The history of Six-Day War

THERE IS ONE THING that experience has taught me about conflicts or even wars in the Middle East or West Asia, as it is now called, post-decolonisation: never try and swim with the tide of conventional wisdom if one of the participants happens to be the tiny state of Israel. In nearly all cases, you are bound to go wrong, horribly wrong.

As a precocious kid, I recall following the 1967 Arab-Israel war. The Indian publications, nearly all of which were fiercely pro-Arab and doted on Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, were confident in their assertion that it would be a matter of days before Israel was brought to its knees. At that time, most people hadn’t even heard of the one-eyed Moshe Dayan who—in popular folklore at least—made mincemeat of the Arab forces. Six days was all it took for Israeli soldiers to kiss the Western Wall where they had been denied access since 1948. Six days ended the pan-Arabist swagger that had so captivated Egypt, Syria and Yemen. The Israeli forces cleaned themselves on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, the Sinai desert was littered with Egyptian tanks and bodies of its soldiers, and the Golan Heights from which there is a straight road to Damascus had been vacated by the Syrian army.

Six days and the entire map of the Middle East was transformed.

The histories of the Six Day War say that the turning point was Israel’s pre-emptive strike on the airfields of the enemy. The destruction of the mighty Egyptian air force on the ground ensured that the outcome of the war was settled in the first hour.

Since 1967, Israel has acquired a larger-than-life reputation for doing the unexpected and demonstrating colossal audacity. Whether it was systematically hunting down those Palestinian terrorists responsible for the massacre of its athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics and, last year, decimating the leadership and ranks of the Hezbollah with the lethal pagers, the doctrine of Israeli warfare is unorthodox and ambitious. This is understandable because for the Jewish state, it is a question of survival. Those who flaunt the Palestinian flag and the keffiyeh as fashion symbols know that the demand for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” implies the total expulsion of Jews from the entire region.

It is this psychology of survival that is crucial to understanding Israel’s determination. Of course, there were the soft options that many Israelis in the 1990s favoured—the “land for peace” approach of the Oslo Accord. Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership had perfected the art of missing opportunities and turned their back on the one concession Israel insisted upon: a recognition of the Jewish state’s right to exist.

What united the multiple forces that detected fresh opportunities from Hamas’ butchery of Israeli citizens across the Gaza border on October 7, 2023 was once again the dream of Jewish expulsion. In the 1960s and 1970s, this alliance was forged by Egypt; now it was Iran under the Ayatollahs that was in the forefront of the war.

Israel does not share a common border with Iran. No Iranian has been turfed out of Judea and Samaria to make way for Jewish settlers driven by the dream of transforming the barren, rocky landscape into something straight out of a picture postcard. In fact, given the sectarian fault lines of Islam, the Shias had no stake in Jerusalem. This is unlike the Jordanians and the Moroccans, not to mention the global Sunni fraternity that regards a jihad for the reconquest of Jerusalem as a religious mission. Yet, it was the Shia theocracy running Iran that saw the destruction of Israel as the cover for exercising its hegemony over the entire Middle East.

Historians in future will debate endlessly over the impulses that drove the Islamic Republic of Iran. Whatever the conclusions, some facets of contemporary Iran are obvious. First, it is plain wrong to see an Israel-Iran war as a clash of civilisations. There is nothing inherently antagonistic between these two extremely sophisticated civilisations. It is best to remember that under the Pahlavi dynasty, Iran and Israel were the best of friends. Secondly, for Iran, its nuclear strategy is aimed at dominance over the entire region. Given the ruthlessness of the Ayatollahs, the regime would not balk at using nukes against the Jews. Finally, Israel’s war aims are not limited to ‘degrading’ Iran’s nuclear programme. Far more ambitious is its goal of toppling the theocracy and replacing it with a modern democracy.

I don’t understand modern military strategy and can’t predict who will win and at what cost. However, it is ominous that Israel’s air force has a free run of the skies above Iran.

EgyptIsrael-Iran conflictMiddle EastSyriaYemen