THE documents and two-way radio messages that Israel has declassified on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war are a treasure trove for researchers worldwide and will, no doubt, help solve some of the riddles surrounding the shocking Arab defeat despite superiority in men and material, if not in quality. Israel, according to the documents, had 412 aircraft, including 203 bombers and fighters with 235 pilots, as against 826 flying machines and 980 pilots that Egypt, Syria and Jordan had between them. Some documents attribute the destruction of Egyptian air power to the fact that the Egyptian defence minister was airborne and the air force had been ordered not to fire on a flying object. While Israel’s own losses were minimal — 46 planes lost and 24 pilots killed, one of them in friendly fire — 250 Egyptian aircraft were destroyed or disabled, with over 100 pilots killed.

Barring Sinai, which Egypt recovered thanks as much to the 1973 war as to the US-brokered Camp David accord, the fruits of that victory are still with Israel. It has annexed Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, while the West Bank and Gaza continue to remain under its occupation in violation of UN resolutions and several bilateral and multilateral treaties to which America is party. The documents reveal the contradictions in Israeli thinking. Abba Eban, one of Israel’s finest diplomats and then foreign minister, opposed from day one any idea of Israel gobbling up the conquered lands. His book, My People, shows both his enlightened mind and the warmth with which he speaks of the joint Judeo-Arab glory that Spain was. The documents quote him as opposing the annexation of Arab territories and warning that the world would side with the Palestinian liberation movement. The true Zionist philosophy, however, was articulated brazenly by Levi Eshkol, then prime minister. “If it were up to us,” he said, “we would send all the Arabs to Brazil.” Since then, it seems, men like Eban have been in short supply in Israel.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2017