Affair. Israel chose not to wait for a Western
flotilla to force open the Tiran Straits or any resolution by the UN Security
Council. Israel's leaders said they wanted peace, but they did not want to
commit national suicide and believed that they could defeat Egypt's Soviet-
equipped army.
After King Husayn flew to Cairo on 30 May to sign an agreement with
Nasir on a joint Arab military command, Israel's cabinet assumed that war
was inevitable. Most reserve units were called up, the economy was put on
a war footing, and Israel's political leaders buried their quarrels to form a
new cabinet that would represent nearly all its parties and factions. Espe¬
cially significant was the appointment on 2 June of General Moshe Dayan
as defense minister, despite his perennial differences with Prime Minister
Eshkol. A hero in the 1948 independence war and the 1956 Sinai cam¬
paign, Dayan gave the Israelis new hope in what many viewed as their
hour of peril. No one knew for sure what would happen next. But Men-
achem Begin (who also entered Israel's wall-to-wall coalition government)
later confessed to the New York Times: "In 1967 we again had a chance. The
Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that
Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We
decided to attack him." Other Israeli leaders also played down the threat
after the fact. But that is getting ahead of our story.
CONCLUSIONThe history of the Middle East after May 1967 was so dominated by the
Arab-Israeli conflict that the preceding era seems serene by comparison.
But this chapter has shown that the political history of this period was tur¬
bulent indeed. Outside powers deserve some blame for fishing in troubled
waters, but how were those waters troubled in the first place? The clash of
personalities and policies, especially in the Arab east, are complex and of¬
ten confusing. Are there no shortcuts, no generalizations, no keys to un¬
derstanding all these details?
Rapid changes, especially in education and technology, were breaking
down the customary modes of life and thought. Masses of people, most
poor and young, flocked to the big cities. Alien ideas and customs, first em¬
braced in these growing urban centers, spread everywhere by means of that
underrated invention, the transistor radio, plus, of course, newspapers and
magazines, schools and rural health centers, movies and (in some countries)