Hazem Saghieh: The six-day war, forty years on
[Hazem Saghieh is political editor of the London-based Arab newspaper al-Hayat.]
In June 2007 the Arab world will mark a bitter anniversary in its modern history, namely the passing of forty years since the six-day war with Israel. For the Arabs, their decisive defeat in June 1967 occupies a very special, if not unique place in their region's post-independence era. Perhaps this is because the event was laden with significance - political, cultural, economic and of course military - in a way that was unprecedented at the time. Indeed, one might go so far as to call it the first defining moment of the modern Arab world.
By any standards the Arabs' defeat in the war of 1948 was a momentous event, leading as it did to the establishment of the state of Israel. But the effect of the 1967 defeat was to confirm what had begun in 1948, consolidating Israel's position in a way that has gone largely unchallenged ever since. Even the Yom Kippur/Ramadan war of October 1973, which Arab regimes sought to depict as a success which redressed the iniquity of their defeat six years earlier, did little of the kind.
The war of 1967 exposed the true nature of Arab governments whose legitimacy rested on their stated aim of liberating Palestine. This goal was in turn ostensibly part of a wider radical anti-colonialist agenda, which sought to sweep away so-called reactionary regimes and bring about a social transformation in the interests of the oppressed masses. Both Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime in Egypt and the Ba'athist government in Syria had such pretensions - and it is worth recalling that Nasser had carved out a place for himself in Arab hearts and minds unrivalled by anyone else either before or since.
The Syrian and Egyptian armies had been reformed supposedly in order to liberate Palestine and "avenge" the creation of the state of Israel, but in 1967 it was from the latter that they sustained a terrible blow. When the chief-of-staff of the Egyptian army, Field-Marshal 'Abd al-Hakim 'Amir, died (whether or not by his own hand), it was as if his demise were a symbol of the fate of the Arab armies on which so many hopes had been pinned and such vast quantities spent, while the Arab masses suffered under their oppression.
The Arabs' resounding defeat occurred at a time of intense polarisation between the west and the Soviet Union - a division in which Nasser's regime invested to great effect. It is also worth noting that in the 1960s, and especially the middle part of the decade, most of the world became a cold-war battlefield. During the 1950s, conflict between the superpowers had been largely restricted to Germany and Korea, but in the ten years that followed confrontation spread from Cuba to Africa, and from Vietnam to Greece. It could be argued that the events of 1967 demonstrated the impossibility of outright victory, even with as powerful a nation as the Soviet Union on one's side, with all its determination to oppose United States and western influence. By the same token, an unprecedented alliance was established between the United States and the Jewish state, an alliance without which nothing in the last forty years could be understood.
The six-day war did not only expose the true capabilities of the Arab regimes and their armies and bloated bureaucracies; it also began to show the capacities of Arab societies and cultures, their elites and their structures both new and old. In the aftermath of war there began a transition from the inclusive rhetoric of pan-Arabism, as embodied by Nasserism and to a lesser extent by Ba'athism, towards distinct Arab indigenous loyalties. In the long term this was perhaps the most significant outcome of the 1967 conflict....
Read entire article at Open Democracy
In June 2007 the Arab world will mark a bitter anniversary in its modern history, namely the passing of forty years since the six-day war with Israel. For the Arabs, their decisive defeat in June 1967 occupies a very special, if not unique place in their region's post-independence era. Perhaps this is because the event was laden with significance - political, cultural, economic and of course military - in a way that was unprecedented at the time. Indeed, one might go so far as to call it the first defining moment of the modern Arab world.
By any standards the Arabs' defeat in the war of 1948 was a momentous event, leading as it did to the establishment of the state of Israel. But the effect of the 1967 defeat was to confirm what had begun in 1948, consolidating Israel's position in a way that has gone largely unchallenged ever since. Even the Yom Kippur/Ramadan war of October 1973, which Arab regimes sought to depict as a success which redressed the iniquity of their defeat six years earlier, did little of the kind.
The war of 1967 exposed the true nature of Arab governments whose legitimacy rested on their stated aim of liberating Palestine. This goal was in turn ostensibly part of a wider radical anti-colonialist agenda, which sought to sweep away so-called reactionary regimes and bring about a social transformation in the interests of the oppressed masses. Both Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime in Egypt and the Ba'athist government in Syria had such pretensions - and it is worth recalling that Nasser had carved out a place for himself in Arab hearts and minds unrivalled by anyone else either before or since.
The Syrian and Egyptian armies had been reformed supposedly in order to liberate Palestine and "avenge" the creation of the state of Israel, but in 1967 it was from the latter that they sustained a terrible blow. When the chief-of-staff of the Egyptian army, Field-Marshal 'Abd al-Hakim 'Amir, died (whether or not by his own hand), it was as if his demise were a symbol of the fate of the Arab armies on which so many hopes had been pinned and such vast quantities spent, while the Arab masses suffered under their oppression.
The Arabs' resounding defeat occurred at a time of intense polarisation between the west and the Soviet Union - a division in which Nasser's regime invested to great effect. It is also worth noting that in the 1960s, and especially the middle part of the decade, most of the world became a cold-war battlefield. During the 1950s, conflict between the superpowers had been largely restricted to Germany and Korea, but in the ten years that followed confrontation spread from Cuba to Africa, and from Vietnam to Greece. It could be argued that the events of 1967 demonstrated the impossibility of outright victory, even with as powerful a nation as the Soviet Union on one's side, with all its determination to oppose United States and western influence. By the same token, an unprecedented alliance was established between the United States and the Jewish state, an alliance without which nothing in the last forty years could be understood.
The six-day war did not only expose the true capabilities of the Arab regimes and their armies and bloated bureaucracies; it also began to show the capacities of Arab societies and cultures, their elites and their structures both new and old. In the aftermath of war there began a transition from the inclusive rhetoric of pan-Arabism, as embodied by Nasserism and to a lesser extent by Ba'athism, towards distinct Arab indigenous loyalties. In the long term this was perhaps the most significant outcome of the 1967 conflict....