June 5 + 48 Years

It's another June 5, the anniversary of the event from which so much of modern Middle Eastern history stems: the 1967 War.  As I'm rather busy, it seems best to simply link to earlier posts on that warm, of which there have been many.

7:45 AM, June 5, 1967: Operation Moked

Forty-seven years ago this morning, Israel launched a "pre-emptive" surprise attack against Arab airfields, virtually destroying the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces on the ground. It was the opening salvo of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Though long known as the "Six Day War," the war's outcome was essentially decided by noon on the first day. The remaining days were spent by the Israeli Army proceeding to occupy Gaza, Sinai, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, enjoying total air superiority over the Arab states.

Each year since 2009 I've talked about various aspects of the 1967 War, and I refer you to all of those earlier posts. Almost everything in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967 owes something to that conflict; we are still trying to untangle the world it created. To the Arab nakba ("catastrophe") of 1948 was added the naksa ("setback") of 1967.

I belong to the school that thinks Nasser was on the verge of making a concession that would have avoided war but kept some of the gains he made in the escalating crisis (he was about to send his Vice President, Zakariyya Mohieddin, to the US and the UN), but we may never know for sure; in any event he was not given the chance to step back from the brink. This year's post will address Operation Moked ("Focus"), the Israeli surprise attack that opened the war.

I won't address motivation here, though there is some evidence that Moshe Dayan, who became Defense Minister only days before, believed that Israel had an opportunity that was likely to be lost over time, and so favored going to war once Nasser gave the Israelis a pretext. But that's an argument for another post.

While much of the world talks of a Six Day war, Ezer Weizman, who had only recently given up command of the Air Force to become Deputy Chief of General Staff, called the chapter in his memoirs "two and half hours in June," He says that on June 5, "At about ten o'clock in the morning I phoned [his wife] Re'uma: 'We've won the war!' She was considerate enough not to say what she thought of her husband going mad under the tension. She only said, 'Ezer, are you crazy? At ten o'clock in the morning? You've finished the war?' The war had five and a half days to run, but those were days when the Israeli Air Force had unchallenged control of the skies over Egypt and the Levant.

Air Force Commander "Motti" Hod

The Israelis knew that on June 5, 1967, they had precisely 196 operational combat aircraft, many of them aging. The Arab states challenging them had 500 or more, and much larger, less trained, armies. A first strike to alter the balance was seen as the proper opening blow. Weizman's successor as Air Force Commander, Mordechai "Motti" Hod, along with Dayan and the senior leadership, decided on a fairly desperate gamble. Of those 196 operational aircraft, only 12 (some accounts say as few as four) were held in reserve for combat air patrol over Israeli airspace. All the rest were devoted to taking out the Arab air forces: much depended on a single roll of the dice. And Egypt, the largest of them all, was the first order of business.

Tensions had been running high for weeks. Since surprise attacks often come at dawn, Egyptian pilots had been flying combat air patrols at dawn. But many senior officers did not arrive at their desks until nine AM. At the time, Egypt was on Summer Time but Israel was not. So 7:45 AM in Israel was 8:45 AM in Egypt, and the dawn patrols had returned to refuel the aircraft and allow the pilots to have breakfast. Most of the Air Force was on the ground. Many senior commanders were just arriving at work.

Egyptian air defenses were still rather poor. The concrete aircraft shelters and blast revetments found on most Middle Eastern air bases today (as a result of 1967) were unknown. Egypt had some SA-2 SAMs, but these were effective against aircraft at altitude; for low-level attack they were limited to anti-aircraft artillery. To make matters worse, Egypt's Defense Minister and Nasser's number two man, Field Marshal ‘Abd al-Hakim ‘Amer and several other senior officers were flying to the Sinai front to meet with troops there, so Egyptian air defenses scaled down their vigilance lest they accidentally shoot down their own boss.

Both sides were using far less advanced aircraft than today. Israel's were mostly French (the US did not sell aircraft to Israel until 1968), with some older British; Egypt's were mostly Soviet by this time, with some older British. Israel did have, and used with effect, a runway-cratering bomb that appears to have been an ancestor of the French Durandal.

