After the Suez War, as we have already noted, the Arabs drew the conclusion that the war with Israeli was a long term project. In January 1964, the first Arab Summit Conference was held in Cairo under the auspices of Abdelnasser, and it adopted three important decisions. The first was to establish an organization that would represent the Palestinians. And it is that which eventually led to the creation of the PLO as we have already seen. Another decision was to establish a United Arab Command. That is a unified Arab command that would conduct the war against Israel in the future. And the third decision was to divert the sources of the Jordan River. These decisions, which look quite belligerent, were actually intended to postpone war, and not to create a war. But in fact, unintentionally, they eventually did prompt the war that broke out in 1967. After all, the idea was if, to form the PLO and to establish a unified Arab command and to divert the tributaries of the Jordan. That this would keep the conflict going on a low controllable flame, but not to initiate an all-out war. But keeping the conflict on a low controllable flame was much easier said than actually done. In May 1967, due to the deteriorating situation along the border between Israel and Syria, the Chief of Staff of Israel then, Yitzhak Rabin, warned Syria, publicly, that if the situation continued to deteriorate, Israel would eventually take action against Syria, which might lead to the toppling of the regime in that country. Shortly after Rabin's warnings, made in, in May of 1967, the Soviet Union, for reasons that are unknown to this very day, passed on false intelligence to Egypt that the Israelis were concentrating forces along the border with Syria, with the intention of attacking Syria. And it was this coalescence of events that led to the crisis of May 1967, that eventually resulted in the June war of that year. Following up on the information given to Nasser by the Soviet Union, Nasser sent his forces into the Sinai Peninsula in a very demonstrative show of force. In broad daylight, in front of the television cameras, sending the Egyptian army into the Sinai Peninsula to threaten Israel not to attack Syria. This was a very surprising action taken by Egypt, considering the fact that Egyptian forces had been tied up in Yemen since 1962. In 1962, a civil war broke out in Yemen between the revolutionaries and the royalists as they were called and Abd al-Nasser intervened with his forces on behalf of the revolutionaries in Yemen bordering on Saudi Arabia and therefore causing a huge Arab internal crisis between Egypt and the Saudis. And the Egyptian forces tied up in Yemen, which eventually became something akin to Egypt's Vietnam, gave rise to the expectation in Israel that there would not be a war with Egypt in the foreseeable future, as long as their forces were tied up in Yemen. But that was not the case in May 1967. Nasser moved his forces into Sinai, and bellicose statements coming from Cairo and Damascus speaking of Israel's impending demise created new tensions between Israel and the Arab states. Israel mobilized its reserves, and this was the beginning of a series of miscalculations by all the players leading to the war that no one had really planned for, or intended. As already mentioned, it is not at all clear why the Soviets passed this incorrect information Abd al-Nasser. But Abd al-Nasser checked the Soviet information, and discovered very shortly after he had sent his forces into Sinai, that the Israelis had not concentrated forces to attack Syria as the Soviets had told him. And even though Abd al-Nasser now knew the truth, having moved his forces into Sinai in such a demonstrative fashion, he could hardly turn back now without losing face. So the Egyptian forces remained in Sinai. And as the Egyptian forces remained in Sinai, the old enemies of Abd al-Nasser, the Jordanians and the Saudis, who had always been ridiculed and humiliated by Abd al-Nasser, now found their opportunity to taunt and to ridicule him. The Jordanians and the Saudis waged a propaganda campaign against Egypt, arguing all along that the Egyptian forces in Sinai were just for show, and that Egypt had no intention to going to war with Israel. Egypt was actually hiding behind the apron of the UN Emergency Forces in Sinai, and that unless Abd al-Nasser removed the UN forces, it was clear that he wasn't really going to war and Nasser was just all bluff and bluster. Against the background of this kind of critique and humiliation, Abd al-Nasser ordered the UN forces on the 17th of May to leave the Sinai Peninsula. And they did. On the same day, the 17th of May, Egyptian MIG aircraft flew over Israel's nuclear facility in Dimona. And all of this gave the Israelis the impression that war was possibly imminent. Israel turned to the United States for guidance and for support. And the US position was that Israel would not stand alone if it did not act alone, which put the Israelis in an unbearable sense of isolation. And the Israeli response looked like fear and panic. Israel's Prime Minister at the time, Levi Eshkol, was not a man of great military experience, he was Israels former Minister of Finance. Eshkol didn't have the charisma of Ben-Gurion, his predecessor. And generally, the Israeli public had little confidence in Eshkol's ability to lead Israel in such a crisis situation. The public were rushing to the supermarkets, and the Israelis were talking about their memories of the Holocaust. There were fears amongst the Israelis of huge numbers of casualties that would result from attacks by Egypt's air force on Israeli cities. And on the 22nd of May, with the UN forces no longer in Sinai, Abdel Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Nasser enclosing the straits was carrying out what the Israelis had firmly said was a course for war. And Nasser did so, again very much against the background of Jordanian and Saudi propaganda designed to humiliate him. After his expulsion of the UN forces from Sinai, the Jordanians and the Saudis pressured Abd al-Nasser to close the Straits of Tiran because they argued, after all, if the UN forces are out, why don't you close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping? And therefore, Nasser eventually did cave in to this kind of pressure. But by closing the straits, Nasser had sealed the issue. It meant war with Israel sooner or later. Israel turned to the United States, which had given Israel a commitment that it would support free navigation in the Straights of Tiran after Israel withdrew from Sinai in 1957. But this commitment came to nothing. And the United States was not really able to organize any kind of international naval force that would open the Straits of Tiran.
