Israel Since the Six-Day War E-Book

Leslie Stein

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 823

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Completing his acclaimed trilogy on the history of Israel, Leslie Stein brings readers right up to contemporary events in Israel Since the Six-Day War. Stein vividly chronicles Israel's wars and military engagements, but he also incorporates fascinating assessments of many other issues, including Israel’s economic development, the nature of the PLO and Palestinian Authority, and Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Furthermore, Stein explores broader social issues, such as extremist Jewish movements and the varying fortunes of migrants from Russia and Ethiopia, to convey clearly a sense of the diversity and complexity of modern Israel.

Wide-ranging and judicious, Stein's cogent and compellingly readable account of Israel’s recent past will engage students and general readers alike.

Leseprobe

ISRAEL SINCE THE SIX-DAY WAR

Also by Leslie Stein

The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel

The Making of Modern Israel: 1948–1967

ISRAEL SINCE THE SIX-DAY WAR

TEARS OF JOY, TEARS OF SORROW

LESLIE STEIN

polity

Copyright © Leslie Stein 2014

The right of Leslie Stein to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8735-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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To Clara with love

CONTENTS

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1  The Early Aftermath of the Six-Day War

2  The War of Attrition and the Prelude to the Yom Kippur War

3  The Yom Kippur War

4  Major Events over the years 1974–1979

5  The Decade of the 1980s

6  The Fateful 1990s

7  The al-Aqsa Intifada

8  Beyond the al-Aqsa Intifada

9  Social and Economic Developments

Conclusion

Appendix: General Election Results

Glossary

Notes

References and Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

 1  Briefing of soldiers in a Bar Lev Line bunker

 2  Israeli soldiers crossing the Suez Canal

 3  Left to right: Sadat, Carter and Begin at the Israel–Egypt Peace Treaty signing ceremony

 4  Intifada protesters in Ramallah, March 1988

 5  Left to right: Rabin, Clinton and Arafat at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony at the White House

 6  Aziz Salha jubilantly raising his bloodsoaked hands after taking part in the killing of two Israeli reservists

 7  Israeli police and rescue workers gathering bodies in the wake of a Palestinian suicide bombing

 8  Ethiopian Jews on flight to Israel

 9  A Haredi father with two of his children

10  Standing in silence in tribute to those fallen in defence of Israel

PREFACE

This book provides a broad survey of the history of Israel from the Six-Day War in June 1967 to the end of the first decade of the twentyfirst century. While paying particular attention to Israel’s wars and military engagements, other topics have by no means been neglected. Israel’s economic development and internal political matters, the nature of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, extremist Jewish movements, social protest in Israel, Russian and Ethiopian migrants, Israeli Arabs, the ultraorthodox Haredi Jewish community, foreign workers, the kibbutz movement and social and economic disparities are all considered. Covering such an extensive range of issues over a 43-year period necessitated drawing upon largely secondary sources, both in English and in Hebrew. In the process an attempt was made to synthesize the material at hand to provide a cogent and reliable account of Israel’s recent past that could well serve both students and general readers.

Given that the book covers only a part of Israel’s postindependence history, background information relating to the period 1948 to 1967 is provided in the introductory chapter to facilitate an understanding of the later events in relation to previous ones. For the reader interested in pursuing the earlier period in more detail, recourse to my book The Making of Modern Israel: 1948–1967 is suggested.

It was to my good fortune that I was able to receive advice and comments from renowned scholars in the field of Israel Studies who had either read the entire manuscript or a chapter or two, as well as from others who proffered clarifications on specific points. The scholars in question were Oz Almog, Ahron Bregman, Raphael Cohen-Almagor, Alan Dowty, Robert Freedman, Daniel Gordis, Raphael Israeli, Moshe Lissak, Derek Penslar, Daniel Pipes, Abraham Rabinovich, Anita Shapira and Colin Shindler. To all of them I am indebted for their valuable inputs, with, of course, the usual proviso that any faults and defects found in the book remain mine alone. In addition, I would like to thank Joe Devanny, editor at Polity Press, for his friendly guidance and cooperation, particularly at a time when I had been labouring under difficult personal circumstances. Furthermore, it has been to my good fortune to have had the manuscript copyedited by Caroline Richmond, who has combed through the text with exceptional care and exemplary professionalism.

Finally, words of gratitude fail me in expressing my appreciation to both my wife Clara (to whom this work is dedicated) and to my son Mark, who have given me unstinted encouragement in ensuring the book’s completion and who both deployed their fine skills in detecting linguistic and other errors that draft manuscripts invariably contain.

Leslie Stein

Sydney, Australia

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All photographs in the body of this book are reproduced with permission. Plates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 and 10 are from the Israeli Government Press Office; plates 7 and 8 are from Associated Press; and plate 6, photographed by Michael Curtis, is from Agence France Press.

INTRODUCTION

After ruling Palestine for over twenty-eight years, in accordance with a League of Nations Mandate for facilitating the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, Britain, on February 18, 1947, decided to place that country’s future in the hands of the United Nations (UN). It arrived at that decision after finding itself incapable of resolving the conflicting demands of Arab and Jewish nationalists. On accepting the Palestinian brief, the UN on May 15, 1947, established a United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) to examine “the problem of Palestine and all matters associated with it.” At the end of an exhaustive inquiry, the majority of the eleven members of UNSCOP proposed that Palestine be partitioned into a Jewish and Arab state, with Jerusalem maintaining an international status. The commission felt that a unitary state would not be viable because the interests of the Arabs and Jews were so irreconcilable that an internecine civil war would be an inevitable outcome. What impressed the investigators was the fact that the Jews had over the years created a self-contained enclave in which Hebrew was the lingua franca. They had managed their own economic, welfare and cultural affairs and had settled on land for which every square metre had been bought and fully paid. Not only that, but the proposed area to be allotted to the Jews was one in which they had already constituted a majority. Meeting on November 29, 1947, over two-thirds of the UN General Assembly gave its blessing to the division of Palestine in the spirit of the UNSCOP recommendation. While the Jews accepted that decision with alacrity, the Arabs rejected it forthwith, and on the following day, by killing seven Jews, they inaugurated a campaign of violence against the Yishuv (Jewish Community in Palestine). In the meantime, the British authorities, while preparing for their departure (scheduled for no later than midnight May 14, 1948), abrogated their responsibility for the maintenance of law and order, which meant that the internal fighting remained unchecked.