The first wave took off from various Israeli bases and proceeded out over the Mediterranean skimming close to the water. In a carefully coordinated move the aircraft assumed formation in Egyptian airspace and began their attack.. The Wikipedia numbers generally track with others: 183 IAF aircraft destroyed 197 Egyptian aircraft and eight radar stations. A second wave (9:30 AM) was also aimed at Egypt, but after the Syrian and Jordanian Air Forces chose to enter the fray, the third wave (12:30 PM) turned against those air forces and Iraq's, hitting the Iraqi base at H3 just east of the Jordanian border.

By a bit past noon most of the Arab air forces were gone, and a great many runways cratered. It was a stunning blow, and made the remaining five and a half days of the war inevitable. By the end of the war Israel had destroyed 452 Arab aircraft, 79 in dogfights and the rest on the ground; it lost 46. It destroyed 338 Egyptian aircraft, most on the first day; 61 Syrian (out of perhaps 100 at most); 29 Jordanian; 23 Iraqi (at the H3 base); and one Lebanese.

Some relevant video:

V

A June 7 Military History Footnote: Why Did the Generals Enter the Old City From the East?

In my post two days ago for the 46th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, I used a photo that has become iconic from June 7, 1967 (left) showing senior Israeli Commanders entering the Old City of Jerusalem. (Left to right: Jerusalem area commander Gen. Uzi Narkiss, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and then-IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin.) They are entering through the gate known as the Lion's Gate or St. Stephen's Gate. It is the only open gate on the eastern side of the Old City.

Those familiar with the Old City of Jerusalem but unfamiliar with the course of the 1967 war may wonder, if until June 1967 Jerusalem was divided between an Israeli-controlled new city to the west and the Jordanian-controlled east, why did the Israeli generals enter from the east?

The particular course of the Battle for Jerusalem explains the reason.

Armchair General

After a major early morning battle at Ammunition Hill to the north (map), Israeli paratroop units advanced from there and through two other axes across the 1949 ceasefire lines in the Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz neighborhoods, modern Arab neighborhoods north of the Old City. After securing the Augusta Victoria Hospital hill north of the Mount of Olives, the Israeli paratroops found themselves to the east of the walls of the Old City.

Another iconic and often reproduced photo from June 7 shows the 55th IDF Paratroop (Reserve) Brigade on the Mount of Olives with the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock in the background. The 55th's commander, then-Colonel Mordechai ("Motta") Gur, is the black-haired man without a helmet seen in profile in front of the Dome of the Rock.

Shortly after the photo was taken, Gur's troops entered the Old City through the Lion's Gate. When soon thereafter he broadcast the famous words "The Temple Mount is in Our Hands!" he became known throughout Israel; by the mid-1970s Gur would be the IDF Chief of Staff.

Al-Ahram Frontpages From the 1967 War

The nostalgia website Antika has a slideshow of Al-Ahram from the June 1967 War that may interest those who read Arabic.

The Fifth of June: The "Naksa" Plus 45 Years

Forty-five years ago today, on June 5, 1967, in the midst of a continuing Middle East crisis, Israel struckl pre=emptively against Arab Air Forces and, in six days, won one of the most decisive short wars in modern times. It also created the Middle East we've been dealing with for the past four and a half decades.  Later wars and peace treaties have changed the details, but all one has to do is realize how often we talk about "the 1967 borders" to confirm that those six days in June created the Middle East we know today. They shattered Gamal Abdel Nasser's reputation and, though he lived another three years, his real era ended with the war. Having dubbed tghe 1948 war that produced Israeli independence the nakba, or catastrophe, the Arab world came to refer to the 1967 war as the naksa, the "setback."

SInce this is the fourth June since I started blogging, I've posted a lot about the war in the past. Rather than repeat myself, I'll just link to myself. My 1967 war tag will bring up previous links, but rather than repeat myself, let me link to them individually:

June 5, 2009: June 5, 42 Years On: Some of the 'What Ifs?'" 

