conflict, for the Arab nations refused to make
peace or to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
Israel’s response to Arab enmity is to place the
whole nation in arms. A professional nucleus of
officers and NCOs is supplemented by conscripts:
every man and woman has to serve for two to three
years; then follows a long period in the reserve (for
men to the age of forty-nine) with annual battle
training. The standing army of some 80,000 can in
time of emergency be quickly mobilised into a
force of 300,000. The army, the air force and the
small navy, in a constant state of readiness for war,
have always proved effective when put to the test.
Arab Israelis are not conscripted but a minority
have fought in the Israeli army.
While Nasser rebuilt and re-equipped the
Egyptian army with Soviet help, Israel continued
to strengthen its relations with France, a source of
some of the best weapons and aircraft. The French
also helped Israel to build up a nuclear potential
with the construction of the Dimona reactor. The
unsigned alliance with the US, however, remained
the sheet anchor of Israel’s international security.
After seven relatively peaceful years, in 1964
Israeli–Arab tensions once more began to grow.
The Israelis completed a project to divert some of
the waters of the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee,
which sparked a belligerent Syrian response.
Nasser felt obliged to fulfil the role of pan-Arab
leader and summoned a conference in Cairo in
- The Arab nations were not ready for war,
but 1964 was notable for the endorsement given
later in the year to Yasser Arafat and for the for-
mation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Coupled with Arab non-recognition of Israel this
was an ominous development. But Nasser had too
many problems at home – attempting to advance
the economy, fighting in the Yemen and losing
US economic aid – to be thinking of any immedi-
ate resumption of war. The most extreme Arab
regime was the Syrian.
Syria’s politics consisted of unstable power
plays between rival groups. In 1966 the most
radical wing of the Ba’ath seized power and
sought to consolidate its grip by taking the lead
in fighting for the liberation of Palestine. Syrian
gunfire harassed Israeli settlements on the fron-
tier, armed Palestinians belonging to Fatah (the
PLO’s largest fedayeen guerrilla group) and sup-
ported by Syria, infiltrated Israel during the
autumn and winter of 1966–7, raided settlements
and set off explosives. The Israelis sent retaliatory
raids into the territory of their Arab neighbours,
sometimes to attack Palestinian bases, sometimes
hitting innocent Arabs in Jordan and the Lebanon
and causing many deaths. Israel, Syria, Jordan and
Egypt were drifting into an all-out war. Nasser,
albeit hesitantly, escalated the crisis, unable as
self-styled leader of the Arab world to appear to
follow in Syria’s militant footsteps. The Israeli
government was also cautious, not believing that
it really faced an imminent war. The Soviets,
meanwhile, were stirring up the Egyptians with
intelligence reports that Israel was readying for an
all-out invasion of Syria, though the Israelis were
probably only preparing another punitive strike
against Syria for supporting Palestinian raids.
Nasser moved army units into the Sinai in mid-
May 1967, and terminated the right of UN
observer troops to remain on Egypt’s Sinai
frontier with Israel. But his most decisive hostile
challenge, on 22 May 1967, was to close the Gulf
of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. Then, on 30 May,
King Hussein placed his troops under Egyptian
command. Washington tried to ease the tension,
but in Israel the Rubicon was crossed when on 1
June the moderate prime minister, Levi Eshkol,
appointed General Dayan, who had been chief of
staff in 1956, to be defence minister; Dayan
insisted that Israel had to defend itself by war.
On 4 June Iraq joined the Jordanian–Egyptian
military pact.
Early in the morning on 5 June 1967, the
Israelis struck. The Six-Day War astonished the
world by its demonstration of the immense super-
iority of the Israeli armed forces. Within twenty-
four hours the air forces of Egypt and its allies
had been destroyed. The Egyptian pilots had not
been sufficiently trained and the Soviet pilots
stationed on their airbases stood aside. After six
days it was all over. Israeli divisions had reached
the Suez Canal and had raced down to the tip
of the Sinai Peninsula, once again occupying
Sharm al-Sheikh, which commanded the passage
through the Straits of Tiran. Israeli forces also
occupied the Gaza Strip, which was inhabited by