MOSCOW: The shortest Arab-Israeli war, the Six-Day War, broke out on June 5, 1967. It lasted until June 10 when the Arabs were comprehensively defeated.
This was when Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Arabs retrieved part of these lands, notably, the Sinai Peninsula, 15 years later. Others, such as the Golan Heights and Palestinian territories, are a subject of multilateral talks that have made little progress thus far.
Why did the Arabs suffer such an overwhelming defeat? The Egyptian and Syrian Armies were not ready for war, although their high-ranking generals, particularly from Egypt, were confident in their ability to erase the “Zionist formation” from the face of the Earth.
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser himself gave the Israelis a casus belli. On May 18, the Egyptian government addressed the UN Security Council with a request to withdraw peacekeepers from the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, who were stationed there in 1957. UN Secretary-General U Thant agreed, and the troops were pulled out in no time.
On May 22, their positions were occupied by the Egyptian military. On May 28, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran (Gulf of Aqaba) to Israeli shipping, and to vessels from other countries that supplied strategic commodities to the Israeli port of Eilat. Israel considered this act a tacit declaration of war, and dealt a pre-emptive blow.
Although it may seem paradoxical, some Israeli media published a stage-by-stage plan of attack on the Arabs several days before the war. However, the Arabs did not believe them.
The Voice of Israel and the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli force would attack Egyptian bases at 4 a.m. on Monday, June 5; it would be followed by a ground offensive, and by the evening of June 6, the Israeli troops would reach the Suez Canal. This scenario was 90% accurate (the attack was launched at 8.30 a.m.). Both Egypt's intelligence and army command knew about the plan. How could they have ignored such information?
In the early hours of June 5, an Israeli attack destroyed 400 aircraft of the Egyptian Air Force in one go. They were simply bombed on the airfields. Soviet military specialists, who trained Egyptian pilots near Cairo, rushed to the Cairo-West Air Base. They were ready to fly the intact aircraft and fight, but were stopped by the Egyptians.
Russian Oriental studies expert, Anatoly Yegorin recalls: “When X-hour struck, our guys wanted to go to the frontline, but the Egyptians objected: 'This is our war, and we should fight it ourselves.' They delayed the return of our military to the place of their service. Not a single Soviet serviceman took part in the Six-Day War.”
Indeed, Soviet military specialists, whose responsibility under contract was to train Arabs, had no right to take part in hostilities.
In the Six-Day War of 1967, Soviet weapons proved to be ineffective in Arab hands.
During parades, or aerobatic performances, Egyptian pilots displayed their skills, but when it came to real fighting they forgot everything they had learned. They did not have combat experience.
Communications is another major reason for the Egyptian Army's defeat. At the lowest level, it had Soviet communication equipment, whereas the general headquarters and the command had bought communication systems in the West, and they were completely under U.S. control.
Yegorin recalls: “At the X-hour, the Americans (their ships were located 14 miles away from Egypt in the Mediterranean) switched off all communication lines linking the general headquarters with the Sinai-based troops.”
In other words, the United States, an Israeli ally, simply paralyzed the Egyptian forces at the right moment.
Egyptians made one more major mistake during the war. While retreating from the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptian Army abandoned 450 functional tanks. Tank crews jumped out of their combat vehicles and ran to the Suez Canal in order to get to the other side. “They could have retreated in these tanks until they reached the canal,” Yegorin said, “but they were getting out of tanks, leaving them, and running.” As a result, in those six days, Israel lost 776 officers and men, and Egypt, more than 11,000.
Most historians believe that Egypt's defeat was caused by political rather than military reasons. Many high-ranking Egyptian generals, who were educated in the West, were extremely displeased with Nasser's “pro-Kremlin” orientation. They attempted to get rid of him by engineering Egypt's defeat in the war in the hope that the United States, which backed Israel, would not leave Arabs on their own.
Epilogue
Soviet weapons proved effective in the next 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal, and attacked the Bar-Lev Line. The results of this war are common knowledge. The Egyptian Army had every chance to score a full military victory over the enemy, not just receive a moral triumph. But Anwar Sadat, who replaced Nasser, stopped the offensive.
The political results were rapprochement with the United States, Camp David and a peace treaty with Israel. Sadat exchanged a military victory for a political one. This was the end of the “romantic era” in Egyptian-Soviet relations. But even now, 40 years after, the Egyptian Army still has Soviet weapons.
By RIA Novosti correspondent Andrei Murtazin
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
