338 • 18 WAR AND THE QUEST FOR PEACEfacilities in these countries, they were imitating what the US Sixth Fleet
had done in the Mediterranean before the 1967 war.
During the war the USSR had ruptured diplomatic relations with Israel,
and many of the Arab states had broken ties with the US. The superpowers
were now less able to mediate in the Middle East. Israel argued that a
peace settlement imposed by the superpowers would last only as long as
the Arab states were too weak to defy it. Look at what had happened to the
settlement imposed on Egypt after the 1956 war. On the other hand, many
Arabs argued that Israel's actions defied UN, Great Power, and Arab peace
proposals. They doubted that the US and Soviet governments would re¬
solve the root issues once they had served their own Middle East interests.
Richard Nixon's victory in the 1968 presidential election gave some
hope to the Arabs; perhaps a new US administration might support them.
Nixon sent a special envoy to the Middle East who returned calling for a
more "evenhanded" approach, implying that Johnson's administration
had tilted against the Arabs. A major issue in debates over US Middle East
policy has been the degree to which Washington should authorize arms
sales to Israel or, indeed, to such pro-Western Arab states as Jordan. John¬
son had arranged to sell Phantom jets to Israel, but Nixon delayed the
deal, putting pressure on the Israelis to return land to the Arabs.The War of Attrition
But the Egyptians, noting the attention paid to fidaiyin raids and Israeli
retaliations, did not wait. In March 1969 Nasir announced that Egypt
would step up the shooting that had been going on across the Suez Canal
intermittently since 1967, starting the so-called War of Attrition. This was
a strategy designed to increase pressure on military targets. The Israelis re¬
sponded by attacking both military and Egyptian civilian targets (using
American equipment in violation of US arms export control laws). More
Egyptians than Israelis were killed, Egypt's cities west of the canal got
shelled so badly that their civilian inhabitants had to be evacuated, Israeli
commandos crossed over and raided Egyptian military targets, and Israeli
jets flew sorties over Cairo and bombed military bases and munitions fac¬
tories in the Nile Delta. Many Egyptians feared a direct hit on the Aswan
High Dam, which Soviet money and engineers had almost finished build¬
ing. By 1970 Israeli troops had dug themselves in behind the Bar Lev line
just east of the canal; in the meantime Egypt was becoming ever more vul¬
nerable to Israel's planes, including new US-supplied Phantom jet fighters.
Nasir had failed to predict how Israel would react to his decision to launch
the War of Attrition; Israel equally misjudged Egypt's response to its deep-