On 5 June Egypt will observe, in silence and remembrance, the June 1967 War when Israeli forces — with a green light from the Johnson administration — launched an all-out attack on Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces. When the UN Security Council ordered a ceasefire on the three fronts, the Israeli army had already occupied Sinai, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. This lightning Israeli attack, with the connivance of the American government, was launched on the same day that Egyptian Vice President Zakaria Mohie El-Din was expected in the US capital, as per an agreement between Cairo and Washington, to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East. According to this oral understanding, Hubert Humphrey, the American vice president, would return the visit and sign in Cairo an agreement on the steps to be taken by both sides, the Egyptians and the Israelis, to defuse the tense situation on the Egyptian-Israeli border. The 5 June defeat was a major blow, not only to the progressive leadership of President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, but also to the Arab progressive movement that the Arab Left, backed by an ever-expanding middle class across the Arab world, represented. Another major victim was Arab nationalism, the concept as well as its manifestations in practice. This was the belief that the post-World War II Arab system of countries newly independent from French and British imperialism constituted a national entity divided by borders that were drawn 50 years before by Arthur Sykes and Georges Picot, the former representing the British Empire, at its peak in 1916, and the latter imperial France. The two empires carved up the dying Ottoman Empire through an agreed-upon division of the territorial spoils of the Great War. Arab nationalism was a logical reaction and a historical result of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the imperial overreach of both London and Paris. This Arab nationalist movement led the Arabs towards independence and national development into the second half of the 20th century. The Israeli conquest of Arab territories in June 1967 brought to a complete halt this progressive movement. Egypt, the Arabs, the Palestinians and the West have paid a heavy price ever since. The demise of Arab nationalism created an ideological void in Arab minds, particularly among the rising generations who had witnessed the moments of triumph of the Arab nationalist movement under the leadership of President Nasser. The West — and particularly the United States — mistook this movement for an intrinsically anti-Western movement allied with international communism and Moscow against the West in the context of the Cold War. As far as the United States was concerned, Washington in the mid-1960s was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and victory was nowhere to be seen. Washington was still a firm believer in the containment policy of George Kennan, and believed, wrongly, that one of its enemies in its struggle with the former Soviet Union was Arab nationalism under Nasser's leadership. The Johnson administration, in its quest for a quick and easy victory over the communists, and to make up for a complete military standstill on the Vietnamese killing fields, thought that the time had come to annihilate Arab nationalism and Nasser's Egypt. But the West and the United States greatly miscalculated. And the results of this grave miscalculation are still reverberating within Egypt, in the Middle East and across not only the Arab world, but also across Muslim lands. Three years after the June defeat, President Nasser passed away and was succeeded by his vice president, Anwar Sadat, also a Free Army Officer who had overthrown the Egyptian monarchy in 1952. His leadership and his alliances with political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, and later on, after the October war of 1973, with the United States consummated the demise of Arab nationalism and the ascendency of political Islam across the Arab world. One of the ironies of history is that Sadat himself fell victim to the bullets of a new form of terrorism based and inspired by religious texts and backed and financed by pro-Western governments in the Middle East and the Gulf, thanks to a combination of petrodollars coupled with a desire to reshape the region and the Arab world to their systems of rule — that is, a religiously based legitimacy. Egypt and the Arab countries are still struggling with this destabilising current to this very moment. In pre-5 June 1967 Egypt, the infamous recent incident in the village of Karam in Minya, Upper Egypt, amid reports of worsening sectarian violence, would never have happened. Earlier this month a group of religious zealots, Salafists and Muslim Brothers entered into a house, pulled out a 70-year-old Coptic lady and stripped her of her clothes and paraded her in the streets. Today, Egypt is struggling to recreate a progressive society and a modern state against great odds within and without. The sine qua non in this war is to defeat the forces of political Islam, regardless of labels and regardless of the naïve belief that there are “moderate” and “extreme” Islamic movements. What has been going in Syria is another example of the destructive force unleashed by political Islam in a bastion of Arab nationalism. I would argue that what both Egypt and Syria are passing through is a distant strategic and political result of the June War of 1967. Arab nationalism was also a reaction to the establishment of the Hebrew state in 1948. It was also a balancing act against religious extremism in the Middle East in the confrontation with this new entity at the heart of the Arab world, Israel, an ever-expanding state and territorial enterprise. Israel is the only member state in the United Nations that has no demarcated and internationally recognised national frontiers. A couple of weeks ago, the Israeli cabinet met on the Golan Heights, which was occupied by Israel in 1967. This was the first time such a meeting had been held on the seized territory since the June 1967 War. The Israeli prime minister announced on this occasion that these occupied territories are Israel's and will remain so. Say goodbye to Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967, and subsequent resolutions by the Security Council on the two-state solution to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Israelis are still expropriating Palestinian lands and building new settlements on Palestinian land. They are still chasing away old Palestinians residents of East Jerusalem and tearing down their residences to resettle Jews in their stead. Arab nationalism was a counterweight to Israeli expansionism. While various US administrations have been sincere in their policies to halt this expansionism, the record has shown that, for one reason or another, they have not been able to rein in Israeli policies of expansionism and annexation of Arab territories. One question still haunts me. Was the Johnson administration fully aware of all the political and strategic ramifications of the green light it gave to Israel to attack Egypt and Syria in June 1967? Another question that calls for an answer is what will the next US administration do, whether Republican or Democrat, to help fix the grave strategic imbalances destabilising the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin today? These imbalances go back to the June War of 1967.
The writer is former assistant to the foreign minister.