Then on May 14, 1948, at a simple ceremony in the Tel Aviv Art Museum, David Ben-Gurion, as head of the Yishuv, declared Israel’s independence. The declaration was issued despite George Marshall, the US secretary of state, warning that, in the event of the Jews claiming full sovereignty, US military assistance would not be assured.1 Even within Zionist ranks the wisdom of undertaking such a step was subject to doubt. Of the ten Yishuv leaders who met to decide their people’s fate, only six voted in favour of immediate independence. The reticence of the four dissenters was hardly surprising, considering that Yigael Yadin, Israel’s de facto chief of staff, had put the odds of a Jewish State prevailing over its enemies at no more than 50 percent.2 On the morning of the second day of its existence, Israel, whose Jewish population numbered 650,000, found itself pitted against the regular Arab armies of Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and Egypt.

In the early stages of the war Israel was extremely vulnerable. Unlike its adversaries, who were largely starting afresh, Israel’s troops were fatigued. They had just undergone five and a half months of combating local Palestinian as well as bands of foreign volunteers and in the process had lost 753 soldiers, including many seasoned officers. What is more, the arms at Israel’s immediate disposal were vastly inferior to those possessed by the Arabs in terms of both quantity and quality. Apart from a limited stock of mortars and PIATS (projector infantry anti-tank weapons, a type of crude bazooka), the Israelis had no field guns to speak of and, barring some Hispano Suiza guns, virtually no anti-aircraft weapons. Their armour consisted of a handful of ironplated vehicles and two Cromwell tanks acquired from a couple of British deserters. Having no fighter planes, their air force consisted of a few Piper Cubs and Austers, two transport planes and three improvised “bombers.” Rifles and machine guns, coming as they did from a variety of sources, lacked standardization. Only 60 percent of Israeli soldiers bore arms.3 Ammunition was in such short supply that merely 50 bullets per rifle and 700 per machine gun were available.4 The Arabs by contrast were believed to have been equipped with something of the order of 152 field guns, 140 to 159 armoured cars, 20 to 40 tanks and 55 to 59 fighter aircraft.5

Israel’s perilous plight was impressed upon members of Kibbutz Degania A when they approached Ben-Gurion, now Israel’s prime minister and minister of defence, with an urgent appeal for additional manpower. Ben-Gurion had the unpleasant task of informing them that “there are not enough guns, not enough planes; men are lacking on all fronts. The situation is very severe in the Negev, is difficult in Jerusalem, in Upper Galilee. The whole country is a front line. We cannot send reinforcements.”6

Yet, in spite of it all, Israel largely held its ground. By mid-June, when the first truce took effect, the Arabs had notched up few successes. An Egyptian column moving in the direction of Tel Aviv was checked, the Transjordanians had mainly contented themselves with seizing what has now become known as the West Bank, Iraqi troops were garrisoned in Arab towns beyond Israel’s territory, and the Syrians had laid claim to but a single Israeli settlement. This is not to suggest that the Jewish defenders were not hard pressed. Kibbutz Yad Mordehai and Kibbutz Nitzanim in the southern region, both outmanned and outgunned by the Egyptian army, fell. Just a few kilometres south of Jerusalem, Kibbutz Ramat Rahel with considerable difficulty headed off one attack after another. In Jerusalem itself, the Transjordanians overran the Old Jewish Quarter. As a consequence, the Jews no longer had access to their hallowed Western Wall. Not content with their gains in the Old City, the Transjordanians besieged the new Jewish residential area, pounding it with over 10,500 shells and causing the death of 316 and the wounding of 1,422 others.7

The June–July truce provided Israel with a golden opportunity to take delivery of crucial arms shipments from Czechoslovakia with Russia’s full backing. It was the hope of the Soviet Union that an Israeli victory over the Arabs would damage Britain’s standing in the Middle East, thereby weakening the so-called forces of colonialism. (Transjordan’s Arab Legion, it should be noted, was both financed and officered by the UK.) Not only did Israel receive reasonable quantities of military equipment (including tanks and fighter planes) but, with its gates now wide open, it welcomed Jewish volunteer soldiers from mainly Western countries as well as young migrants able and willing to play a part in their new country’s defence. From that point of time onwards, the strategic balance shifted in favour of the Israelis, who by the year’s end controlled somewhat more territory than had originally been designated to them by the UN.

Realizing that a continuation of the war would only compound their losses, the invading Arab countries (with the exception of Iraq, which withdrew its forces), and with the inclusion of Lebanon, entered into separate armistice agreements with Israel. The armistice agreements were meant to constitute a first step on the road to a permanent settlement and explicitly committed each signatory to abstain from any form of violence, even guerrilla or non-government-organized violence, against a fellow contractual state. However, with the exception of Transjordan (which, after acquiring large swathes of the West Bank, changed its name to Jordan), no Arab state showed any serious interest in reaching a full peace accord. Even many, if not the majority, of the Jordan parliamentary members and government ministers were opposed to their King Abdullah secretly suing for peace. When, on Friday July 22, 1951, Abdullah made his way to pray in East Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, he was assassinated at point-blank range by an agent of Haj Amin al-Husseini. As a result, all hopes of Jordan coming to terms with the Jewish State vanished. Al-Husseini was in effect the Palestinians’ de facto leader. He was an ardent anti-Semite who had spent time in Nazi Germany during World War II. In his meetings with top-ranking Third Reich leaders, including Hitler, he had beseeched his hosts to extend their solution of the Jewish problem to the Jews of Palestine.8

Israel’s victory in its war of independence was a costly one. It had lost 6,000 of the flower of its youth, a loss amounting to close to 1 percent of its initial population. Allowing for Israel’s small size, Van Creveld estimated that “the blood bath was more intense than that undergone by either Britain or Germany in 1914–1918.”9 In fact, the death toll in the War of Independence approached a third of all those killed in action from November 1947 until the end of the twentieth century. No other Israeli war matched it.

