Six Days of War

I finished Six Days of War by Michael B. Oren, an account of the origins and events of the Six Day War between Israel and the Arab-allied forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia from June 5th to 10th, 1967.  Excellent.  This is the equivalent of Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August.  40% is devoted to the conditions leading to the war, 50% is an account of the war itself and 10% to the aftermath.  

The Six Day War has always fascinated me because of its existential nature.  Israel surrounded by hostile nations on four sides, with 50,000 regular troops (and 216,000 reserves) against 567,000 troops in the belligerent nations.   Israel's 800 tanks facing 2,500 Arab coalition tanks.  Israel's air force had 250 aircraft to the 600 in the Arab coalition.  

Israel's major city, Tel Aviv was only seven miles from the front lines.  60% of Israel is the Negev Desert, meaning that all populated Israel was basically within spitting distance of the front lines.  

How did they pull off such a stunning upset, defeating all three active armies against it, destroying some 40-70% of enemy aircraft, armor, and tanks.  Some 800 dead to some 18,000 among the Arab armies.  

Israel captured some 22,300 square miles (mostly desert and mountains) of enemy territory.  That compares to Israel's original 8,000 square miles of territory.  

It has always bothered me, at a naive level, that Israel initiated hostilities but Oren lays out the complex background that at least leads you to understand why there was little or no alternative.

The biggest take-aways for me have to do with the context and origins of the war.  

What comes across is just how much this was a tragedy, in part, of noise and signals.

Of the three primary Arab belligerents, both Egypt and Syria were authoritarian despots operating under the guise of forms of national socialism.  Jordan was a monarchy threatened by a huge internal population of Palestinian refugees.

The Arab street was passionately Islamist whereas the strong-arm authoritarian regimes of Syria and Egypt were essentially atheist.  

On the one side, Israel, you had a functioning and internally robust to the point of fractiousness, democratic parliamentary system with a mix of socialist, Zionist, religious, and Arab minorities as well as numerous small independent parties.  All through the six days, almost every few hours, there were long sessions of debate within the parties of the political process and between the civil government and the military.  All issues were considered with reasonable representation from all interests.  Israel also had a reasonably robust and certainly diversified and relatively prosperous economy.  

On the other side, Nasser (Egypt) and Assad (Syria) and to a lesser extent Hussein (Jordan) each were massively insecure.  Each, but especially Syria and Egypt were fighting six kinetic dynamics even before the war.  They were fighting for 1) power in their respective regimes (primarily within military ranks), 2) endorsement and support from their masses, 3) power within the Arab world, 4) patronage from either of the two leading super-powers, the US and the USSR, primarily in terms of weapons and subsidies, 5) rapid development from illiteracy, poor population health, minuscule industry, low agricultural productivity into more prosperous nations, and 6) and in many ways the least necessary, or most discretionary conflict, that with Israel.

The verbal and action signaling conflict among these six dynamics were incredibly discordant and inconsistent both within each country and between the Arab-alliance.  It is astonishing just how unclear everything was to every party and how difficult it was to get clarity and how risky every assessment was.

The military juntas of Egypt and Syria both faced competition from various Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Islamist groups were singularly focused on the destruction of Israel and Judaism and the restoration of Palestinians to the lands of Israel, so military leaders had to be seen to be adamant about Israel's destruction.  Consequently Assad and Nasser were both competing in playing to the Islamists while also trying to suppress them.  Wooing the Arab street but suppressing any alternative political structures.  Demonstrating military prowess while trying to fund development.  Outshouting one another in their passion to destroy Israel while trying to avoid war.  Constantly having to tend to ever-shifting within-military factions and alliances.  

Nasser and Assad also were dueling with one another, and to an extent with the Ba'ath party in Iraq for titular leadership of the Arab world, going so far as an ever shifting melange of "unions" among the three countries which were never more than empty treaties.

All four parties at the center of the conflict (Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan) had to interpret all six channels of signal from each other and among each other.

The reality was that none of the countries could afford a war and while well-equipped with weaponry, neither Syria (which had routinely been purging its military ranks), nor Egypt (where leadership positions in the military were awarded based on personal loyalty rather than competence) had solid reasons for confidence in their potential military performance.

Other points of interest:

I found it striking how low a level of engagement and support there was from the US for Israel.  Respect, certainly, but Israel fought on its own.  

How integral the USSR was in instigating the war by repeatedly alarming Egypt and Syria with false reports of Israeli troop deployments.

How frequently Israeli General Dayan was the catalyst to bring resolution to endless civil debate.  He did not override the civil leaders but forced them to decisions they were trying to avoid making.

How heavily Dayan focused on defeating Egypt as the primary objective.  Success in Jordan and later in Syria came about despite the Israeli Defense Force strategic focus rather than because of it.  And primarily because of local on-the-ground company and battalion leaders.  

The extent to which Israel entered the conflict without any objectives other than survival.  The defeat of the opposing forces and conquest of territory arose as a consequence of the actions to survive, not because they were objectives in themselves.

As with the causal relationship between World War I and World War II, Six Days of War, without addressing it specifically, lays out the evidence that the Six Day War was a prelude to the 1973 War.  It was only after the Arab defeat in 1973 that there slowly emerged diplomatic progress, haltingly and with many critical issues still unresolved.

The sharp contrast in military cultures between the combatants.  Israeli leaders from lieutenants on up led from the front with corresponding casualty rates.  Arab military leaders were in the rear echelons and the first to evacuate when the tides turned against them.

While Israeli tanks and aircraft routinely inflicted 2-4 times the level of casualties on the Arabs, they also suffered absolute degradation, losing as much as half of their equipment (looking at both 1967 and 1973).  

What comes across especially clearly, is why this has always been an existential issue, for Israel de facto and for the Arab regimes by choice.  With the Arab refusal to accept the existence of Israel, Israel has always been exceptionally constrained.  Their diplomatic negotiations can't go far with that intransigence and they don't want to fight further wars where even small casualty rates are enormous given the size of their population.  The accomplishment of the Camp David Accords and later the Abraham Accords were such an accomplishment.  The more Arab nations which accept the existence of Israel, the more latitude there is for diplomatic and economic development.  

It is a commonplace that Arafat was singularly able, in diplomatic negotiations, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  I had not realized just how true this was also for Nasser.

A very good book, worth reading for both its history and as context for today.