June 5, 2010: June 5, After 43 Years

June 9, 2010: The USS Liberty Incident: Still Starting Fights After All These Years

June 10, 2010: And on the Sixth Day ... 

June 15, 2010: Levi Eshkol in the Six-Day War 

June 6, 2011: June 5, 44 Years and a Day Later

Of course you'll find a lot under my Nasser tagged posts as well, and then there was my recent post on the death of Zakaria Mohieddin.

The Next-to-Last Free Officer: Zakaria Mohieddin, 1918-2012

Zakaria Mohieddin, one of the original Free Officers of 1952 and onetime Vice President of Egypt, Prime Minister, and intelligence chief under Gamal Abdel Nasser, has died today at the age of 94. With his passing, only one of the original Free Officers from the original Revolution Command Council survives: his first cousin, Khaled Mohieddin. (In this 2010 post about Khaled I mistakenly declared him the last, under the mistaken impression — derived from the Internet — that Zakaria had died in 2009. I acknowledge the error, which is now no longer erroneous, since Khaled is now indeed the last.)

Mohieddin, left front; Nasser center at corner of table; Naguib in hat; Anwar Sadat left rear

Zakaria Mohieddin always was a presence, if a somewhat unassuming one, in the Nasser era, often used for diplomatic missions. As a young officer he served with Naguib and Nasser at Faluja in Palestine in 1958k, and became an early member of the Free Officers. While his cousin Khaled was the Revolution Command Council's most leftwing member, Zakaria was often seen as pro-Western. He was the first head of Egypt's General Intelligence Directorate when Nasser set it up in the early 1950s, but it did not become the feared instrument of Nasser's security state until under later directors. He served as Vice President from 1961-68, and Nasser was about to dispatch him to the United Nations to try to avert war when the 1967 war broke out with the Israeli pre-emptive strike. When Nasser offered to resign after the defeat he named Mohieddin his successor, but of course the crowds, and Mohieddin, refused to accept Nasser's resignation. He was also Prime Minister in 1965-66. He quit public life in 1968, and had remained in obscurity; his last public appearance seems to have been in 2002 on the 50th Anniversary of the 1952 Revolution.

SCAF paid tribute to an earlier ruling junta with Field Marshal Tantawi, Chief of Staff Gen. Enan, and other members of SCAF participating in his funeral today. 

With his passing, the only survivor of the original Revolution Command Council is Zakaria's first cousin Khaled, who is nearly 90. The last vestiges of the Nasser era are passing from scene.

June 5, 44 Years and a Day Later

Back in 2009 in my first year of blogging I commented on June 5, the outbreak of the 1967 War. Last year I was stuck in a hospital bed a couple of days after breaking my hip and only a day after surgery, and so I was brief. Unsurprisingly, we have had many occasions to discuss the war which produced so many of the issues we have been wrestling with ever since. Today is June 6, not 5, due to the fifth falling on a weekend. But the recent flap between Obama and Netanyahu over borders are a reminder of the persistence of the issues produced in those six days in June 44 years ago, and the continuing occupation all remind us of the enduring symbolism, for Israelis and Palestinians both, of the Fifth of June.

Levi Eshkol in the Six-Day War

Following up on my recent posts on the anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War, here's a useful piece by an IDF vet in Ha'aretz on rehabilitating the reputation of Levi Eshkol in connection with the preparedness of the IDF for the war.

If you saw any presentations on the anniversary of the war, I'll wager you saw pictures of Moshe Dayan, with his rakish eyepatch, striding in combat gear through St. Stephen's Gate (Lion's Gate) into the Old City. Most likely you saw pictures of Yitzhak Rabin here and there too, but Levi Eshkol?

If you're old enough or have read the more detailed studies of the war from the Israeli side (Michael Oren for the political/military, Tom Segev for the social context), you'll certainly be aware that Eshkol was Prime Minister during the war. But he certainly doesn't play a major role in most people's mental imagery of the narrative of the war. Since by now my regular readers eill be aware that I need to let the latent history professor loose on the blog now and then, this is one of those times.