The Arabs likewise suffered a heavy death toll, but in addition the Palestinians experienced the trauma of a large number of their people being uprooted from within areas falling under Israel’s jurisdiction. Such refugees, totalling an estimated 730,000, sought sanctuary in Jordan, the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria. With respect to the ultimate source of the refugee problem, it unquestionably arose as a by-product of the Arab–Jewish conflict culminating, on May 15, 1948, with the invasion of Israel by four regular Arab armies. As Jacob Malek, the Soviet delegate to the UN, put it: “The existence of Arab refugees in the Middle East is the result of attempts to scuttle the UN General Assembly’s decision regarding Palestine. Those implicated bear direct responsibility for the refugees’ plight.”10

The Arabs have never come to terms with their own role in causing the refugee problem. Instead, they have laid full blame for that outcome on the Jews. In this regard, they have been backed to the hilt by Western radicals motivated by a deep ideological hatred for the Jewish State. Their false charges are based largely on an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) plan (Plan Dalet) which was reputedly designed to “ethnically cleanse Palestine of its Arabs”11 but which in reality was nothing more than an operational plan for securing the IDF’s rear as it faced an oncoming invasion.12 The spuriousness of such an outrageous slur is amply demonstrated by events that occurred during the war in Haifa and Nazareth. When, in the wake of a heated battle, the Jewish forces took control of Haifa, they met with local Arab leaders to offer their people full and equal residency rights.13 On receiving the Jewish offer, the Arabs requested a brief adjournment to consult with Arab states. Hours later they announced to everyone’s amazement, including Major-General Stockwell, a senior British officer who acted as an observer, that, rather than live under Jewish control, they would leave for Lebanon. In conclusion they stated: “We do not recognise you and we shall return when you are no longer here.” Stockwell, who was utterly astounded, asked them whether they had taken leave of their senses.14 In vain, the Jewish mayor, Shabetai Levy, implored them to reconsider their decision. (Confirmation of Jewish efforts to persuade the Arabs not to flee has been provided by both American diplomats and British officials.)15 Similarly, with regard to Nazareth, immediately after that city had fallen into Israeli hands, Ben-Gurion sent the military commander in question an urgent message stressing that no Arab was to be expelled.16 To this day, Nazareth remains overwhelmingly an Arab city.

The irony of it all is that, rather than the Jews, it was the Arabs themselves who were seeking an “ethnic cleansing of Palestine” and, far from being coy about their objective, they made no bones about it. In March 1948, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arab Higher Command, on being interviewed by al Sarah, a Jaffa newspaper, stated that the Arabs “would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated and the whole of Palestine became a purely Arab state.”17 Similarly, Abdel Qader al-Husseini, who headed the Palestinian militia in the Jerusalem region, declared that “the Palestine problem will only be solved by the sword; all Jews must leave Palestine.”18

In practice, whenever they overran Jewish settlements, Arab forces had no compunction in razing them to the ground. That the number of such settlements was relatively small is due solely to the fact that the Arabs did not succeed in vanquishing that many. Amos Oz, an Israeli writer who had empathized with the Arab refugees, fittingly summarized the difference between Israel and its foes by observing that

the Arabs implemented a more complete ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the territories they conquered than the Jews did. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were driven out from the territory of the State of Israel in the war, but a hundred thousand remained. Whereas there were no Jews at all in the West Bank (including the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem) or the Gaza Strip that came under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Not one.19

As already suggested, the Arab refugee phenomenon emanated primarily from the dynamics of the in-fighting between Palestinian Arabs and Jews that the Arabs themselves initiated. It was then exacerbated by the pan-Arab invasion and by the IDF’s attempts to repel it. Before Israel was established some 300,000 refugees had already fled.20 The first to depart were Arab notables and their families, who may have recalled previous temporary migrations such as occurred during World War I and during the 1936–9 Arab rebellion, when 40,000 Arabs left the country.21 The full extent of the exodus of the Arab elite can be inferred from Majid al-Haj, an Arab-Israeli academic, who reported that, after the war, “nearly all members of the Palestinian Arab middle and upper classes – the urban landowning mercantile, professional and religious elite – were no longer present in Israel.”22 Whatever factors drove them, the Arab elite set a standard of desertion that was readily emulated by the broad uneducated masses.23

The Arab elite’s growing absence led to the closure of schools, ­hospitals and business enterprises. General municipal and social ­services, which had previously been delivered by the British bureaucracy, collapsed. Unlike the Jews, the Palestinians failed to create a self-contained state in the making and were unable to take over as the British withdrew. This resulted in increased unemployment and welfare losses, all of which had a demoralizing effect.24 To make matters worse, the unruly behaviour of extraneous Arab militias caused people endless misery. As one leading Arab citizen in Haifa recalled, “Robber gangs terrorized the residents. Food prices became inflated. A panic exodus began.”25

One cannot of course deny that the IDF had also been instrumental in adding to the refugee flight by virtue of its destruction of numerous Arab villages judged to be actively hostile to it and which stood ready to provide material assistance to the invading forces. However, such displacements were undertaken out of strategic considerations and not out of any official antipathy to the Arabs per se. In this respect, on March 23, after more than 100,000 Arabs had already fled, General Ismail Safwat, the overall commander of the Arab Liberation Army, wrote that the Jews “have not attacked a single Arab village unless provoked by it.”26 Abdul Azzam, the Arab League secretary general, appreciated the strategic merit, from Israel’s point of view, in expelling specific Arab villagers. He lamented that, by “driving out the inhabitants [from areas] on or near roads by which regular forces could enter the country,” the Jews were providing the Arab armies with the “greatest difficulty in even entering Palestine after May 15.”27 Sir Allan Cunningham, the British high commissioner in Palestine, agreed that “the Jews for their part can hardly be blamed if, in the face of past Arab irregular action and the continued threat of interference by Arab regular forces, they take time by the forelock and consolidate their positions while they can.”28 Finally, Simha Flapan, whose book The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, has become a bedrock for anti-Israel propaganda, affirmed that the military benefits of razing certain Arab villages “were so evident that liberal and socialist commanders and their troops were able to overcome any qualms.”29

By the end of 1949 the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) was formed and assumed responsibility for the care of Palestinian refugees. The establishment of UNRWA was an anomaly in that all other refugees throughout the world at large fall under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Only the Palestinians have a UN body of their own. Just as irregular, Palestinians are able to retain their refugee status even on acquiring the citizenship of another country. Perhaps most astonishing of all, Palestinian refugees are able to transfer their refugee status to succeeding generations. Partly as a result of UNRWA’s interminable largesse, but mainly on account of Arabs wishing to perpetuate the existence of Palestinian refugees, the problem has become quite intractable.

