1968 - Mark Kurlansky [150]
Walter Laqueur, a Brandeis historian who had written several books on the Middle East, wrote an article in May arguing that the region was potentially more dangerous than Vietnam. Later in the year Nixon would make the same point in his campaign speeches. What frightened the world about the Middle East was that the two superpowers had chosen sides and there was an obvious risk that the regional conflict would become a global one. The Israelis and the Arabs were in an arms race, with the Arabs buying Soviet weapons and Israelis buying American, while the Israelis, whose allies were not supplying them as quickly as the Soviets were the Arabs, also built up a homegrown arms industry.
“Gradually,” Laqueur wrote, “the world has reconciled itself to the fact that there will be a fourth Arab-Israeli War in the near future.” In July a poll showed that 62 percent of Americans expected another Arab-Israeli war within five years. The Egyptian government insisted on referring to its complete military rout in the Six Day War as the “setback.” Israel’s plan to offer the land it had seized in that war in exchange for peace was not working. There was a great deal of interest in land, but not in peace. The president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, refused even to enter into negotiations with Israel. Mohammed Heykal, an Egyptian spokesman, insisted that another war was “inevitable”—perhaps because demonstrating Egyptian students were furious about the Egyptian performance in the last war. While the age of student movements had given birth to antiwar protests on campuses all over the world, Cairo students were protesting that their war hadn’t been fought well enough. Because Saudi Arabia considered itself a religious state, King Faisal was calling for a “holy war,” whereas Syria, considering itself to be a socialist state, had opted to call for a “people’s war.” The Palestinian organizations staged murderous little raids known as “terrorist attacks,” and the Israelis responded with massive firepower, often making incursions into Jordan.
The Arabs all agreed not to talk to the Israelis, because this would give the Israeli seizures some form of recognition. However, according to Laqueur, some were beginning to think they had made a mistake, since “in negotiation, the Zionists would have settled for much less than they eventually got.” A poll conducted in France showed that 49 percent of the French thought Israel should keep all or part of the new territories it gained in the 1967 war. Only 19 percent thought it should give it all back. The same poll conducted in Great Britain showed 66 percent thought Israel should keep at least some of the new territory and only 13 percent thought it should give it all back.
That land was the reason observers were giving as long as five years until the next war. If the Arabs had taken a beating in 1967, the next time would be even worse, now that the Israelis controlled the high ground at the Suez and the Golan. Many were already predicting Nasser’s overthrow from the last failure. But this situation subtly created a shift in the Middle East that was not clearly seen at the