4.

In the first weeks of May 1967 Israel's Cabinet reportedly decided to attack Syria and numerous Israeli officials openly called for massive retaliation. Although Oren acknowledges these very real threats and even quotes Ben-Gurion and Dayan as deploring such bellicose provocations, he nonetheless reckons them as "efforts to forestall a major confrontation with Syria" (SDW: p. 53; cf. p. 51). The Soviets apparently got wind of the Israeli Cabinet decision and conveyed a warning - albeit overblown - to Nasser. Maintaining that "the reasons for the Russians' warning would remain obscure," Oren offers multiple tortured speculations in the body of the text such as "the tendency of Communist decisionmakers to be influenced by their own propaganda on imperialist and Zionist perfidy," and tucks away in a footnote the most obvious explanation: that Israel was in fact planning an attack (SDW: pp. 54-5, p, 342n52). Indeed, just a few pages after reporting the Israeli decision to strike, he dismissively refers to "yet another Soviet claim of threats against Syria" (SDW: pp. 51, 59).

Ridiculed in the Arab world for standing idly by after the Samu raid and the downing of Syrian aircraft, Nasser reacted in mid-May to the new Israeli threats by moving Egyptian troops into the Sinai and ordering the removal of UNEF from Sinai, Gaza, and Sharm-el-Shaykh overlooking the Straits of Tiran. To dampen tensions on the Sinai front, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant proposed (with the support of Israel's closest allies, the US and Canada) the repositioning of UNEF on the Israeli side of the border. Oren defends Israel's peremptory rejection of U Thant's initiative on the grounds that "incorporating contingents from countries hardly sympathetic to Israel, UNEF would be less likely to stop aggression than to limit Israel's response" (SDW: p. 72). Oren doesn't offer a jot of evidence to support this allegation of UNEF's partisanship (there isn't any), but acknowledges earlier on that "the mere presence of UNEF had sufficed to deter warfare during periods of intense Arab-Israeli friction, to keep infiltrators from exiting Gaza and ensure free passage through the Straits of Tiran" (SDW: p. 67). In addition, he repeatedly suggests that Nasser's decision to remove UNEF (as well as U Thant's acquiescence in it) put the Egyptian leader in a position to "threaten" peace (SDW: pp. 67ff). It's hard to understand, however, why stationing UNEF on the Egyptian side of the border preserved peace while stationing it on the Israeli side wouldn't have or, put otherwise, why UNEF would deter Egyptian aggression on the Egyptian side but not on the Israeli side. Oren also rapidly disposes of U Thant's stopgap proposal enthusiastically supported by Nasser (although Oren never mentions this) but firmly rejected by Israel to reactivate the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission (EIMAC) (SDW: p. 74).

Following the removal of UNEF from Sharm-el-Shaykh, Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli vessels (and foreign vessels carrying "strategic" cargo) bound for the Israeli port city of Eilat. Although acknowledging that "few Israeli-flag vessels in fact traversed the Straits," Oren designates them a "lifeline of the Jewish state" and Eilat a "thriving port" (SDW: pp. 81, 83). In fact, only five percent of Israel's trade passed through Eilat, and oil, which was the only significant commodity possibly affected by the blockade, could have been re-routed (if circuitously) through Haifa. Oren reports extensively on the "frightful" news that Egypt had mined the Straits and otherwise forcibly implemented the blockade, only to note later in passing that actually "the waterway remained mine-free" (SDW: pp. 84, 90, 95; cf. p. 166). Indeed, he makes no mention that just a few days after Nasser announced the blockade, vessels using the Straits apparently weren't any longer even being searched (I&R: p. 139).

Oren maintains that Israel had won "international recognition of its right to act in self-defense if the Straits were ever blockaded" and, even more emphatically, that the U.S. had "pledged" to "regard any Egyptian attempt to revive the Tiran blockade as an act of war to which Israel could respond in self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter" (SDW: pp. 81, 12). Yet the actual documentary record shows that Israel obtained from the U.S. and other maritime states support only for its right of "free and innocent" passage in the Straits; that the U.S. called for "any recurrence of hostilities or any violation by any party" to be referred back to the U.N.; and that even U.S. officials and legal scholars, not to mention U.N. secretaries-general Hammarskjold and U Thant, stressed that this was a "complicated" jurisdictional dispute warranting mediation (there's a passing reference by Oren on p. 141 to the "murky legal waters of Tiran"). It would seem that Oren conflates Israel's declared policy - "Interference, by armed force, with ships of Israel flag exercising free and innocent passage in the Gulf of Aqaba and through the Straits of Tiran will be regarded by Israel as an attack entitling it to exercise its inherent right of self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and to take all such measures as are necessary." - with that of the U.S. and the international community.

Reaching Cairo just after the blockade was announced, U Thant elicited a "very significant" (his words) assent from Nasser to a new diplomatic initiative: the appointment of a special UN representative to mediate the crisis, and a two-week moratorium on all belligerent acts in the Straits. Israel peremptorily rejected both of U Thant's proposals. Its dismissal of the moratorium proposal rates only a scant mention in Oren's account (he never bothers to mention Egypt's acceptance and Israel's rejection of a special mediator), while Nasser's repeatedly expressed willingness to submit the Straits dispute to the World Court (for Israel inconceivable) is dispatched in a single, negatively charged phrase (SDW: pp. 126, 144; I&R, p. 129 and sources cited).

Alongside U Thant, the U.S. also tried its hand at mediation in late May and early June. In what Oren rightly describes as "precisely the opening the White House sought," Nasser agreed to send his vice-president to Washington to explore a diplomatic settlement (SDW: p. 145). Just two days before the Egyptian's scheduled arrival, however, Israel attacked. Recalling that the U.S. was "shocked.and angry as hell," Secretary of State Dean Rusk speculated that "We might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the straits, but it was a real possibility" (I&R: p 129; SDW: p. 196). Even Middle East Record, a semi-official Israeli compilation, observed after the June war that "a number of facts seem to indicate Abdel Nasser's belief in the possibility of terminating.the conflict through diplomacy" - pointing in particular to his "suggestion" that the World Court arbitrate the Straits dispute, his "vagueness" on the blockade's enforcement, and his "willingness" to revive EIMAC (I&R: pp. 129-30). One would never guess from reading Oren that such a "real possibility" existed for "terminating.the conflict through diplomacy," if only because the crucial facts enumerated in this mainstream Israeli compilation enter just barely or not at all in his uniquely comprehensive and impartial history of the June war.