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Soon we'll be able to take the initiative and rid ourselves of Israel once and for all,'' the Egyptain field marshal Abdel Hakim Amer said in a phone call to the head of the P.L.O. on June 4, 1967. In two weeks of escalating crisis, Egypt had expelled the United Nations peacekeepers stationed in Egypt, moved troops in huge numbers into the Sinai and -- despite panicky Israeli and American warnings that this was an act of war -- blockaded the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya were all united, encircling Israel and massing troops. Amer himself had drafted several plans for invading Israel, including Operation Dawn, which had been called off at the last minute on May 27 after the Israelis found out it was coming. From Algeria to Yemen, Arab leaders fiercely echoed Amer's private call for Israel's annihilation. Israelis were terrified; the army chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, no wimp, was secretly said to be suffering from ''acute anxiety'' and had to be tranquilized.

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I say that the example of the Six-Day War is instructive because the same dynamic is visible in Israel today. Occasionally I do some work for an international consulting company in Washington, and recently they asked me to give them a worst-case scenario on the Middle East. In the scenario I came up with the Palestinians get "lucky." They don't blow up a bus, they blow up a schoolhouse, they blow up a refinery; and they don't kill a couple hundred people, they kill a thousand people. Then Israel responds massively in the West Bank and Gaza. Immediately Hezbollah begins shooting rockets into Israel. Israel retaliates against Hezbollah, and the Syrian army mobilizes. The Iraqi army starts moving through Jordan, then the Egyptians begin moving tanks into Sinai, and all of a sudden Israel is presented with the '67-esque question, Do we pre-empt? Nine weeks ago we came within a hair's breadth of that scenario. It was the Passover massacre. Israel responded with a defensive shield; Hezbollah began firing rockets. I'm actually watching this unfold. My scenario was informed by what I knew of '67, and here it was happening again. This time it was averted by the timely intervention of Colin Powell. That's what didn't happen in '67. But it shows you how the same thing can happen again. It happens so fast that very few people have time to react to it.

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Interview with author

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And he (Sharon) keeps on calling for a unilateral cease-fire. I can't think of any country when presented with the kind of casualty rate that Israel has been that would respond in such a restrained manner. Look at what the United States did in Afghanistan. Israel's casualty rate has been proportionately higher. We've lost the equivalent of 20,000 Americans. And we haven't laid Palestinian cities to waste with our air force.
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one Israeli army camera caught a Palestinian funeral where the casket tipped over and the body got up and ran away. I saw it. It was pretty amazing. There were reports of them digging up bodies all over the West Bank to bring them into Jenin. The UN was bringing in these people who knew nothing about military operations, and it was pretty much a stacked deck. It was a case where Israel really stood by its guns, the United States backed Israel, and Kofi Annan backed down. He knew what was going to go on. If he had felt more justified in his position they would have raked Israel over the coals. They would have brought them up in front of the General Assembly, they would have passed sanctions. They didn't.

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[edited to fix the UBB tags]

[ June 17, 2002: Message edited by: agent007 ]