Setting the Record Straight

...pressure would force it to stop was eerily reminiscent of Israel's movements at breakneck speed in 1967, especially toward the end of the war when it ousted the Syrians from the Golan Heights in order to end the shelling of Israeli kibbutzim and communities below and to negate the Syrian strategic threat...

...For it is in the sections dealing with the few weeks leading up to the hostilities that this book really shines...

...They believe Israel has no legitimate reason to be in the disputed territories and should evacuate them forthwith...

...This, in turn, has led both diplomats and the media to seriously misread United Nations Resolution 242, calling for the establishment of "secure and recognized borders" between Israel and the Palestinians as well as Israel and Syria...

...On the crucial matter of whether U.S...

...The worldwide reaction to the situation has revealed remarkable ignorance of the facts surrounding the 1967 confrontation...

...The current argument for implicitly legitimizing Palestinian terrorism and condemning Israel's response is directly related to interpretations of the Six-Day War...

...He clearly was not a man intent on launching an aggressive war of conquest...

...For example, it recounts in great detail the cautiousness of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who initially resisted expanding the war to the Jordanian and Syrian fronts...

...But he conducted extensive interviews with former policy makers, diplomats and military personnel in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Russia, the U. S., and Israel...

...But the Jewish state ended up controlling the Sinai Desert, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights...

...Oren's carefully balanced examination of the events leading to war strongly buttresses Israel's stand...

...how Jordan's King Hussein, despite entreaties from Israel, was pressured by his Arab allies into attacking the Jewish state...

...Reviewed by Harold M. Waller Professor of political science, McGill University Thirty-five years after the event, the unplanned Six-Day War remains the source of most of the international tension in the Middle East...

...Moreover, Oren demonstrates convincingly that Israel's main concern was Egypt, and that even after the crisis was well under way it had no plans to engage Jordan and Syria...

...What makes Six Days of War stand out among the numerous earlier books written on the subject is the author's exhaustive combing of previously unavailable material in the archives of the United States, Britain, Canada, Russia, Israel, and the United Nations...

...Negotiations with the Palestinians in 2000 were directed toward that end...

...the mischievous role played by the Soviet Union in stirring up Syria and Egypt...

...It graphically describes the unwillingness of the international community to honor guarantees to keep the Straits of Tiran open to Israeli shipping...

...His friendship with Nasser gave him immense authority, and ultimately much of the responsibility for the disaster that befell Egypt...

...Amer emerges as a major actor in the drama...

...ren's battle accounts are fascinating, despite our knowing their outcome...

...The race to complete those operations before European Union and U.S...

...officials gave Israel the "green light" or not, the evidence suggests an understandable Israeli perception that the U.S...

...Israel's lightning victory over Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967 neutralized the existential threat it then faced...

...and it explains why Egypt resisted a cease-fire that might have terminated the fighting after three or four days...

...The Sinai was eventually returned to Egypt in the context of a peace treaty...

...He shows how Egypt's military move into Sinai, expulsion of the UN peacekeeping contingent, and closure of the Straits of Tiran constituted a casus belli...

...The author further documents the excruciating lengths to which Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol went in order to avoid going to war...

...The effects of the June 1967 conflict, as we have seen, are very tangible to this day...

...Many members of his Cabinet feared they were jeopardizing their country's security by waiting so long to act, but Eshkol insisted on searching for a way out...

...In terms of the book's main theme, Oren's comprehensive account of Egyptian Field Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer's Operation Dawn—a bold plan to take the offensive and secure the Negev before Israel could respond—is of greater consequence...

...It has also led to an array of other distortions, like the repeated charge that the Jewish state is guilty of "illegal occupation of Palestinian territory...

...the other territories, however, particularly the West Bank and Gaza, have become acute contemporary problems...

...Wisely, though, he devotes only 134 pages to them...

...For another, although the author rigorously sticks to his subject, he nevertheless illuminates the extent of the parallels between the Middle East in the 1960s and now...

...The almost unanimous international condemnation of Israel's antiterrorist operations in the West Bank this spring was merely the latest manifestation of this syndrome...

...There is little question that the sense of isolation, reinforced innumerable times before and after 1948, exercises a profound effect on those who make life-anddeath security decisions for Israel...

...On the contrary, much of the dramatic campaign resulted from improvisation on the ground...

...Recognition of this weakness permeated the thinking and debates of Israeli policy makers in the critical weeks prior to the 1967 War and during the actual fighting...

...Many presumably well-intentioned and in principle open-minded people see it as a war of conquest...

...Perhaps most significant, though, and still starkly relevant today, is the book's pervasive theme: No matter how impressive Israel's military prowess may be, it lacks the political strength to convert battlefield superiority into long-lasting diplomatic gains...

...was prepared to acquiesce once it was apparent no international flotilla would materialize and that Israel had decided there was no alternative to war...

...the serious miscalculations by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser...

...Oren's methodical research also uncovers the answers to a number of questions that have been controversial since 1967...

...The feeling of political isolation was palpable when Israel tried to call in international guarantees obtained in the aftermath of the 1956 Sinai Campaign, only to be told "sorry" and not to dare to attempt a pre-emptive strike...

...Regrettably, archives in Arab countries are still not open...

...For one thing, it provides an accurate record of a controversial period...

...Indeed, the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967 has centered largely on three related outstanding issues: the disposition of the land lost to Israel, the guarantee of Israel's security and legitimacy, and the resolution of the Palestinians' plight...

...Six Days of War contains many other eye-opening discoveries and confirmations...

...Israel, in contrast, contends that it was responding to acts of aggression in 1967 and is legally entitled to remain in place until peace is achieved with its various neighbors...

...Liberty was apparently an awful mistake in the fog of war, not a deliberate action...

...Michael Oren's unparalleled account of the epic struggle enables us to understand why...

...Failure to do so justifies Palestinian resistance, from their perspective, including homicide bombing of civilians...

...All were brought to the fore over the past 19 months as stone-throwing Arab youths in the West Bank gave way to Arab suicide bombers across Israel, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government sought to stop the terrorist mayhem...

...The result is a detailed narrative, with copious endnotes, that vividly depicts what happened from both the Israeli and Arab points of view...

...For weeks after it was evident that military action was inevitable, he explored every conceivable diplomatic avenue that might have averted the step (and then tried again upon being rebuffed...

...In these circumstances Michael B. Oren's scrupulously researched and dispassionately written Six Days of War is especially valuable...

...The fact that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat was dissatisfied with Jerusalem's negotiating position, Israel maintains, hardly gave him license to launch a sustained terror offensive...

...it exposes the extent to which the Arabs' decisions were shaped by their delusion that they had been attacked by the British and the Americans along with the Israelis...

...and the plan for an Egyptian offensive that was aborted at the last minute...

...Israeli leaders made provocative statements that exacerbated the crisis, Oren shows, but he leaves no doubt that the Arabs and their Soviet backers fomented it...

...Most noteworthy is his finding that the June 8 Israeli attack on the U.S.S...

...and how Syria rejected a cease-fire that would have kept Israel off the Golan Heights...