As far as the Arabs are concerned, their perpetual demands for the return of the refugees have been submitted not as an alternative for the destruction of Israel but as the means to effect it.30 For example, in October 1949, Muhammad Saleh ed-Din, Egypt’s foreign minister, stated that, “in demanding the restoration of the refugees to Palestine, the Arabs intend that they shall return as the masters of the homeland, and not as slaves. More explicitly: they intend to annihilate the state of Israel.”31 As recently as 2000, a fatwa, specifically requested by Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), ruled that “any arrangement calling for the refugees to be compensated for their right to return or their settlement outside their homeland (that is all of Israel) is, from the point of view of the Sharia, null and void.”32 By ensuring that no alternative other than the full repatriation of all refugees to Israel is enshrined in religious doctrine, Arafat effectively put paid to any peaceful resolution of the Arab–Israeli conflict. Unless the Palestinians undergo a genuine change of heart and come to terms with the existence of Israel as a sovereign Jewish State, such a state of affairs is doomed to continue ad infinitum.

Meanwhile, with the War of Liberation behind them, the Israelis turned their minds to the mass absorption of Jews from European and Arab countries. Within a matter of only four years, an influx of migrants led to a doubling of the size of the Jewish population. Israel’s newcomers did not stream into a consolidated, tranquil and ordered country but, as Ben-Gurion stressed, into “a tender and young one that had arisen in the midst of confusion, anarchy and the tribulations of war.”33 The ability of the state to rise to the challenge that the uncoordinated and unregulated arrival of destitute Jews posed was quite amazing. As many as 10 percent of all immigrants were either chronically ill or were suffering from diseases, such as polio, tuberculosis, trachoma and syphilis.34 So pervasive were migrant medical disorders that one observer warned that the state faced the danger of becoming one big hospital for the Jewish people.35 Those from Yemen in particular were in a most wretched condition. On a visit to an army hospital, Ben-Gurion reported seeing “children and babies who were more like skeletons than living human beings, too weak to cry, many of them unable to absorb food.”36

Receiving and integrating such a large number of immigrants over a matter of a few years imposed tremendous strains on the country. This was especially so in view of the cascading nature of the migratory influx. Just as Israel was being inundated by the sudden arrival of thousands upon thousands of immigrants from one source, it would suddenly and unexpectedly be confronted by the arrival of a multitude of others from yet another country. The first large-scale aliyah (immigration to Israel) began in October 1948, with the appearance of the Bulgarian Jews accompanied by former inmates of displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. Three months later, the airlift of Jews from Yemen got under way, and in February 1949 – that is, one month thereafter – as the country was buckling under the weight of dealing with them all, Jews from Turkey turned up. In November 1949, well before the immigrants in place were adequately housed, the Jews of Poland began arriving, to be followed in May 1950 by a massive number of new entrants from both Iraq and Romania. Government officials were beside themselves. Civil servants and social workers required for the task at hand greatly exceeded those available, both in absolute and in qualitative terms. Personnel with insufficient training and experience had to improvise within newly formed bureaucratic structures. Lines of demarcation were indistinct and communications between those formulating and executing policy often went awry.

At first, for many immigrants, their introduction to Israel occurred within a reception camp (and later at a more permanent transition camp) where they slept in asbestos huts or in surplus British army tents. Sometimes, thousands of incoming Jews would be transferred to a particular camp within a single day. For example, on April 11, 1949, a total of 5,340 were deposited at the main camp, Sha’ar Ha’aliyah, where the harried staff was hard pressed in arranging for their food and bedding. In general, the reception camps left much to be desired. Although they provided free food and board, living conditions were sub-optimal. Frequently, groups of fifty or more men, women and children slept in a common hall. Residents had to wait for hours at a stretch to access showers. Electrical power was sporadic and non-existent at night. The camps “swarmed with mosquitoes, flies, mice and rats. The cesspools of the toilets overflowed and the dining hall was thick with grime.”37 Unsatisfactory hygienic conditions gave rise to an increase in infant mortality, which was already adversely affected by malnourished mothers arriving in Israel in an undermined state of health. During the summer of 1949, intestinal disorders were widespread. Due to a critical shortage of hospital beds and medical supplies as many as half of afflicted camp children died.38

To enable immigrants to earn a living, employment was offered in the context of miscellaneous projects, of which many served no practical purpose other than to provide a pretext for doling out welfare payments. The government hesitated to support immigrants directly on an ongoing basis lest they be discouraged from entering the workforce, and with that in mind it insisted that all able-bodied men below the age of forty-five seek paid employment. Those failing to do so were subject to the withdrawal of free access to food and shelter. Obtaining work frequently entailed adapting one’s calling in accordance with local labour market conditions. This applied to 60 percent of all immigrants.39 For breadwinners who had previously been shopkeepers and petty traders and who then had to become farmers or general workers, the transformation was both physically and psychologically challenging.

Eventually, migrants found a niche for themselves within new agricultural settlements or the country’s urban areas. The integration of Israel’s disparate Jewish population was not easily accomplished. Even to this day, the country is riven by differences in ethnic origins. Few Mizrahis (Jews from Arab countries) are represented in the top echelon of Israeli society, such as among cabinet ministers, army officers, high-court judges, university presidents, and so on. However, among operative unifying forces, the feeling that all Jews are kinsmen sharing the same religion and destiny has proved to be a powerful one. The very realities of life in Israel have given rise to the melding of people from vastly different backgrounds into a homogeneous national body. With Israel constantly at war with its neighbours, external threats tend to draw its Jewish citizens closer together. In that respect, the army has played a key role. By requiring most able-bodied men and women from different backgrounds and walks of life to serve within its ranks, it has subjected them to a common experience and mission.

The flood of penurious and displaced Jews seeking a haven in Israel came at a time when the state’s threadbare economy was already stretched to the limit. Foreign reserves had fallen to such a low level that the continued importation of products such as wheat, flour and oil was put in doubt.40 Internally, an abrupt exodus of Arab farmers, the mobilization of Jewish ones and war damage led to a serious shortfall in agricultural output.41 As a result, elementary necessities (including clothes) had to be strictly rationed. But, by March 1953, Israel managed to secure a commitment from West Germany to provide it with nearly a billion dollars’ worth of reparations. That, plus a combination of newly sourced funds from the USA and World Jewry and a ready availability of entrepreneurs and experts in important fields of economic endeavour, paved the way for a steady and rapid rise in national income.42 Furthermore, the establishment of a number of new development towns in various parts of the country afforded employment for the recent immigrants and ensured a more balanced geographic dispersal of the Jewish population.

