David A Korn - Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970

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Stalemate

First published 1992 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1992 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No paortf this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Korn, David A., 1930

Stalemate : the war of attrition and great power diplomacy in the
Middle East, 19671970 / David A. Korn.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Israel-Arab Border Conflicts, 1949 Egypt. 2. Middle East
Politics and govenment1945 I. Title.

DT82.5.17K67 1992

956.04dc20

91-43086

CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28858-7 (hbk)

To the memory of Iris Dobson Korn and Marie Davey Korn

Contents

1. xiii

Guide

Maps

Egypt, Israel, and neighboring states

Photos

The idea for this book was bom along with the events it seeks to describe. I was assigned to the American embassy in Tel Aviv in September 1967 and served there until August 1971, first as political officer and then as chief of the Political Section. There I saw a fascinating drama unfold, and I realized that I had what amounted to a front row seat. I kept notes and copies of newspaper articles and press releases, and I resolved that one day I should write its history.

Not until almost twenty years later, when I could seriously begin, did I realize how complex an undertaking it would be. I want to express here my particular thanks to my many former colleagues in the Foreign Service of the United States of America for the help they gave me in reconstructing the events of the period; and to the many Israelis and Egyptians diplomats, journalists, and soldierswho so generously shared with me their experiences and recollections and so patiently answered my many questions. Some did not wish to speak for attribution, even though the events discussed took place more than twenty years ago. I have of course respected their wishes.

The official name borne by Egypt during the time of the events described herein was the United Arab Republic, the name given to the union between Egypt and Syria that was formed in 1958. Even after that union broke up in 1961, Egypt continued to be called the United Arab Republic. After Nassers death, President Anwar Sadat changed the countrys official name to the Arab Republic of Egypt. For the sake of simplicity and clarity I have used the designation Egypt throughout my text, rather than the more cumbersome United Arab Republic.

I want to express here my appreciation to Professor Howard Sachar of George Washington University, who gave me encouragement and much needed practical guidance in launching my work on this book, and to Professor Janice Gross Stein of Toronto University for reading through the completed manuscript. I am deeply grateful to the United States Institute of Peace, headed by Ambassador Samuel Lewis, for its grant that enabled me to travel to Egypt and Israel to conduct interviews and collect material. The help that Ambassador Frank Wisner and his staff at the American embassy in Cairo gave in arranging for me to interview former senior Egyptian officials was invaluable; I am particularly grateful to Mr. Will Moser of the American embassy staff, who very efficiently got me in and out of Cairo airport, accompanied me into the Sinai to look at the last Israeli fort still standing there, and gave so generously of his time and effort to make my stay in Egypt profitable. In Israel, Mrs. Peppi Dotan was my research assistant. She did a magnificent job of arranging interviews and tracking down out-of-print publications. She was enormously helpful.

I thank the directors and the staffs of the Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo and the Dayan Center at the University of Tel Aviv for assistance extended to me during visits to those two cities. My thanks also to Mr. Hanoch Levin for permission to quote from his sketches and plays Ketchup, You and I and the Next War , and The Queen of the Bathtub.

Ms. Betsy Folkins, assistant librarian at the Middle East Institute of Washington, D.C., and Ms. Anat Rapoport, director of the Dayan Center library, gave exceptionally resourceful and unfailingly courteous assistance, and I am much indebted to them.

Last but not least, my deepest thanks to my wife, Roberta Cohen, for her friendship, unfailing encouragement, and help throughout the writing of the book.

David A. Korn
Washington, D.C.

In the second half of the twentieth century no region of the globe has known more wars or been the focus of more intensive efforts at peace-making than the one that Israel and the surrounding Arab statesEgypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syriaoccupy in uneasy propinquity. Since 1948, the dispute between Israel and its Arab neighbors has flared into war six timesin 1948, in 1956, in 1967, in 1969 and 1970, in 1973, and in 1982. In each instance diplomacy was called on to put out the fire and restore order. War and diplomacy have marched through these years hand in hand.

Each of the Arab-Israeli wars has had its own particular character, but taken as a whole the six divide neatly into two equal segments. The first threeIsraels 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Sinai campaign, and the 1967 Six-Day Warwere dominated by a single issue: whether there should exist a viable, independent state of Israel. In the wars since 1967, the central issue was no longer the existence of the State of Israel but its territorial dimensions. In the Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition of 1969 and 1970 and in the Ramadan (or Yom Kippur) War of October 1973, the Arabs sought to reverse the territorial gains made by Israel in 1967, while Israel struggled to hold onto them and, in the diplomatic contests that followed, to transform them into permanent territorial or political achievements. Even Israels 1982 invasion of Lebanon was, in its essence, an attempt to settle the issue of Israeli dominance over the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The history of the diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict divides along identical lines. In the period between 1948 and 1967 no serious or sustained effort was made to bring peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The major diplomatic initiatives of the time addressed, unsuccessfully in each instance, the issues of water sharing (the Eric Johnston mission of 19531955) and of Palestinian refugees (the Joseph Johnson mission of 19611963)components of the conflict rather than the conflict itself.

As in war, 1967 was the watershed also in diplomacy, for that year marked the beginning of an era of intensive efforts at Arab-Israeli peace-making. The cornerstone for this new phase was laid on November 22, 1967, when the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 242. In Resolution 242, the international community for the first time set out the principles that it considered should guide efforts to bring to settlement the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The resolution spoke of the need for a just and lasting peace and for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the June 1967 war, of termination of states of belligerency and respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every state, of freedom of navigation and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem. It did not, however, say how any of these things was to be accomplished.

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