Menu:
"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."
Gamel Abdel Nasser,May 3oth 1967.
Michael Carroll reviews the role of the United Nations leading up to the Six Day War in 1967.
- Middle East Review of International Affairs 2005 Issue 2
Michael Carroll reviews the role of the United Nations leading up to the
Six Day War in 1967. In an article in the Middle East Review of International
Affairs he describes the failure of United Nations Peacekeepers to maintain
a buffer between Egyptian and Israeli forces along their troubled border.
The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was deployed to the Middle East
in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis in 1956.
Originally intended to be a short-term "emergency" force, UNEF
quickly fell into a comfortable routine patrolling along the international
frontier and Gaza Strip. Despite complaints in New York about the expense
of peacekeeping, it was clear that UNEF 's presence was a deterrent to further
hostilities, and for most politicians and diplomats, this uneasy peace was
clearly preferable to an open war in the Middle East. After ten and a half
years, UNEF had become a well- recognized fixture in the Egyptian desert.
It is important to remember that the world in 1965 was practically another
planet. The United Nations was a serious player in international relations.
UN flagged forces, albeit mostly American, had turned back an invasion of
South Korea in 1950. And the UNEF had actually helped keep the Arabs and
Israelis from engaging in open war for10 years. The United States was not
nearly so dominant in 1965 as it is in 2005. The Soviet Union was still
regarded as a superpower, providing the weaponry and ideology that fueled
Arab nationalism. America was tied down in Vietnam with little in reserve
to spare for a major commitment to the Middle East and, in the eyes of many,
already in irreversible decline.
One other striking difference of that era was the confidence, perhaps even
overconfidence of Arab nations in the power of their national armies. Armed
with the Soviet made weaponry, numerically superior to the Israelis, the
Arab street of the day had little doubt that they would drive the Jews into
the sea once hostilities began. One Egyptian commander told a UN officer
"I will see you for lunch at the best restaurant in Tel Aviv in a few
days."
In January 1964 the Arab League officially declared its desire to achieve
"the final liquidation of Israel." The problem was UNEF. For the
Arab armies to triumphantly fulfill their historical mission it was necessary
to get the United Nations, then a body taken seriously, out of the line
of fire. (Thirty years later, neither the Serbs nor the Muslim Kosovars
would show the slightest respect for the United Nations. Peacekeepers would
be trussed to lamposts. UN armories would be looted.) Gamal Abdel Nasser
simply decided to tell the UN to clear out.
The message to withdraw UNEF was first conveyed to the commander of UNEF,
Major General Indar Jit Rikhye, on May 16, 1967. The UAR Liaison Officer,
Brigadier General Ibrahim Sharkawy, called Rikhye in the afternoon to inform
him that a special envoy would be arriving with an important message for
the UNEF commander.
The message was a demand for UNEF to leave the buffer zone. Amazingly by
today's standards, the UN held firm. "The courier, expecting immediate
compliance on the part of UNEF, was sorely disappointed when General Rikhye
merely noted the contents of the letter, and informed his visitors that
he would pass the message on to Secretary-General U Thant. Rikhye would
have to await orders from New York." This simple act of decisiveness
took the Egyptians aback and forced them to take their case to New York.
Unfortunately Secretary General U Thant chose this moment to begin the long
journey down the slippery slope. U Thant believed that the UN could not
maintain itself on the Egyptian border without the permission of the host
country and recommended a gradual withdrawal. But -- and here is the time
warp factor again -- Canada believed it was necessary to defy Nasser in
order to preserve the buffer -- and peace in the Middle East. Although some
that the question be put to the Security Council. But U Thant was adamant
and Canada was outvoted. The withdrawal began.
In the meantime, Egypt's preparations were advancing apace. It blockaded
the Gulf of Aqaba. Nasser characterized this act as "an affirmation
of our rights and our sovereignty over the Gulf of Aqaba. This is in our
territorial waters and we shall never permit a ship flying Israeli colours
to pass through this Gulf." Seeing that war was in the offing, Israel
sent its own diplomats around the capitals of Europe to see what their attitude
would be if Israel warred against Egypt.
Unwilling to await the results of U Thant's discussions in Cairo, the Israeli
Cabinet dispatched Abba Eban on a whirlwind tour of Paris, London, and Washington
to gauge international support for Israel. Thoroughly disappointed with
the reception from President Charles DeGaulle, Eban fared better in London
where he at least felt he had, "crossed…into the twentieth century."
Eban inferred a much higher degree of sympathy for Israel in Britain and
was impressed by Prime Minister Harold Wilson's resolve to work collectively
on the international stage to oppose Nasser's closure of the Straits of
Tiran. In terms of a diplomatic solution, Israel was pinning its hopes on
Britain and the United States to bring about a peaceful resolution. President
Johnson took a strong stand against Nasser's closure of the Straits of Tiran.
The limiting factor, however, was that any action to be undertaken in the
Middle East needed the full support of Congress which, after having written
a blank check for Vietnam, was understandably reticent. ...
As Eban flew back to Tel Aviv, Nasser was speaking to a group of Arab trade
unionists, predicting that "the battle against Israel will be a general
one…and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel. " Confident
of the Arabs numerical and qualitative superiority over the IDF, Nasser
felt he had little to fear from a war with Israel ...
UNEF deliberately slow the process of withdrawal in an effort to delay the
outbreak of conflict, but events had gone too far. On June 5, 1967 the Israelis
annihilated the Arab air forces on the ground and then proceeded to destroy
the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria while seizing the West Bank,
the Golan Heights and the Sinai, creating the map of the Middle East as
we know it today. Viewed against the backdrop of 1965, the world forty years
later is a strange place. Since then the Arab world found, then squandered,
the oil fields beneath them. Israel would become overwhelmingly dominant
in conventional force. The mantle of Arab nationalism would shift its basis
from a quasi-Marxism to Islamism. The Soviet Union would collapse. America
would bestride the world. But Israel itself would change, withdrawing from
Gaza, destroying the very homes of its citizens who had settled there. And
no longer would Arabs anchor their claim to the lost territories, their
claim to Israel itself, on the strength of arms but upon the rights of the
defrauded. The gallant invitation to lunch in the best restaurant in Tel
Aviv would give way to a permanent hand held out to the European Union and
the UN social welfare agencies.
Carroll suggests that the decline of the United Nations peacekeeping as
a serious international force may have begun with UNEF's abandonment of
its mission; that UNEF began a withdrawal which has never stopped. Perhaps
it is fairer to say that the passage of years magnified all the tendencies
present even then. It is hard to recognize in this historical portraits
the Canada, America and the UN of today. But if that brings on a sense of
nostalgia or loss, it should also evoke the spirit of opportunity. One thing
is certain: 2045 will differ from today by as wide a margin as the present
from the eve of the Six Day War.