The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective E D I T E D BY I B R A H I M A B U - L U G H O D WITH A FOREWORD BY MALCOLM H. KERR NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS EVANSTON 1970 Copyright © 1970 by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 74-107607 SBN: 8101-0303-6 Manufactured in the United States of America Second printing, 1971 Ibrahim Abu-Lughod is Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Arab Rediscovery of Europe and co-author of Patterns of African Development. Contents vii Foreword MALCOLM H. KERR ix Preface IBRAHIM ABU-LUGHOD 1 The Arab Portrayed EDWARD SAID 10 Jerusalem: Its Place in Islam and Arab History A. L. TIBAWI 49 Prelude to War: The Crisis of May-June 1967 HISHAM SHARABI 66 Israel’s Arab Policy IBRAHIM ABU-LUGHOD 91 Some Legal Aspects of the Arab-Israeli Conflict CHERIF BASSIOUNI 122 The United Nations and the Middle East Conflict of 1967 SAMIR N. ANABTAWI 138 American Mass Media and the June Conflict MICHAEL W. SULEIMAN 155 United States Policy toward the June Conflict KAMEL S. ABU-JABER 169 The American Left and the June Conflict ABDEEN JABARA 191 Selected Bibliography 197 Index Foreword We hear much today about the pitfalls of being culture-bound. Our perceptions of the world are distorted not only by the incompleteness of our information but also by the way in which our established habits of thought and taste and our inherited forms of moral preference tend to mold our consciousness of events into familiar patterns. The truly cultivated man is marked by empathy—by his recognition that the thought and understanding of men of other cultures may differ sharply from his own, that what seems natural to him may appear grotesque to others, and that each pattern without the complement of the others is parochial. American perceptions of the Arab-Israeli conflict present a prime example of such parochialism. Our understanding of what the conflict is about tends to be cut according to a comfortably familiar pattern of attitudes and sympathies ingrained in the American experience. This pattern sustains almost complete identification with the people of Israel and reduces the Arabs to little more than caricatures. Israel is seen as a “Western” state populated by technologically minded, energetic, democratic, pioneering frontiersmen who are transforming a wilderness and providing a home for the persecuted; the Arabs are seen as exas- peratingly inscrutable, unreliable, inept, backward, authoritarian, and emotional. Israel is our staunch friend; the Arabs throw stones at American embassies. More particularly, the Israelis are Jews. This single fact is probably enough to be decisive by itself for it invests sympathy with Israel with all the sanctity of rejection of mass extermination and disavowal of country-club bigotry. American liberals, it seems, cannot find fault vii MALCOLM H. KERR with a collective Jewish cause because of the implication of anti- Semitism. In consequence, in the Middle East conflict the critical facul­ ties of otherwise sensitive Americans have been anesthetized. Support for Israel is an automatic liberal cause, and Israeli actions that would draw strong condemnation if undertaken by another country are defended by liberals with the same arguments that apologists for colonialism and racial inequality have invoked elsewhere. The nine essays in this volume, written by Arab scholars living in the United States and Britain, provide a badly needed antidote to the one-sided and selective attention given in this country to the Middle East conflict. The imbalance must surely be rectified if Americans are to form independent judgments. This volume alone is hardly enough for that purpose, but it is a step in the right direction. Many readers will be surprised to learn to what extent these intelli­ gent, moderate, well-informed Arabs reject basic propositions that have become axiomatic among Americans. Various of these authors maintain, for example, that Israel’s policy has been to avoid rather than promote a peaceful settlement; that the Arab states’ intervention in Palestine was legally and morally justified; that the religious attach­ ment of Jews to the Wailing Wall is of recent, politically inspired origin; that Israel planned to wage the 1967 war weeks before Presi­ dent Nasser sought the evacuation of United Nations forces from Sinai; and that the purpose of Nasser’s diplomacy in the May crisis was not to move toward war but toward a full peace settlement with Israel. While some will no doubt dismiss such arguments as absurd propa­ ganda, more thoughtful readers will want to follow the authors’ train of evidence and logic closely enough to consider whether their conclu­ sions are plausible. They will find that the evidence available on these and other aspects of the Palestine conflict can reasonably be inter­ preted in ways very different from those familiar to them. Whether or not they are persuaded by all that they read, they will find