As Israel came to grips with its internal problems it had also to confront threatening challenges in the international arena. First and foremost was the continued hostility of the entire Arab World, which adamantly refused to accept Israel’s very existence and which freely put about threats of a forthcoming “second round.” To add substance to their comminatory remarks, in the spring of 1950 the Arab League imposed a trade and investment embargo on the Jewish State. Enlisting the support of non-Arab Muslim countries, the League threatened to boycott any company, including shipping and general transport ones, that maintained commercial ties with Israel. Extending their campaign further afield, the Arabs sought and obtained the uncritical support of the Third World bloc, which, in April 1955 at its inaugural conference in Bandung, Indonesia, adopted a pro-Arab resolution proposed by Egypt’s president, Abdul Nasser. Although the conference was ostensibly a meeting of “non-aligned states,” Israel was pointedly excluded, even though, unlike Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq, it had not entered into a military alliance with a Great Power.

Co-opting the UN General Assembly, and with the automatic support of the Soviet Union within the Security Council, the Arabs and their allies soon turned the entire UN into an anti-Israel organization. As an example, when in May 1956 a report on the Israeli–Arab conflict drafted by the UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, was submitted to the Security Council, Ahmed Shukeiri, Syria’s representative and later chairman of the PLO, objected to the use of the term “peaceful settlement on a mutually acceptable basis.” Deferring to Arab, Iranian and Soviet opposition, the offending text was duly deleted!43 To all intents and purposes, Israel has been treated within the UN as a state with less than full rights. It has never once been considered as a candidate for a temporary seat in the Security Council. In 1950, on encountering obstacles in attending a UN Food and Agriculture Organization Conference, Israel proposed that the UN guarantee all members ready access to such gatherings. Much to Israel’s mortification, its resolution was overwhelmingly rejected. Only four of the forty states that participated voted in its favour.44

Not only did Israel have to contend with a wall of antagonism from the Arabs, the Soviet Union and the Third World, but it was also subject to baleful Western intrigues. The notion propagated by radical European and American intellectuals that Israel has always been cuddled under the caring wing of the USA is entirely belied by the facts. For one, during Israel’s War of Independence, when its future was very much in the balance, the United States refused to supply it with arms. Thereafter, in April 1955, Israel informally learnt from Herbert Morrison, a British member of parliament, that Britain and the USA had reached a joint understanding, embodied in a document named Project Alpha. The two powers agreed that, in the interest of warding off war between Israel and the Arabs, Israel ought to cede parts of the Negev. In exchange Israel was to receive the Gaza Strip, along with all its Palestinians.45 In September 1955, in a speech delivered at the Guildhall, London, Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign minister, gave some indication of the contours of the Alpha plan. He declared that the solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict required a compromise that would ultimately necessitate Israel’s borders falling somewhere between the present armistice lines and the positions suggested in the UN 1947 partition resolution.46 Such a generous British offer of Israel’s territory would still have left the Arabs dissatisfied. An internal report of the secretary general of the Arab League maintained that the Arabs not only expected Israel to withdraw to the proposed UN 1947 boundaries and to permit the return of all refugees, but that they also required of Israel that it relinquish part of its attenuated land for refugees who might choose not to live there.47

By November 1955, the US secretary of state, John Dulles, provided Israel with full details of Project Alpha. In Dulles’s version, there was to be a transfer of a large area of the Negev to Jordan and Egypt to enable them to maintain a territorial link with each other. Israel, if it so wished, could obtain the Gaza Strip in exchange for transferring to Jordan compensating territory.48 The essence of the US–UK understanding is summed up in a joint unpublished memorandum which stated that “Israel must make concessions. The Arabs will not reconcile themselves to reaching a settlement with Israel with the present boundaries.”49 Such a conclusion was rather extraordinary, considering that both Egypt and Jordan, because of their war of aggression against Israel, were already holding large amounts of Palestinian land to which they had neither legal nor moral claims. Project Alpha never stipulated the word “peace”; rather, it alluded to an Arab “acceptance of Israel’s existence.”50

Efforts to erode Israeli gains as a means of currying favour with the Arabs extended to other areas. On a visit to Israel in May 1952, Henry Byroade, the US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, suggested to Ben-Gurion, Israel’s prime minister, that he limit Jewish immigration to permit the wholesale return of Arab refugees.51 This call was repeated by Byroade two years later in an address to a Jewish audience in Chicago, where he added the proviso that Israel should abandon its Zionist mission by ceasing to consider itself the centre of World Jewry.52 Byroade’s demand was couched in language that would have delighted the Arab League, for he described the Jews as sharing only a commonality of religion and not of nationhood.

With regard to Jerusalem, in November 1949 Herbert Evatt, the Australian foreign minister, proposed in the UN General Assembly that the city be granted international status, in keeping with the November 1947 UN partition resolution (it came to light that Evatt had done so in order to obtain Catholic support for the Australian Labor Party in a forthcoming general election).53 Evatt’s resolution, approved by a large majority on December 10, had the backing of a host of Catholic states, communist countries, and the Arab and Muslim bloc. As had subsequently become par for the course with many UN General Assembly resolutions, this one was based on rank prejudice and pure hypocrisy. When Jewish-held Jerusalem was systematically and repetitively bombed by the Arab Legion in 1948, the UN stood by with its hands folded doing nothing to assist the beleaguered Jews, who were supposed to have received the protection of an international governor and police force. For four hundred years (1517–1917) the Christian World was reconciled to Turkish Muslim control of the city, and when in 1948 the UN intermediary, Count Folke Bernadotte, favoured handing it over to Transjordan, it raised no outcry. Only when the Jews, who had constituted a majority in Jerusalem since 1874, claimed sovereignty to the western part, where there was not one of the seven major holy sites,54 did Western diplomats once more press for its internationalization. In the words of Monsignor Oesterreicher (a Catholic priest and scholar),

during Jordanian rule, 34 out of the Old City’s 35 synagogues were dynamited. Some were turned into stables, others into chicken coops. There appeared to be no limit to the sacrilege. Many thousands of tombstones were taken from the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives to serve as building material and paving stones. A few were also used to surface a footpath leading to a latrine in a Jordanian army camp.55

Not once did the UN General Assembly issue Jordan with merely the mildest of rebukes. Evidently, the UN’s declared zeal for the protection of the holy sites in Jerusalem did not apply to Jewish ones.

