Fifty years ago — in May 1967 — Egypt's president Gamal Abdul Nasser intimidated U.N. Secretary of General U Thant into withdrawing the United Nations peacekeeping force from the Egyptian-Israel border.
Nasser then declared the closing of the Straits of Tiran — an act of war against Israel.
Israel responded to this existential threat with a full mobilization of its military and a diplomatic mission led by Foreign Minister Abba Eban seeking an international effort whether by naval force or suasion to break the blockade.
When such an effort was not forthcoming, after two weeks at existential razor's edge for the nation, Israel launched a pre-emptive air attack that destroyed Egypt's air force and laid the foundation for Israel's stunning military successes against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War.
The relief, if not outright jubilation, that accompanied Israel's victory soon confronted a reality of promise and peril that has defined the last 50 years.
The Six-Day War forever changed the nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship for the betterment of both countries. As Ambassador Michael Oren noted in "Six Days of War," President Lyndon Johnson was "staunchly pro-Israel."
Nevertheless, a State Department spokesman — on June 5, 1967, the first day of the fighting — described the American position with respect to the conflict as "neutral in thought, word, and deed." Richard Wilson, chief of the Minneapolis Tribune's Washington Bureau, had written on May 28, 1967: "America's interest [in the Middle East] is not that clearly definable."
This ambiguity gave way as the U.S. began a decades-long process to reconfigure attitudes and relationships between Israelis and Palestinians and the Middle East Arab states while emerging as Israel's foremost ally, profoundly sharing democratic values and with strategic interests mostly aligned.
In June 1967, Israel delivered a blow to the Soviet Union's Cold War client states of Egypt and Syria. In particular, the Soviet Union had invested $2 billion (in 1960s dollars) to arm and train the Egyptians, with a "return" of a humiliation for Russia, most pointedly in the eyes of the nonaligned world the communists longed to impress.
President Johnson waited only a week after the war's end before articulating a vision of the right of every state in the region to exist and a solution to the refugee problem. As Dennis Ross writes in "Doomed to Succeed," about the relationships of U.S. presidents with Israel: "Johnson concluded it was time to try to reconcile the Arab-Israel conflict — not settle for a new fragile truce."
Five months of difficult negotiations between the U.S., USSR, Egypt and Israel ultimately yielded United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 in November 1967 — a conceptual framework of "land for peace" that would eventually result in peace treaties between Egypt and Israel (1979) and Jordan and Israel (1994) and was the foundation for the Oslo process between the Palestine Authority and Israel.
The Six-Day War, according to Ross, also resulted in other tangible changes in the U.S.-Israel relationship. Intelligence sharing became a "two-way street" — particularly since Israel was providing information about captured Soviet weapons. Approval to sell Israel advanced Phantom fighter jets came in December 1968. (France, previously, had provided Israel most of its combat aircraft.)
The American impulse to recontour the Middle East accelerated after the next Arab-Israeli conflict: the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
This time it was Egypt and Syria that temporarily gained the upper hand with a surprise attack penetrating the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Unlike in June 1967, the Egyptians and Syrians were able to destroy Israeli tanks and jets.
A massive U.S. airlift resupply may have saved Israel until its military regained its equilibrium and opened the roads to Cairo and Damascus.
At the end of the Yom Kippur War, the U.S. had considerable leverage over the Israelis and Egyptians, which the Nixon administration exercised, building upon the principles expressed by Johnson after the Six-Day War.
Recognizing the exigencies created by the presence of Israeli forces on the west side of the Suez Canal in Egypt and Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptians and Israelis acceded to the strong American suggestion of direct talks between their militaries to facilitate disengagement.
Unlike the infamous Khartoum "three nos" of the Arab League, articulated toward Israel in August 1967 after peace negotiations, these disengagement negotiations were the first wisps on the possibility of an Arab nation recognizing Israel. In many but not all respects, the Six-Day War ended when Anwar Sadat made his historic journey to Jerusalem (a city reunited June 7, 1967) in November 1977 to be welcomed by Menachem Begin.
A half-century of profound friendship, though, has not eliminated sometimes significant differences between the U.S. and Israel: over settlements, Iran, and the status of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the road to Middle East peace will always run through Washington, D.C., Israel's most trusted ally — a salient and salutary outcome of the Six-Day War.
Steve Hunegs is the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.
