Donald Neff - Warriors for Jerusalem : the six days that changed the Middle East

WflRBIORS FOR JERUSALEM THE SIX DAYS THAT CHANGED THE MIDDLE EAST

DONALD NEFF Author of Warriors at Suez

$17.95

Warriors for Jerusalem is a unique map of the junction where history meets todays headlines.

On June 5,1967, Israeli planes destroyed the air forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, launching the briefest war in the history of the Middle East. By June 11, Israel had captured all of Palestine and more: Egypts vast Sinai Peninsula and Syrias Golan Heights, as well as the West Bank of Jordan. It was a complete and decisive victory, fulfilling for the first time in two thousand years the ancient dream of bringing the revered Old City of Jerusalem under Jewish control. But as Donald Neff documents in this stunning new history of the Six-Day War and Americas deep involvement in it, Israels was a Pyrrhic victory; for in those six days, the Middle East was irrevocably transformed locked into the pattern of bloody conflict that dominates world concern today.

Like Donald Neffs revelatory Warriors at Suez, Warriors for Jerusalem is a compelling and scrupulously researched depiction not just of a battleground but of the complex events leading up to and away from it. Beginning with a meticulous catalogue of the tensions that sparked the warfrom the activities of the little-known Yasser Arafats Fatah through the tragic gamble that caused Gamal Abdel Nasser to threaten Israels western border; from the secret machinations of the Soviet Union through the battles between moderates and extremists within the Israeli governmentDonald Neff recreates day by day, hour by hour, the events of June 1967.

Warriors for Jerusalem is, above all, the story of how President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top officials presided over a signal failure of U.S. diplomacythe origins of Americas dangerous and costly position in the Middle East today. Beleaguered by the escalating war in Vietnam, mired in domestic protest, and swayed by the many powerful Americans who espoused Israels cause, Johnson made the fateful decision to abandon the beachhead of neutrality that Dwight D. Eisenhower had claimed in the Middle East. Here is the story of how Israel was

(continued on back flap)

Also by Donald Neff

WARRIORS AT SUEZ

DONALD NEFF

LINDEN PRESS/SIMON & SCHUSTER __________________New York 1984

The Six Days That Changed the Middle East

Copyright 1984 by Donald Neff All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form Published by Linden Press / Simon & Schuster A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Simon & Schuster Building Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10020

LINDEN PRESS / SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Karolina Harris Manufactured in the United States of America

13579 10 8642

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Neff, Donald, date. Warriors for Jerusalem.

Bibliography: p. Includes index.

1. Israel-Arab War, 1967Diplomatic history.

I. Title.

DS127.2.N43 1984 956'.046 83-26746

ISBN 0-671-45485-4

For

Abigail Trafford and

The Coming Generation:

Abbie, Greg, Trish and Toria

A Note to the Reader

Much of the new material for this book comes from documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. Although the bureaucracy in recent years has been making increasing inroads into the acts liberal provisions for declassifying government documents, the act remains viable as of late 1983. A number of significant documents concerning the 1967 war have been released in the past three years, and they form the basis for portions of this book.

I am grateful to David C. Humphrey, archivist at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, for his generous and uncomplaining assistance. As in my work with the Eisenhower Library on an earlier book, the Johnson Library proved to be the single most helpful institution. These presidential libraries remain the best-organized and most convenient gathering places of a wealth of diverse research material that would be unavailable otherwise. As such they perform a valuable function for the American democracy.

The other major source of new information came from interviews with officials of the period. In those cases where the sources refused to be publicly identified with a viewpoint or event but where I had confirmed their version and felt it insightful or critical to the understanding of events, I have clearly signaled the circumstances for anonymity. On the whole, however, I have refrained from using nonattributable information, no matter how tempting it was to do so.

PART ONE: COUNTDOWN

January 1, 1965, to June 4, 1967

CONTENTS

PART TWO: WAR June to June 10, 1967

PART THREE: AFTERMATH June to November 22, 1967

AMERICA

Walworth Barbour, ambassador to Israel

Lucius D. Battle, assistant secretary of state

McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the President

Abraham Feinberg, Democratic Party fund raiser

Abraham Fortas, associate justice of the Supreme Court

Arthur J. Goldberg, ambassador to the United Nations

Richard Helms, director, Central Intelligence

Lyndon B. Johnson, President

Arthur B. Krim, finance chairman, Democratic National Committee

Mathilde Krim, wife of Arthur Krim

Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense

Richard H. Nolte, ambassador-designate to Egypt

Eugene V. Rostow, under secretary of state

Walt W. Rostow, national security adviser

Dean Rusk, secretary of state

Harold H. Saunders, Mideast expert, National Security Council

BRITAIN

Lord Caradon, ambassador to the United Nations Harold Wilson, prime minister

EGYPT

Abdel Hakim Amer, commander in chief

Mohamed Heikal, journalist

Mohamed A. Kony, ambassador to the United Nations

Gamal Abdel Nasser, president

Mahmoud Riad, foreign minister

Anwar Sadat, legislator

FRANCE

Charles de Gaulle, president Maurice Couve de Murville, foreign minister

ISRAEL

Menachem Begin, opposition leader David Ben Gurion, former prime minister Moshe Dayan, defense minister

Abba Eban, foreign minister

Levi Eshkol, prime minister

Ephraim Evron, minister to the United States Yitzhak Rabin, chief of staff

Ezer Weizman, chief of operations

JORDAN

Mohammad H. Farra, ambassador to the United Nations Hussein ibn Talal, king

PALESTINE

Yasser Arafat, leader of Fatah

Anwar Khatib, governor of Jordanian Jerusalem

Ahmed Shukairy, chairman, Palestine Liberation Organization

Raymonda Tawil, writer

SOVIET UNION

Nikolai Fedorenko, ambassador to the United Nations

Aleksei N. Kosygin, premier

Vasily V. Kuznetsov, first deputy foreign minister

SYRIA

Hafez Assad, defense minister Nureddin Attassi, president Yousef Zayyen, prime minister

UNITED NATIONS

Odd Bull, chief of staff, Truce Supervision Organization Indar Jit Rikhye, commander, Emergency Force U Thant, secretary-general

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee.

Psalm 102:1

Lord, accept my prayer.

The Koran 14:40

Beware lest stem heaven hate you

enough to hear your prayers!

Anatole France