Israel Survives

Abstract

When Israel realized that it had become a pawn in a global chess game, it could do little to prevent a war no one saw coming. Diplomat and historian Richard Parker wrote: “What cries out for explanation now, a quarter century later, is that a scant three weeks before June 5 no one — statesman, scholar, soldier, Eastern or Western, Israeli or Arab — has predicted a general Arab—Israeli war in June or even in 1967.” Indeed, on May 5, 1967 the military intelligence service predicted that Israel faced no existential treat as her “security preoccupation” would revolve around Palestinian infiltration.¹ This consensus is startling considering the effect Syrian support for FATAH infiltration had on Israeli—Soviet relations.