Strategy or chance: Mideast historian reexamines beginning of Six Day War

The 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel gained control of territories now at the center of the Middle East conflict, was the result of poor judgment and a series of misinterpretations on the Israeli and Arab sides, historian and former Israeli official Michael Oren GS '86 said last night in Dodds Auditorium.

Oren, author of the bestselling "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East," addressed the "sequence of miscalculation and misinterpretations" that led Israel to go to war against its Arab neighbors and to triple its size, occupying the West Bank, east Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip.

Using newly declassified documents, Oren concluded that the war "never should have taken place," but rather happened because Arab politicians made poor decisions about their domestic situations in relation to foreign policy and Israeli leaders were too glib about their military power.

Oren, who advised former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and is now director of the Middle East history project at the Shalem Center, said the war was the root of the modern conflict.

Just yesterday morning in Jerusalem, a suicide bombing killed 11 people and left at least 49 people wounded.

The Six Day War broke out on June 5, 1967, when Israel began a preemptive air attack on Egypt's air force and went on to make quick victories all over the Middle East.

Prior to war, Oren said, tensions had been escalating between Israel and the Arab nations surrounding it.

Arab states were domestically insecure, Oren said, and Arab leaders thought that they could use an anti-Israel position to consolidate domestic support.

A Baathist military regime ruled Syria since 1966, President Nasser led Egypt and King Hussein was in charge of Jordan.

Syrian-supported Palestinians and Israelis had been exchanging attacks. Nasser used the violent exchanges and a false Soviet report that Israel was planning to invade Syria to gain support for his anti-Israel coalition.

In the two weeks prior to the war's start, Egypt had expelled U.N. peacekeepers from the Gaza strip, had moved large numbers of troops into the Sinai Peninsula, had set a blockade and led the unifying of several Middle Eastern nations.

.....Jordan had joined the coalition, for example, because King Hussein had apologized to Israel when three Israeli soldiers were killed by a landmine while patrolling on the Israel/Jordan border. The Jordanian people were clamoring that Hussein was "collaborating with Israel," Oren said.

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.....Oren pointed to the similarities between today's conflict and the 1967 war.

He noted how just as President Lyndon Johnson said Israel would not be alone in 1967, President Bush has supported the Jewish state now.

But both presidents had to place their support in terms of a larger framework, he added.

"As Johnson had his hands full with Vietnam," Oren said, Bush is preoccupied with "fighting terrorism."

The United States and Europe do not want Israel to act too aggressively in the current conflict because they cannot afford to be "dragged into a war with implacable ending," he said.

Oren ended on an optimistic note. Answering an audience member's question on what steps both sides should take, he said more Arabic women should be allowed to work for Arab nations and to compete efficiently in the world market.

In addition, he said Israelis should embrace the Arab population living in Israel.

Oren earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies in 1986 at the University. His book is one of the first works to explore both the military and diplomatic dimensions of the intense Arab-Israeli fighting in June 1967.