The writer in Ha'aretz, Eliyahu Sacharov, wants to rectify that, and he's not alone. Many people thought Eshkol received poor treatment from his countrymen at the time, and since. Segev's book 1967 (2005 in Hebrew, 2007 in English) pays attention to Eshkol, and Segev credits long conversations with Miriam Eshkol, the Prime Minister's widow, among his sources.

Eshkol was Israel's third Prime Minister, but like Moshe Sharett before him, he rose to power in the shadow of David Ben-Gurion, and that was a very large shadow indeed. When Ben-Gurion split with Mapai (the core of Labor) and former Rafi in 1965, Eshkol led the new Labor Alignment to victory over Rafi in 1965 elections. Eshkol became Prime Minister; Ben-Gurion his critic from the wings.

As was frequently the case at the time, Eshkol held the Defense portfolio as well as that of Prime Minister. Over several years he presided over the development and professionalization of the IDF, helping to create the instrument that would win the Six-Day War.

As tensions with the Arab world built up in early 1967, Eshkol worked hard to secure Israel's position internationally within the context of the post-Suez settlement, also building a relationship with US President Lyndon Johnson. Although Ben-Gurion criticized Eshkol for weakness and indecisiveness, today his efforts are seen as having strengthened Israel's hand internationally.

Under pressure to create a Government of National Unity, with Rafi and many others calling for the naming of Moshe Dayan as Defense Minister, Eshkol fought to keep the portfolio.) (Dayan, a Rafi ally of Ben-Gurion, had won fame as Chief of Operations in the 1956 Sinai Campaign.) When King Hussein of Jordan flew to Cairo to sign an alliance with Nasser and put Jordanian troops under an Egyptian general, Eshkol ran out of political capital. Eshkol was confronted with a loss of support within his own Cabinet, within the Army, and in public opinion. On the afternoon of June 1, he named Moshe Dayan Defense Minister.

Note: On the afternoon of June 1. Four and a half days later, at a little after 7:00 am on June 5, Israeli aircraft took off for their first wave of strikes against Arab air forces. (Assuming Arab air forces would patrol at dawn expecting an attack, then land to refuel and breakfast, Israel sought to strike in that window.)

Major military operations are not planned in four and a half days; pilots are not trained in four and a half days. Yet in the wake of the victory, Dayan won the accolades and his eleventh-hour appointment was seen as the salvation of the state, though he had been a politician in opposition during the planning stages of the war.

Eshkol had no choice but to name Dayan, and certainly Dayan performed ably, though Chief of Staff Rabin and the IDF Command had their war plan mostly in place already. Dayan took the honors, and Eshkol's role was largely neglected.

Eshkol remained in office, dying of a heart attack in February 1969, less than two years after the war, and thus never wrote a memoir to defend his position, as everyone else did. Eshkol was not forgotten — a national park and the suburb of Ramat Eshkol, the first built over the Green Line, are named for him; he has appeared on both paper notes and coins. But until fairly recently, only his partisans have sought to give him due credit for the war. That does seem to be changing.

And on the Sixth Day . . .

There was a ceasefire. And on the seventh, the Armies rested. The 1967 war and the occupation lines resulting from it are so central to today's peace process that it is tempting (given the time frame) to evoke the Biblical creation narrative.

June 10, the sixth day of the Six-Day War, gets considerably less attention than some of the others. It's the day of mopping up and wrapping things in a package, played out as much in the United Nations as on the battlefield, which by day six meant only the Golan.

The war had begun on the Egyptian front, and though on day one Israel attacked both the Jordanian and Syrian air forces, they did not move on those fronts on the first day. Once Jordanian artillery opened fire, it gave Israel the opportunity to move against East Jerusalem and to unite the city, a profound religious and nationalist goal. Syria engaged in artillery duels but until the Sinai and West Bank were secure, Israel did not feel free to begin ground operations in the Golan, and there was some concern that a ceasefire would be imposed before it had the opportunity.