On the home front, Israel began to be subject to regular acts of depredation, murder and sabotage by Arab groups or individuals infiltrating into its territory from surrounding countries. With Israel’s borders being lengthy, tortuous, largely unmarked, situated for the most part in desolate areas and generally not associated with natural barriers, they were relatively easily traversed. Over the years 1951–6, Israel lost hundreds of its citizens as a result of acts of terror perpetrated by Arab intruders and the need to combat them. The sheer brazenness of the saboteurs caused Israelis to fear for their safety and to question whether their state was capable of providing them with a reasonable measure of protection and security.56 Settlements populated by newly arrived immigrants lacking military experience were most at risk, particularly those without fencing, lighting, shelters, telephones and internal means of communication.57 In some instances, entire villages were abandoned.

Because of general economic constraints, the army’s budget was cut to the bone. Serviceable weapons were in short supply; soldiers were scantily clothed and fed, and their state of morale was abysmal.58 Lack of discipline and absenteeism without leave was rife and, what is more, drug addicts and criminals were present among the new recruits.59 The state of the Golani Brigade which “guarded” the north of Israel typified the chaotic state of the IDF in those days. Most of its commanders had never been under fire, only 10 percent of its soldiers were native-born Israelis or immigrants from Western countries, 17 percent knew no Hebrew, 50 percent knew it partially and 30 percent had no formal education. In Uri Milstein’s opinion, the “Golani was not a combat brigade but rather a kind of immigrant absorption centre.”60 Insufficiently trained and poorly motivated conscripts sent on missions either failed to reach their targets or disengaged on meeting token resistance.61

To remedy the situation, a special retaliatory unit under Ariel Sharon’s command, known as Unit 101, was formed. The unit undertook an intensive commander training program that included the conveying of skills in hand-to-hand combat, weapons use, sabotage and field craft. Its recruits, who were all carefully selected, earned a reputation for bravery and daring and set an exacting standard that was gradually emulated by the rest of the IDF. Amalgamating with a parachute brigade, Sharon’s men were exclusively assigned responsibility for all of the IDF’s punitive raids. These invariably occurred in the wake of Arab-perpetrated atrocities such as when, in March 1954, an Israeli bus was waylaid while ascending Maale Akravim (Scorpions’ Pass), a desolate Negev elevation on the road to Eilat. With the driver meeting death instantly, the bus veered backwards until it struck an embankment. The attackers then boarded the bus and fired at all passengers, including women and ­children, killing eleven of them and wounding three.

At first the Arab marauders were almost all freelance operators, but by April 1955 the Egyptians had formed their own official ­detachment of armed infiltrators, known as Fedayeen (literally, “those who sacrifice themselves”). The move was formally proclaimed in a government communiqué that made it clear that “there will be no peace on Israel’s border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel’s death.”62 Elaborating, Hassan el Bakuri, an Egyptian minister, declared that “there is no reason why the Fedayeen filled with hatred of their enemies should not penetrate deeply into Israel and turn the lives of its people into hell.”63 By establishing a paramilitary organization to create havoc in Israel, Egypt deliberately flouted a key clause of the Israeli–Egyptian armistice agreement. The clause in question read: “No element of the land, sea or air, military or paramilitary forces of either Party, including non-regular forces, shall commit any warlike or hostile act against the military or paramilitary forces of the other Party, or against civilians in territory under the control of that Party.”64

An ominous aspect of the training of Arab terrorists and the general dissemination of anti-Israel sentiment within the Arab World, and within Egypt in particular, was the widespread recruitment of ex-Nazi war criminals and collaborators. Although the Arabs were infatuated with Hitler and were more than willing to draw on support from his surviving henchmen, they did not for a moment flinch at depicting both Israel and Zionism as being Nazi-inspired. In the early 1950s many ex-Nazis settled in Egypt, where they adopted Arab noms de plume. The director of the Cairo-based Institute for the Study of Zionism, Alfred Zingler, styled himself Mahmoud Saleh.65 His assistant, Dr Johannes von Leers, who had served on the staff of Goebbels’s ministry, became known as Omar Amin. In 1957, according to the German newspaper Frankfurter Illustrierte, Egypt had welcomed more than 2,000 ex-Nazis. Two in particular, Erich Altern (Ali Bella), who was a high-ranking member of the Gestapo, and Hans Baumann (Ali Ben Khader), who had participated in the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, became military instructors in Palestinian refugee camps. The significant ex-Nazi presence in Egypt did not in the slightest degree detract from its popularly perceived image as a “progressive anti-imperialist state.” Syria likewise became a beneficiary of German military advice.66

Towards the middle of 1956, after numerous rounds of Arab strikes and Israeli responses, Moshe Dayan, as Israel’s chief of staff, concluded that the usefulness of reprisal attacks had run its course. The Arabs had begun to anticipate the modus operandi of Israeli actions and had taken steps either to frustrate them or to impose heavy IDF losses. What especially strengthened Dayan’s assessment that the IDF had to change tack was the news on September 27, 1955, that Egypt had secured an arms agreement with Czechoslovakia (or, to be more exact, with Russia) which stood to tilt the strategic Israel–Egypt balance decisively in Egypt’s favour. Within no time, the Soviets began to provide Egypt with a prodigious amount of modern weapons, of a type and calibre that had hitherto not been available to any Middle Eastern combatant, including tanks, artillery, planes and submarines. Payment, to be deferred, was to be made in Egyptian cotton. Dayan’s biggest nightmare was that, on integrating and mastering its newly acquired weapons, Egypt would challenge Israel in a “second round” at a time of its own choosing. That being the case, Israel had perforce to initiate a preventive war while it still had the facility to do so.

