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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
The tarnished legitimacy of the Arab states following the June
1967 War was especially poignant in Egypt. Israeli troops were
situated on the east bank of the Suez Canal, the canal was closed
to shipping, and Israel was occupying a large piece of Egyptian
territory. Nasser responded by maintaining a constant state of
military activity along the canal--the so-called War of Attrition--
between February 1969 and August 1970. Given the wide disparity in
the populations of Israel and Egypt, Israel could not long tolerate
trading casualties with the Egyptians. The Israeli government, now
led by Golda Meir, pursued a policy of "asymmetrical response"--
retaliation on a scale far exceeding any individual attack.
As the tension along the Egyptian border continued to heat,
United States secretary of state William Rogers proposed a new
peace plan. In effect, the Rogers Plan was an interpretation of UN
Security Council Resolution 242; it called for the international
frontier between Egypt and Israel to be the secure and recognized
border between the two countries. There would be "a formal state of
peace between the two, negotiations on Gaza and Sharm ash Shaykh,
and demilitarized zones." In November Israel rejected the offer,
and in January 1970 Israeli fighter planes made their first deep
penetration into Egypt.
Following the Israeli attack, Nasser went to Moscow requesting
advanced surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and other military
equipment. After some wavering, the Kremlin committed itself to
modernizing and retraining the Egyptian military. Egypt's new
Soviet-made arsenal threatened to alter the regional military
balance with Israel. The tension in Israeli-Soviet relations
escalated in July 1970, when Israeli fighter planes shot down four
Egyptian planes flown by Soviet pilots about thirty kilometers west
of the canal. Fearing Soviet retaliation, and uncertain of American
support, Israel in August accepted a cease-fire and the application
of Resolution 242.
Following the June 1967 War, the PLO established in Jordan its
major base of operations for the war against Israel. Throughout the
late 1960s, a cycle of Palestinian guerrilla attacks followed by
Israeli retaliatory raids against Jordan caused much damage to
Jordan. In September 1970, after militant factions of the PLO (who
previously had stated that "the road to Tel Aviv lies through
Amman") hijacked four foreign planes and forced them to land in
Jordan, King Hussein decided it was time to act. Throughout
September the Jordanian military launched an attack to push the PLO
out of Jordan. Jordan's attack on the PLO led to an escalation of
Syrian-Israeli tensions. It was widely believed in Washington that
deployment of Israeli troops along the Jordan River had deterred a
large-scale Syrian invasion of Jordan. As a result, President
Richard M. Nixon increasingly viewed Israel as an important
strategic asset, and the Rogers Plan was allowed to die.
While negotiating a cease-fire to the conflict in Jordan,
Nasser died of a heart attack. The new Egyptian president, Anwar as
Sadat, quickly realized, just as Nasser had toward the end of his
life, that Egypt's acute economic and social problems were more
pressing than the conflict with Israel. Sadat believed that by
making peace with Israel Egypt could reduce its huge defense burden
and obtain desperately needed American financial assistance. He
realized, however, that before some type of arrangement with Israel
could be reached, Egypt would have to regain the territory lost to
Israel in the June 1967 War. To achieve these ends, Sadat launched
a diplomatic initiative as early as 1971, aimed at exchanging
territory for peace. On February 4, 1971, he told the Egyptian
parliament:
that if Israel withdrew her forces in Sinai to the passes
I would be willing to reopen the Suez Canal; to have my
forces cross to the East Bank . . . to make a solemn
declaration of a cease-fire; to restore diplomatic
relations with the United States and to sign a peace
agreement with Israel through the efforts of Dr. Jarring,
the representative of the Secretary General of the United
Nations.
Sadat's peace initiative, similar to the Rogers Plan, was not
warmly received in Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir stated
unequivocally that Israel would never return to the prewar borders.
She also commissioned the establishment of a settlement on occupied
Egyptian territory at Yamit, near the Gaza Strip. Her rejection of
the Egyptian offer reflected the hawkish but also complacent
politico-military strategy that had guided Israeli policy after the
June 1967 War. Advised by Minister of Defense General Moshe Dayan
and ambassador to Washington General Yitzhak Rabin, the Meir
government held that the IDF's preponderance of power, the disarray
of the Arab world, and the large buffer provided by Sinai, the West
Bank, and the Golan Heights would deter the Arab states from
launching an attack against Israel. Therefore, the Israeli
government perceived no compelling reason to trade territory for
peace. This view had wide Israeli public support as a result of a
growing settler movement in the occupied territories, a spate of
Arab terrorist attacks that hardened public opinion against
compromise with the Arabs, and the widespread feeling that the Arab
states were incapable of launching a successful attack on Israel.
Israel's complacency concerning an Arab attack was bolstered in
July 1972 by Sadat's surprise announcement that he was expelling
most Soviet military advisers.
Data as of December 1988
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