At 3 am on June 9, Syria accepted a ceasefire, trying to block an Israeli attack, but it was too late and Israel attacked the Golan. June 9 was the day to ascend the plateau; June 10 the day to occupy. Syria, dug in here more than the other Arab states, gave considerable resistance.

But pressure from the Arab side for a ceasefire was intense. The Arab Armies were beaten and their East Bloc allies were trying to block an even greater disaster. Trying to speed a ceasefire, Radio Damascus announced the fall of the provincial city of Quneitra — which the Israelis knew they had not yet taken. Determined to get Quneitra before a ceasefire kicked in, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol gave the Northern Command four hours to take it, knowing it would take considerable diplomatic skill to prevent an imposed ceasefire before that time.

(The ceasefire as one dimension of battle tactics goes back to the original War of Independence when Israel established the precedent that if a ceasefire is to be "in place" in a certain number of hours, forces should move the front as far and as fast as they can so that the ceasefire solidifies the gains before the enemy can make a countermove.)

Eshkol's deadline was two pm. Quneitra fell at 12:30 pm. A ceasefire was in place on all fronts for 6 pm.

The Six-Day War was over. All that remained was figuring out how to deal with Israel's large newly-occupied territories, and the Arab populations living there. I'll have to get back to you on that: that's what the last 43 years have been about.

There've been other wars; there've been peace treaties; we've gone from Labor Prime Ministers saying "There's no such thing as a Palestinian," to Likud governments negotiating with a Palestinian Authority. There has been progress, particularly in the 90s, but there's little doubt that those six days 43 years ago really are a key to the peace process today, such as it is.

The USS Liberty Incident: Still Starting Fights After All These Years

I'm a day late on this one; that may happen during the convalescence period; but 43 years ago yesterday, the USS Liberty, collecting intelligence signals in the eastern Mediterranean, was attacked by Israeli aircraft, leaving 34 Americans dead. Forty-three years later, you can get a good argument going among Mideast watchers (or in the "Communcations" section of The Middle East Journal) by producing a new book or article on the subject of whether Israel knew it was attacking an American ship (fervently believed by the US intelligence community and the Liberty survivors, as well as critics of Israel), or a tragic mistake (Israel's explanation, and that of most of its defenders). It doesn't divide easily on pro-Israeli/anti-Israeli lines; many who were in the State Department or NSA at the time were pro-Israeli but convinced it was deliberate. (And as an aside, a Liberty survivor was on board the Gaza aid flotilla.)

For background, the Wikipedia article offers an introduction. For a sampling of the "deliberate" argument, there are the USS Liberty Veterans' Association website, survivor Jim Ennes' USS Liberty Memorial; and NSA watcher James Bamford has argued the "deliberate" side forcefully, though I can't locate a website by him. On the "accident" side, the most fully researched and argued case is in A. Jay Cristol's 2002 book The Liberty Incident, which either decides the issue once and for all (if you assume it was an accident), or, to be fair, at least dispels some myths that have lingered about the case (if, like me, you still have doubts). Cristol maintains a website with documents and links.

Given the huge number of trees and, more recently, bandwidth that have given their all to fuel this debate over four decades, I'm not going to shed any major new light here, but do have a few comments. Due to a couple of coincidental factors, I've had to deal with the Liberty a few times at MEJ, mostly in flame wars related to the publication of new books such as Cristol's. Now, as it happens, my distinguished predecessor as Editor of MEJ, Richard Parker (former Ambassador to Algeria, Lebanon, and Morocco), was Political Officer at the US Embassy in Cairo in June 1967. He has written a lot about 1967, in his book The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East and elsewhere, hosted an anniversary conference and edited the proceedings (The Six-Day War: A Retrospective), and has retained an avid interest in the subject.

Ambassador Parker lived through the Liberty incident at first hand, and has sometimes described himself as "the only Gentile in the US government who believes it was an accident." That against-the-grain condition, Dick's natural tendency to welcome a good argument, and his links to The Middle East Journal, all mean we have often been the venue for the debate, most recently when Parker reviewed Cristol favorably.

