Two days before Israel would embark on the Six Day War, army brass and top politicians held a tumultuous meeting in which a group of Israeli-born generals, watching the build-up of Egyptian forces in the Sinai desert, seemed to be accusing prime minister Levi Eshkol of suffering from a perilous, Diaspora-related hesitancy that could have existential repercussions for the state.
The details of the June 3, 1967, meeting between the IDF General Staff and the government of Israel were released for the first time on June 4th by the Israeli army and Defense Ministry archive, revealing the width of the gap separating the political and military leadership at the time.
Some have contended that the army was on the cusp of a coup at the time. The protocol does not support that, but it does illustrate the lengths the army went to force Eshkol to war.
“I think we may find ourselves in a military situation whereby we lose many of our advantages and could reach a situation — which I don’t want to describe in sharp words — but there would be a serious danger to the existence of Israel,” IDF chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, said two days before the start of the Six Day War.
He described an immense build-up of Egyptian forces in the Sinai desert. The longer Israel waited to launch a pre-emptive strike, the future prime minister said, the greater the chances that Jordan, Iraq, and Syria would join the Arab offensive.
“I, at least, feel, or more than feel, that a military and diplomatic noose is being cinched around us, and I don’t believe anyone else is going to loosen it,” he said.
As the days ticked by, with diplomatic messages traveling to and from Israel, Egypt amassed over 1,000 tanks in the Sinai desert. The public endured perhaps the most harrowing weeks in the history of the state.
The head of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Araleh Yariv, who described Israel and Egypt as “pawns” in the larger game, told the cabinet ministers that “the president will be annoyed and we will be condemned,” but if Israel takes fast and immediate action, the US will not be “a major obstacle to our actions.”
Rabin assured Eshkol that the Russians would not join in the fray.
Others were more forceful. Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon arrived at the meeting from the southern front. He declared immediately that the army’s goal was “nothing short of the full destruction of the Egyptian forces.” The IDF was fully capable of that, he said, but “on account of the hesitancy and time-wasting we have lost the main point of deterrence we had, which is the fear the Arab states had of us.”
Acting in tandem with a foreign power, as Israel had done in 1956, was a mistake, he said, and a sign of weakness.
“There is a point that will determine if we are to exist here over time or not, and that is our [ability to] stand up for our rights. Running around, and I won’t use the word ‘pandering, among powers and asking to be saved is not part of standing up for your rights. If we want to last here over time, we must stand up for our rights.”
Sharon said that what determines “a war between us and the Arabs is the swiftness and momentum of the strike” and not the balance of power on the battlefield.
Delaying a strike, he said, would be “a mistake of the first order.” He guaranteed the resounding defeat of the Egyptian army, saying “I promise you it will be done in the best possible way” so long as the government gives the order to act.
Maj. Gen. Moshe Peled said that the General Staff “has not received a single explanation – what are we waiting for … reveal the secret and we will know what it is we are waiting for!”
Nasser, he said, delivered his army to the borders of Israel in an unready state. “The only thing working in his favor is that the government of Israel is unwilling to strike it.”
He called the government’s caution “a lack of faith” in the army and said that while soldiers were manning the front lines, the home front was in a process of collapse.
“The State of Israel does not have endless endurance … it is unclear to me whether the government has the accurate picture of what is happening internally ... if you knew, you would be asking why we do not act more swiftly. The enemy is fortifying and growing in strength, the economy is increasingly weak, and all this for a goal that no one explains to us.”
“We deserve to know why we must endure this humiliation. Perhaps we shall receive, at this opportunity, explanations for what it is we wait for?”
After roughly two hours of discussion, prime minister Eshkol spoke. He focused his comments at Sharon. “He spoke of pandering and I turned up my nose at the expression. Now he speaks of running around. I say: everything we have in material might for our army – comes from that running around. Let us not forget that and not see ourselves as Goliath-like. With unarmed and ill-equipped fists – we have no strength.”
The Soviet Union, he said, may or may not get involved. And the IDF may prevail, as it says it will, but even if Israel broke the back of the enemy today, he said, it would still need to re-arm. “Even if we start to build our own planes – engines we shall not build so fast on our own. And if every 10 years we are forced to fight – we need to think, is there an ally who will help us or do we talk to an ally today and tomorrow say: we honk at you [an expression of contempt].”
Without a doubt there is room for the line of thought that says “don’t wait for the goyim to help you,” he said, but the army needs to understand “that the matter is not being done” not because the government does not want to but because there is still time that needs to be ticked off the diplomatic clock.
“We need a few more days in order to not lose the sympathy and assistance – monetary and materiel – that will be necessary, from someone. And that,” he said at the close of the meeting, “the Soviet Union will surely not grant us.”
The Six Day War, in which Israel won the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai from Egypt and the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan, began with a preemptive Israeli strike two days later.
SEE ALSO: The startlingly simple reason Obama ignores Syria