Israel’s most pressing need was somehow to augment its modest stock of weapons so as to offset Egypt’s growing strategic advantage. But both the USA and the UK rejected its requests. As the US secretary of state, John Dulles, briefed President Dwight Eisenhower, the USA had to turn down Israel’s appeal for arms “not on its own merits” but so as not to appear to be too pro-Israel.67 Similarly, Dulles and Harold Macmillan, the UK foreign secretary, jointly concluded that they ought to “avoid being pushed by the Russians into a position of opposition to Arab interests … Our guiding principle is that we should not be moving in to supply Israel with arms on a large scale to offset those supplied by the Iron Curtain.”68 Dulles even invented a disingenuous rationale for denying Israel the means to defend itself. He held that, since the Arabs were considerably more numerous than the Israelis, Israel in the long run could never attain the ability to absorb armaments to the extent that they could. Therefore it was pointless, if not self-defeating, for the US to supply Israel with military hardware.69 In desperation, Israel turned to France. There it had better luck, for at the time the French were beset by an uprising in Algeria, which they regarded as an integral part of their mainland. Since Nasser was providing material and moral support to the rebels, the French looked upon Israel as a natural ally. Accordingly, they more than willingly agreed to furnish it with a wide array of armaments, and by mid-1956, without seeking any military quid pro quo, they began delivering them in earnest.

Then, on July 26, 1956, Egypt unexpectedly nationalized the Suez Canal Company. This led Britain and France (whose citizens had jointly owned and managed the company) to plan to reverse that decision by force of arms. Affronted by what they regarded as Nasser’s audacity, and already furious with him for meddling in Algeria and Jordan’s internal affairs, not to mention his irksome anti-Western posturing, the two newfound allies were determined to bring him down a peg or two. In the course of their deliberations, the French suggested enlisting the support of the Israelis, not so much for their military usefulness as for a means of providing them with a cover or pretext to seize the general Suez Canal area. After some hesitation, Ben-Gurion acceded to their request, and on October 25, at a meeting in Sèvres (a Paris suburb), Britain, France and Israel agreed to collude in an attack on Egypt.

The Sèvres Agreement stipulated that the campaign against Egypt would open with an Israeli “raid” involving a parachute drop at the far end of the Mitla Pass, some 50 kilometres east of the Suez Canal and out of the immediate reach of major Egyptian forces. Simultaneously, an Israeli armoured column would enter the southern portion of Sinai, destroy two Egyptian positions and then proceed to link up with the paratroopers at the pass. The parachute drop and an ensuing Israeli general offensive was meant to provide Britain and France with sufficient cause to secure the canal from the warring parties. On the morning after the outbreak of fighting, Britain and France were to issue an ultimatum (termed “appeal” in the Sèvres Agreement) to the two protagonists to stay clear of the canal. It was anticipated that Egypt would not comply, especially since it was also to be asked to accept a “temporary” French and British presence in the Canal Zone. In that event, both Britain and France would then intercede (thirty-six hours after the Israeli parachute drop) as protectors of a vital international waterway.

As far as Israel was concerned, it was essentially pursuing its own interests, which were to free itself from the threat of an Egyptian invasion. Had its bellicose neighbour honoured the Israeli–Egyptian armistice agreement by not dispatching armed Fedayeen to Israel to wreak havoc on its population, and had it not so assiduously striven to acquire sufficient means to fulfil its publicly declared objective of destroying Israel, it is highly unlikely that Israel would have been complicit with Britain and France, who were essentially seeking to assert their mastery over a recalcitrant Third World country. When, in July 1952, Major-General Muhammad Naguib overthrew King Farouk, Ben-Gurion made it clear that “Israel wishes to see Egypt free, independent, and progressive … We have no enmity against Egypt.” 70 The alliance with Britain and France furnished Israel with vital practical support from two European powers at a time when Egypt was being unconditionally propped up by the Soviet Union and when the USA exhibited a marked measure of aloofness towards the Jewish State.

The Sinai Campaign opened on October 29, 1956, by Israel carrying out military operations exactly as outlined in the Sèvres Agreement. Thanks in part to France undertaking to assist in the defence of Israel’s skies and Nasser withdrawing forces to reinforce the Canal Zone in anticipation of a British–French invasion, Israel, in just over six and a half days, and what seemed like a practice run for the later Six-Day War, thoroughly routed the Egyptian army in Sinai. While Israel’s performance was well executed, the same cannot be said for its allies, who, because of inordinate delays, were slow in getting off the mark. By the time they eventually arrived in Egypt and made some tentative inroads, American and Soviet opposition to their project was becoming so shrill and threatening that they were soon forced to back down and withdraw in ignominy. A combination of Russian hints of raining down atomic bombs on London and Paris, an American determination to withhold vital economic assistance and a growing groundswell of internal ­opposition in the UK persuaded the British government to change course. When Britain did so, France had no option other than to follow suit.

With the Israelis becoming the only ones occupying Egyptian territory, the full weight of international opinion told against them. Apart from the usual diet of Soviet threats, which the Israelis took quite seriously, the USA was most adamant that Israel had to withdraw fully. In a message authorized by President Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, Jr (the US acting secretary of state), informed Israel that, should it not do so, the USA would deprive it of all forms of aid, enforce UN sanctions against it and have it expelled from the UN.71 The harshness of Hoover’s communication reflected the United States’ need to counteract the spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East, which capitalized on the Anglo-French debacle and on growing anti-Western sentiments within Arab and Third World countries.

Although Israel had no alternative but to comply, it did its utmost to delay matters in order to use the time available to persuade the USA of the justice of its cause and of the need for international recognition of its natural rights, as a littoral state (denied by Egypt), to sail the Gulf of Eilat. Slowly but surely, with the US media and Congress coming round to the view that Israel indeed harbored legitimate grievances, Eisenhower mellowed somewhat and began to show a more sympathetic appreciation of Israel’s predicament. On February 20, 1957, in a nationwide radio and television broadcast, he publicly conceded that Israeli military action against Egypt resulted from grave and repeated provocations. Although he went on to state that “military force to solve international disputes cannot be reconciled with the principles and purposes of the United Nations,” he also mentioned that no nation has the right to hinder free and innocent passage in the Gulf.72 Taking up Eisenhower on the latter point, Israel requested that the USA use its good offices to persuade other nations to deliver similar pronouncements. In a meeting with Dulles, Abba Eban, Israel’s foreign minister, was told that the United States was predisposed to a French suggestion for resolving the deadlock. It entailed the issuing of a manifesto by the USA, France, Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and other countries recognizing Israel’s claim to free navigation in the Bay of Eilat. Should such a right be denied, Israel would be entitled to assert it by force. With that understanding, and with the UN committed to the stationing of an Emergency Force (UNEF) in Egyptian territory along the Israel–Egypt border, Israel, on March 8, 1957, finally evacuated the entire area it had conquered.