My own take: unlike Dick Parker, I wasn't there. I was finishing my sophomore year of college. I don't know what happened. I've read the major books on both sides and I still don't know for sure. Cristol has knocked down some of the arguments for it being deliberate, but not all of them. I do have a nagging feeling that something's missing. Neither the "Israel knew it was American and attacked it deliberately" nor the "It was a tragic mistake" explanation accounts for all the data. If it was deliberate, the why is a problem: to cover up the planned attack on the Golan? It was in the wrong place, and the timing is wrong. To cover up a war crime in the Sinai? Nobody's successfully substantiated that. For some other reason? If it was an accident, it was an incredibly stupid one, as the Liberty had a large US flag, was broadcasting its identity, etc.

There may be a clue out there. In 2007, Israeli scholars/journalists Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez published Foxbats over Dimona, a revisionist look at 1967 based on interviews with veterans of the ex-Soviet Union and memoirs published in obscure ex-Soviet veterans' publications, not to mention Soviet-era documents. It was a controversial book, welcomed by those who want to portray 1967 as a Soviet-Arab plot against Israel, but despite the many favorable reviews it received from folks like Daniel Pipes, it also received powerful reviews from Foreign Affairs and from Professor Mark Katz in (ahem) The Middle East Journal. (That, in turn, sparked a spirited exchange between Ginor and Remez and Ambassador Parker in MEJ.) Here's their Amazon page. Personally — and I've discussed this with Ginor and Remez so I hope they won't mind me mentioning it here — I think they may overstate what the Soviets were prepared to risk, but that they do bring new evidence to the table.

The Liberty does get a chapter in their book, and when I read it I was struck by the fact that while nothing they reveal answers all the questions, it could provide a missing link: a Soviet role, or even just both the US and the Israelis treading cautiously to to avoid engaging the Soviets, could have been a factor. There's always been a question about why the US recalled aircraft dispatched from the carrier Saratoga; one explanation has been they may have been armed with nuclear weapons. Of course they weren't going to nuke the Israelis; but could they have pulled back from providing air cover for Liberty out of concern Russian ships in the area would think they were the target? Ginor and Remez find hints of two or three Soviet ships and perhaps submarines operating in the general area of the Liberty. They don't draw firm conclusions, but could his be the missing link in the Liberty debate?

I don't know. I do suspect that either nuclear issues or issues of Soviet involvement would be the sensitive issues that would still not have been declassified, and it does seem as if somebody somewhere is covering up something, even if you accept Israel made a mistake.

Will we ever know for sure? Lots of people on each side are confident they already know. I admit that I don't. Heck, we still don't know for sure who ordered the killing of Admiral Darlan in 1942. (Before the comments start, note I didn't say there were no obvious suspects. There are too many.)

June 7: The Day The Central Symbol Changed Hands

Today marks the 43rd anniversary of a day that, if not in fact the central focus of modern Middle Eastern history, then is at least the symbolic focus. It was on June 7, 1967, the third day of the six day war, that the Israel Defense Forces captured Judaism's most famous pilgrimage site, the Western Wall (once, but not since, known as the Wailing Wall), but also, with it, Islam's third holiest sanctuary, the Masjid al-Aqsa, and the adjacent Dome of the Rock, which themselves seit on the great platform where the First and Second Jewish Temples once stood. The site Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) and Jews know as Har Ha-Bayit (The Temple Mount) has become a symbol of the problem: Of the making of peace plans for Jerusalem there is no end, and many of them deal creatively with the Haram, but the sheer direct-claims to the same holy site aspect of the place, the zero-sum, one side must lose when the other gains, makes it such a potent symbol. We've talked about the potency of religious sites before, but this is the one where it all comes together.

This YouTube video captures the triumphal mood of the Israeli side on that day,with stills of the events and recorded broadcasts:



But, of course, it was a tragedy for the Muslim world, and in that conundrum lies the central symbol of the problem.

