Mufti was the leader of the Palestinian Arabs and, by some estimates, the most popular figure in the Arab world, so his countless incendiary broadcasts against the Allies and the Jews amounted to a significant psychological warfare asset for the Axis. In addition, in 1943, he traveled to Yugoslavia where he recruited Muslim volunteers to create a division of the Wafen SS. In 1946, he escaped Allied captivity and possible trial as a war criminal, making his way to Cairo where he was welcomed as a hero.
In short, the Arabs had mostly supported the losing side in the world war, whereas the United Nations had been founded as a kind of victors’ club. The very rubric, United Nations, had been the formal name that the alliance against the Axis had given itself, and it was now carried over to the new global body. And, indeed, the price of admission to the United Nation’s founding conference was to declare war on the Axis. Thus, the history of Jewish persecution and of Arab collaboration helped tilt the General Assembly.
So, too, did the contrast between the two sides in their attitude toward compromise. Both camps were divided within themselves, but among the Jews the advocates of accepting half a loaf prevailed, whereas among the Arabs the absolutists reigned supreme. Golda Meyerson (later, Golda Meir), the Zionist representative at the United Nations, expressed disappointment that the proposed partition would deny Jerusalem to the Jews, but she embraced the plan nonetheless, hoping the United Nations would “improve” it.23 In contrast, the Arab Higher Committee, which, with al-Husseini back at the helm, had regained its status as the voice of the Arabs of Palestine, was unyielding. The Arabs “would never allow a Jewish state to be established in one inch of Palestine,” vowed the group’s spokesman, warning that the effort to do so would lead “probably to a third world war.”24
Sixty-four years later, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, conceded in an interview on Israeli television that this refusal of compromise “was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole.”25 There were many reasons for this mistake and for the contrast in the stands of the two parties. The key one was that the Jews were desperate for a state in Palestine even “the size of a table cloth,” as David Ben Gurion famously put it, whereas the Arabs, including those of Palestine, had reached no consensus on what they wanted except that there be no Jewish state on even “one inch.” Some envisioned an independent Arab Palestine, whereas others preferred to see the land absorbed into a “greater Syria” or an enlarged Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Still others yearned for a pan-Arab state or a pan-Muslim caliphate. When the war of 1948 ended, all of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip were in Arab hands, but not a finger was raised to create a Palestinian Arab state. That was the Palestinian tragedy, or Naqba, as it is called today.
Over the ensuing years, the Arab world seethed with recriminations, sparking the overthrow of incumbent regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. International efforts to mediate the Arab–Israeli conflict proved futile, as Arab political discourse reverberated with the paramountcy of redeeming Arab honor, even while the strengthening Israeli state and army made this goal each day more unrealistic.
Then, with little warning, in the spring of 1967, the constant background noise of low-gauge confrontations and mutual threats swelled to a crescendo. For reasons that remain murky to this day, the Kremlin informed the Egyptian and Syrian governments falsely that Israeli forces were massing on Syria’s border for an attack. Israel denied this, and UN and Egyptian officials saw for themselves that there was no truth in it. But the tension did not dissipate.
On May 15, following meetings between Egyptian and Syrian military leaders, Cairo declared an emergency, and tanks were seen rumbling through the streets of the capital. A day later Radio Cairo broadcast: “the existence of Israel has continued too long. We welcome the Israeli aggression. We welcome the battle we have long awaited. The peak hour has come. The battle has come in which we shall destroy Israel.”26
Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser demanded that the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) be withdrawn from the Sinai where it had been stationed as a buffer under the terms that ended the 1956 Sinai War. Much of the world was dismayed at the alacrity with which UN Secretary-General U Thant complied with this request, and some analysts speculated that Nasser may have counted on more resistance. But Nasser communicated directly with Yugoslavia’s dictator, Josip Broz Tito, and India’s president, Indira Gandhi. Their countries furnished the largest contingents of UNEF troops, and Nasser was close to both leaders, having collaborated with Tito and Gandhi’s father, Jawaharlal Nehru, in founding the Non-Aligned Movement. They made clear to UN headquarters that their intention was to pull out their forces in compliance with Nasser’s wishes, leaving U Thant few options.
On May 23, while Egyptian forces continued to pour into the Sinai, Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping. The Straits of Tiran are at the neck of the Gulf of Aqaba—a three-mile-wide waterway between Egypt and Saudi Arabia that leads to the port of Eilat, Israel’s sole outlet to its south and east. Free passage through this channel had been internationally guaranteed, albeit without Egyptian concurrence, under the terms of Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai after the 1956 war. There was little question that the renewed blockade constituted an act of war. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, editor of the leading Egyptian government newspaper, Al-Ahram, and a confidant of Nasser’s, told his readers at the time, “an armed clash between [Egypt] and the Israeli enemy is inevitable.”27
For his part, Nasser breathed fire. Addressing a trade union meeting on May 26, he declared:
[I]f Israel embarks on aggression against Syria or Egypt the battle against Israel will be a general one . . . And our basic objective will be to destroy Israel. . . . I say such things because I am confident. I know what we have here in Egypt and what Syria has. I also know that other [Arab] states . . . will send . . . armored and infantry units. This is Arab power. This is the true resurrection of the Arab nation.28
Israeli leaders mostly tried to calm the situation. Levi Eshkol, Israel’s prime minister, was known as an organization man, not an orator. When he addressed the Knesset on May 28, his words were so mild and delivered so fumblingly, that they “were conciliatory to the point of timidity,” says historian Howard M. Sachar.29 “We do not contemplate any military action,” Eshkol insisted in words explicitly addressed to Egypt and Syria, appealing for “reciprocity” from them.30 Cruise O’Brien speculates that these earnest assurances of peaceful intentions may have backfired in that they “seem to have suggested to Nasser that Israel was so anxious to avoid war that further risks could be taken.”31**
Not all Israeli utterances were pacific. Two weeks earlier, military chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin had reacted to some guerrilla actions emanating from Syria by threatening, “We may well have to act against centers of aggression and those who encourage it.” For this bellicose outburst he was dressed down so severely by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s iconic first prime minister who was still active although he had been succeeded in office by Eshkol, that Rabin apparently had a brief nervous breakdown.
While urging Israeli patience, Washington and London decried Egypt’s action against freedom of navigation. Hoping to forestall a military response by Israel, they floated plans to organize an international flotilla to break the blockade. Although other governments agreed that freedom of the seas should be affirmed, few if any were willing to send ships into a potentially violent showdown. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson was strongly sympathetic to Israel, but he felt constrained by the mounting domestic and international protests against his escalation of the war in Vietnam.
On May 30, King Hussein of Jordan flew to Cairo. Israel’s border with Jordan was by far its most vulnerable, directly abutting Israel’s narrow midsection where most of its people lived. Before, Hussein had always distinguished himself as the most moderate of Arab rulers, the polar opposite of the inflammatory Nasser. In the heat of the moment, however, Hussein