Shortly after the Sinai Campaign, the Australian prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies, observed that “the United Nations made Israel a victim of a double standard of belligerent rights.” It accepted Egypt’s assertion that it could deny Israel access to the Suez Canal because Israel and Egypt were in a state of war with each other, but at the same time it compelled Israel to withdraw from Egyptian territory, including the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had illegally conquered. Menzies avowed: “I cannot believe this kind of thing is a triumph of international justice.”73 Paul-Henri Spaak, one-time foreign minister of Belgium and acting president of the UN General Assembly, arrived at a similar conclusion. He wrote (in Foreign Affairs) that, confronted with regular Egyptian violations of the armistice agreement, the UN could not bring itself to intervene, but as soon as Israel sent its troops into Sinai there was an uproar. “All who stood by with folded arms in the face of the terrible suppression of the Hungarian uprising were beside themselves in reprimanding Israel. Justice of this sort is nothing but a travesty.”74

Critics of Israel’s Sinai Campaign have likened it to a “war of choice,” implying that it was not strategically imperative and that it was motivated by a desire to acquire more land. Yet, as far as the Israeli defence establishment was concerned, Israel’s “choices” were limited to biding its time until the Arabs attacked it at their leisure or foreclosing such an option by means of a pre-emptive strike. Israeli generals were not alone in assuming that Nasser was intent on going to war. In April 1956, George Kennedy Young, the deputy director of MI6, confided to the CIA that, according to their sources, Nasser aimed at nothing other than the total destruction of Israel.75

Israel’s achievements from the Sinai Campaign were not negligible. Between March 1957 and May 1967, there was not a single Egyptian violation of the armistice agreement. Ships freely sailed to and from Eilat, a UN peacekeeping force was stationed in the Gaza Strip and Sinai, and the general state of military tension between Israel and Egypt abated. Since the Egyptian army did not immediately reoccupy its Sinai bases, for a few years the peninsula effectively became demilitarized.76 Within the international arena there was a relaxation of tension, for proposals by Western powers to revise Israel’s frontiers so as to curry Arab favour (such as Project Alpha) were finally put to rest.

While, for the time being, Egypt refrained from violating the border, it never desisted from scheming to undermine Israel. A critical step was taken in January 1964 at an Arab summit held in Cairo, when Nasser suggested that a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) be set up under Arab League auspices. His suggestion was readily approved and finance was budgeted for that purpose. Nasser then nominated Ahmad Shukeiry, a former Palestinian who had served successively as the Saudi Arabian and Syrian ambassador to the UN, to be the PLO’s first president. Once again the summit concurred. Shukeiri then personally selected the delegates for the PLO’s founding conference, which opened in May 1964 in East Jerusalem. Off his own bat, Shukeiry drafted a National Charter and a Fundamental Law for the nascent organization. At that time both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were firmly in Arab hands. If to those regions one adds the eastern part of Jordan, then 82 percent of the original mandated Palestine was Arab held. Within those confines, the Palestinians constituted a distinct majority (even within Jordan alone, where the Bedouin were a rather small minority).77 Not being content with such a situation, the PLO dedicated itself to the total elimination of the Jewish State. Only then, it declared, would Palestine be liberated. Interestingly, while one of the resolutions adopted at the PLO’s founding conference held that the Palestinian body would assume sovereignty over Palestine, it was also agreed that such sovereignty would not abrogate Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank.78 The abnegation of Jewish national rights was but one plank in the PLO’s platform. It was officially intended that all Jews bar those that had lived in Palestine before 1918 be expelled. At least that was touted as the preferred benign outcome. In reality, many PLO members and adherents expected the Jews to be massacred en masse. As one “militant” confessed, he was among those who thought “that we must slaughter the Jews.”79

Not to be outdone by Egypt’s pretensions to be the leading sponsor of Palestinian rights, the Syrians in the latter half of 1964 sought to form a rival body to the PLO under their direct control.80 Their army intelligence agents scoured refugee camps in Lebanon in search of volunteers to be trained as Palestinian Fedayeen. One of the Syrian agents was approached by Yasser Arafat and seven of his comrades. (Yasser’s first name was originally Rahman. He was given the name Yasser by a teacher in memory of a myrmidon of the Nazi collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini, a cousin of Arafat’s mother. The eponymous Yasser was killed by the British while smuggling German arms into Palestine.)81 Arafat explained that he headed a band dubbed the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine. He and his men had opposed the formation of the PLO for not being sufficiently revolutionary and were hindered by it in that it attracted Algerian funds and facilities that they had previously enjoyed. To the great satisfaction of the recruiting agent, they agreed to cooperate with the Syrians.

Their first task was to draft a communiqué announcing the inaugural military action of their group, which they named Fatah, derived by reversing the first Arabic letters of the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine (Harakat-Tahrir Falastin). “Fatah” means “conquest through Jihad.” The communiqué opens by referring to the group’s dependence on God and their belief in the duty of Jihad,82 thus making nonsense of Arafat’s subsequent protestations that he was striving for a secular democratic state. The heralding of military action in January 1965 turned out to be somewhat premature, for the explosive charges meant to sabotage Israel’s national water carrier failed to detonate. No matter, news of the “event” was widely disseminated, and instantly Arafat and his associates acquired celebrity status. Orchestrated by Syria, further Fatah raids got off the ground. Many were staged from Jordan in order to complicate matters for King Hussein, but a large number also originated from Syria. The Fatah raids were masterminded by the Syrian Military Intelligence organization (the Deuxième Bureau). They were plainly meant to demoralize the Israelis, and the Syrians were by no means reticent in expressing such views. Senior government officials explicitly informed Hall Saunders, a member of the US National Security Council, that the Fatah had been given free rein to endanger Israeli lives to such an extent that many, if not most, would leave for the safety of foreign shores.83

It was only a matter of time before Israel retaliated. For the most part it attacked bases in Jordan, but in March 1967 Prime Minister Eshkol decided to exact a punishing toll from the guerrillas’ Syrian sponsors. The plan was to send tractors into the demilitarized regions