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| quote: | Originally posted by Epicurus
Wow. Suddenly, all the zionists come out of the woodwork. This should be fun 
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I'm no zionist ... I don't fancy their mustard much less claim to have the audacity to cut it  (inside joke you're probably not aware of)
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Occrider:
Ya I don't like arguing the 1967 war from the "Arab perspective" too much and I didn't give an "Arab" opinion on this in my points because frankly, it's not very convincing. However, it's still a point of contention because no one really knows exactly what happened, and no one will, until the Arab archives are opened (if that ever happens). Having said that, there are some things that one can say with a fairly comfortable degree of accuracy, and you've pointed out some, but there is a lot of information that needs to be added to what you've said (ex. Soviet disinformation regarding Israeli movement along the Sinai that caused Naser to move his troops etc.). At any rate, this is a point of contention for me NOT because what you (or others) have said is bull, or because I plan on arguing this point from the "Arab perspective" (as I know that Arab governments are NOT innocent), but because there are several points that need to be looked at in more detail.
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Well there is a significant amount of information out there about that time period that is available to historians (much of it primary sources too!) ... unfortunately one probably wouldn't happen upon that information very easily on the web, only dry historians with nothing better to do have tenacity to go through mounds of historical documents/interviews to put together an accurate chronology of the chain of events leading to a crisis  .
With respect to the soviet disinformation of an Israeli buildup (which was on the Syrian border, not the Sinai ... it provoked an Egyptian reaction however, due to the Syrian-Egyptian defense treaty signed in 1966), the soviets provided this information to Sadat on his visit to Moscow on April 29. Due to the rather tenuous "friendship" between Egypt and Syria however, Nasser dispacthed his chief of the general staff, Gen. Muhammad Fawzi, to Damascus on May 14 to investigate the claims. Fawzi conferred with Syrian Chief of Staff Ahmad Suweidani, viewed aerial photographs, and flew in a private plane himself to observe the border. He found that there were no IDF concentrations, and a rather relaxed Syrian Army. Fawzi reported his findings to Nasser that, "There is nothing there. No massing of forces. Nothing." The same assessement came from the Chief of Egypt's military intelligence Lt. Gen. Muhammad Ahmad Sadiq, who sent Israel Arabs to investigate Northern Galilee, and stated that, "There are no force concentrations, nor is there justification, tactical or strategic, for such concentrations." 1
So in fact, I think all evidence leads us to conclude that Nasser knew in fact that the Soviet intelligence was inaccurate. However, he chose to ignore it. Now it's probably not because he necessarily wanted to start a war, but because a remilitarization of the Sinai was immmensely advantageous to him politically. A pullback from teh Sinai would have been humiliating, and the continual confrontational buildup of forces impassioned the Arab world in support of Nasser's "defiant" stance against the Zionists. He probably viewed it as a win-win situation whereby he could gain teh benefits of remilitarizing the Sinai while avoiding the risk of war.
All in all, it is far too difficult to properly lay down the groundwork and context of the entire conflict in a TA post ... I could probably do a half-decent job in a 15-20 page paper or so. I will summarize my conclusions however: I do not believe that Nasser really wanted war with Israel. Acutally I would say he was largely ambivalent ... he might not have minded a short conflict whereby the Arab Defense League was against Israel alone followed by quick UN intervention (a sentiment shared by Syria I'm sure), but he didn't really have ferverent ambitions for war. This differed from many ministers in his cabinet however, particularly egyptian commander in chief Amer who, more or less, salivated at the idea of war with Israel. What did happen, however, was that the political jockeying among Arab states themselves, to see who could outdo the other in their escalations and rhetoric against Israel, eventually led to the straw that broke the camel's back. In so doing, Israel was pushed and prodded towards the viewpoint that war was inevitable (in preparation reservists were called to active duty, a staggering blow to the Israeli economy, thousands dug trenches, prepared anti-tank ditches, readied 14,000 hospital beds, and dug 10,000 graves 2 ). Eventually, faced with the possiblility of an overwhelming Arab attack from 3 fronts (even an Iraqi army was mobilized and positioned in Syria), Israel was forced to respond to the perceived threat. So in effect while Israel did initiate hostilities, the Arab mobilization and escalations was essentially an implicit declaration of war whether they realised the ramification of their actions or not. The whole situation possesses interesting similarities to World War I whereby the mobilization of armies sealed the inevitability of war ... a situation which may appear bizarre to us now, but makes perfect sense with pespective and an understanding of logistics. At any rate, that's my opinion.
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1 Fawzi, Harb al-Thalath Sanawat, pp. 71-72. Parker, The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East, pp. 14, 44.
2 Red Cross: Foreign Ministry to Le Hague, May 30, 1967
Edit: Does anyone know how to use superscripts in TA?
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Retro ...
Last edited by occrider on Apr-09-2004 at 04:34
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