the argu­ ments intelligent, careful, sober, and responsible, in the tradition of serious scholarship. This is a great deal more than can be said of much of the literature circulating in America about the Middle East. We must ask ourselves whether those of us who have a perspective of Middle Eastern events different from that of these authors suffer any less than they from cultural bias. If not, then perhaps the views we have so easily adopted ought to be re-examined. Professor of Political Science Malcolm H. Kerr University of California at Los A ngeles Preface Although more than two years have elapsed since the Arabs and Israelis faced each other on the battlefield in June, 1967, not a single scholarly, objective, and detached investigation of the factors that have led to that confrontation has appeared in the English language. Arabs, Israelis, and noninvolved third parties have contributed differentially to an understanding of some of these factors through innumerable publi­ cations, but as the reader will observe from the bibliography appended to this volume—which lists those sources that specifically deal with the 1967 June War—the preponderant majority of the works published in English, or for that matter in any European language, have come from Israeli or Israeli-inspired sources. This is of course neither accidental nor unexpected. The Jewish involvement in the Israeli experiment has placed highly trained manpower at the service of various Israeli objec­ tives, not the least of which is the dissemination of information calcu­ lated to enhance Israel’s international interests and gain sympathy and support. Israel has considerable support among other groups as well, which in turn have contributed to the dissemination of information equally favorable to Israel and Israel’s perspective. In part as the result of such publications but perhaps more impor­ tantly as the result of the sustained efforts of the mass media, the cultured layman and the concerned citizen alike may have arrived at a certain set of conclusions with reference to the causes of the eruption of conflict in June which reflect a particular view of its historical perspective and its ultimate objectives. These conclusions have, in the opinion of some, an apparent validity, yet most scholars recognize that the bases of international conflict are neither simple nor as clear as IX IBRAHIM ABU-LUGHOD protagonists in the conflict wish people to believe. This simplification of issues has applied not only to the eruption of hostilities in June, 1967, but to the totality of the Palestine conflict which constitutes the essence of the continuing tension between Arabs and Zionists. The series of essays contained in this volume has one major objec­ tive: to present an alternative perspective which should be considered in any full assessment of the origins or subsequent development of the June, 1967, conflict. The essays are not intended to provide a compre­ hensive review or discussion of the totality of the Palestine conflict and its international ramifications, but they do answer specific questions that are of direct relevance to the eruption and immediate aftermath of war in the Middle East in June, 1967, and they provide an interpretation of events surrounding that conflict which must be taken into account by scholars and students of international relations. There is no doubt but that the true and full origins of that war will ultimately become common knowledge. Scholars cannot help but increasingly direct their intellectual efforts to a conflict which has already demonstrated its potential for the disturbance of world peace. They may assess the origins and immediate causes differently from those individuals who are sympathetic to Israel or to the Palestinians or to the Arabs. Whatever their assessment may turn out to be, scholars would of necessity have to examine all available data in order to insure that the assessment is based upon unimpeachable and verifi­ able evidence. The intended users of this volume are those scholars and students who may wish to ascertain the causes and origins of the Arab-Israeli confrontation of June, 1967. Several characteristics of the contributors to the volume and of their essays may be of interest to the reader. First, with one exception, all are Americans of Arab ancestry or origin. Second, each of the con­ tributors is a scholar whose previous intellectual contributions, again with one exception, have revolved around questions and issues unre­ lated to the Palestine conflict. Finally, the authors—applying the same rules of evidence employed in all scientific endeavors—come to con­ clusions that contrast with those hitherto accepted in current Western literature. “The Arab Portrayed,” the essay which introduces this volume, powerfully and poetically probes the cultural values that surround and underlie an appreciation of the immediate issues and consequences of the Arab-Israeli confrontation of June, 1967. Its author, Dr. Edward x