Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Orientalism and Analysis: Ideas of the ‘Arab’
- 2 Formation of the United Arab Republic
- 3 Revolution in Iraq
- 4 Syrian Secession
- 5 Civil War in Yemen
- 6 Six-Day War
- 7 War of Attrition
- 8 Early Years of Sadat's Presidency
- 9 Yom Kippur War
- 10 Aftermath of Victory
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - War of Attrition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Orientalism and Analysis: Ideas of the ‘Arab’
- 2 Formation of the United Arab Republic
- 3 Revolution in Iraq
- 4 Syrian Secession
- 5 Civil War in Yemen
- 6 Six-Day War
- 7 War of Attrition
- 8 Early Years of Sadat's Presidency
- 9 Yom Kippur War
- 10 Aftermath of Victory
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
After the Six-Day War, Israel was no longer the object of sympathy and compassion, but rather an important strategic asset to be reckoned with.
Simcha Dinitz, 2000Peace does not mean surrender … There is no other way for us but force, we have no alternative to safeguard our honour.
President Nasser, 1969Egypt's humiliation in 1967 had a visibly dramatic impact on President Nasser. His associates recall that his hair ‘turned white’ and he lost the ‘spark’ in his eyes, subsumed as he was with the bitterness of defeat. In the context of frayed diplomatic relations, American policy-makers increasingly viewed Nasser as the ‘villain’ of the war and a ‘Soviet client’. As Arabist Richard Parker put it, ‘We had no particular interest left in Egypt. All the Americans had been kicked out … [It was] very hard to get anybody to pay any attention to Egypt. Very hard to get anybody to take Egypt seriously.’ Against this increasingly adversarial relationship, the British assumed the more neutral role of ‘honest broker’ in the Arab–Israeli dispute, authoring, for example, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 which called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for peace. The protracted War of Attrition on the Suez Canal, culminating in the unprecedented Soviet intervention of 10,000 men to protect Egypt against Israeli deep penetration raids, raised important questions about Egypt's commitment to peace and independence and Soviet willingness to escalate the regional conflict.
An examination of the diplomatic and intelligence assessments of these events provides a more nuanced view of the War of Attrition than that which exists in the current literature. The historical record thus far has emphasised Western miscalculation and the West's broad misunderstanding of Nasser's intentions in launching the War of Attrition. One study, for example, asserts that ‘the Americans were still unable to assess Egypt's motives correctly or the logic behind its military actions’ during this period. Similarly, Richard Parker attributes the failure to predict Soviet intervention in 1970 to a ‘lack of imagination’.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Arab World and Western IntelligenceAnalysing the Middle East, 1956–1981, pp. 200 - 226Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017