June 5, After 43 Years

It's June 5, the date of the outbreak of the six-day war of 1967, the event from which so much of the modern Middle East stems. There's much that can be said, but given the obstacles of blogging from a hospital bed on drugs, it's difficult to be profound.

Fortunately, I reflected at some length last year, and can simply refer you there. Now that I've been at this more than a year, I can resort to reruns when I have to.

June 5, 42 Years On: Some of the "What Ifs?"

Tom Segev has a piece in today's Haaretz noting that soon after the 1967 war Yitzhak Rabin suggested a Palestinian state linked in some way to Israel to Levi Eshkol, and that this "two-state" solution was not considered a radical idea at the time. (Segev's book 1967 is probably the best overview of the war in the context of Israeli society, as opposed to a military narrative like Ambassador to the US-designate Michael Oren's Six Days of War.)

Forty-two years on, the 1967 war still haunts the region. Most peace plans center around the ceasefire lines as they stood on June 4, 1967. Settlements beyond those lines remain the great obstacles to finding a solution. Although the 1973 crossing of the Suez Canal to some extent offset the humiliation of Egypt's defeat in 1967 (making it possible for Sadat to go to Jerusalem in 1977), the military one-sidedness of 1967 served to transform the situation: surrounded little Israel became seen by many as Israel the occupation power, and Israelis themselves, until 1973, came to believe in their own invincibility. The Bar-Lev line was once as famous as the Maginot Line, and as evanescent when the time came.

Segev's article is a reminder that so many things that now, in retrospect, seem set in stone were not always so. History is a series of contingent decisions. Change one of those decisions and much else may change. Alternative history is always a useful intellectual exercise, if of course in the end a futile one: it can make us think about how things might have been averted, but we can't go back and change them. A few of the "what ifs" we may reflect on on the Fifth of June:

• What if, while striking a threatening pose and ordering the United Nations Emergency Force out of Sinai and threatening to close the Strait of Tiran, Nasser had at the very least taken the precaution of dispersing his Air Force? There are sound reasons to believe Nasser intended to push to the brink but no further, and simply was unprepared for an Israeli pre-emptive strike, though he gave them the pretext by committing technical acts of war. The destruction of the Arab air forces on the morning of June 5 made the remaining five and a half days of war inevitable. Yet no defensive precautions were taken.

• Egyptian Vice President Zakaria Mohieddin was scheduled to travel to the United Nations within the next few days; many believe Nasser planned to stand down gracefully when he arrived. He never got the chance. There are still many questions about the timing of the Israeli pre-emptive strike, but at least in part it seems to have been intended to make sure that Nasser not have time to save face, since Israel calculated it would do better against the Arabs in 1967 than a few years later.
  

• What if Eshkol had taken Rabin's advice, as noted in the Segev article above?
  

• What if the Khartoum Summit in September 1967, instead of the "three nos": no peace, no recognition, no negotiations, had offered to negotiate something like the current Arab Peace Initiative? At the time, Israel might have welcomed it.

• What if the Cold War had not gotten in the way? The way in which the US-Soviet rivalry had been grafted onto the Arab-Israeli conflict distorted the regional issues out of all recognition and made US and Soviet responses dependent not on their regional interests but on global competition.

• Many of the mysteries of the 1967 war are still coming to light. Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez' Foxbats Over Dimona has sparked a lot of debate (including in the book review pages of The Middle East Journal), and any discussion of the Liberty incident still sparks battles 42 years later. (And Ginor and Remez tell me they have something more to unveil later this year. Stand by.) Without getting into those issues right now — the literature is vast and polemical, and I'll refer you to it rather than summarize it — we may still have more to learn.

But, of course, what happened happened, and more than four decades later we are still struggling with the decisions made in 1967. I'm not even certain that Obama was aware that he was speaking in Cairo the day before the annniversary (he didn't allude to it), but Israelis were clearly aware of it.

One could, of course, write a book on this; many have. I just wanted to raise a few thoughts on the anniversary.