Last update - 16:56 07/06/2007
What if ...
Scenario: Many now scoff at those "generals of yore," the two or three old codgers who survive from the General Staff of 40 years ago and who are currently appearing in out-of-the-way interviews and evenings of "storytellers of fantasies." They are part of an almost forgotten group who in the summer of 1967 tried - so the legend goes - to foment some sort of prodigious, redeeming and impossible "war of victory": a victory not only against Egypt, as in the "Sinai Campaign," but - believe it or not - against Jordan and Syria, too.
To this day they are putting forward the old hypothesis that the crisis over the Straits of Tiran was a major missed opportunity, and that that year could have been a watershed in our history; as though the IDF - if it had only been allowed - could have come up not only with a mere victory, but could have smashed the Arab armies almost to smithereens and conquered vast territories that would have more than tripled the size of the country. In this "alternative history," we could have - they say - controlled the entire Sinai peninsula as far as the Suez Canal, the entire West Bank as far as the Jordan River, and the entire Golan Heights as far as the outskirts of Damascus.
Complacently stretching from the purity of Mount Hermon's snow to the placid turquoise waters of Sharm el-Sheikh, we could have sat back and relaxed, knowing that "the land was quiet for 40 years."
However, as will be recalled, it was the prime minister at the time, Levi Eshkol, who rejected outright the pressure of those "militarishe meshuggeners," in his words, and thus, in the view of some historians, prevented a permanent military putsch that could have made the first third of Israel's history a distant memory, an object of longing for nostalgia freaks. "I don't even want to think about how far we would have deteriorated if the mentality represented by Moshe Dayan on this side and Yigal Allon on that side had triumphed," a senior historian told us this week. "Let's say the army had kept rolling until we were stopped by some water barrier or by a cease-fire - then what? We would rule over a million Arabs for 40 years? Intoxicated with victory, kowtowing to generals for decades, like in some South American country? Gradually withdrawing with our tail between our legs only after another war, or after waves of terrorism, with thousands of casualties? And to know what it would do to the Israeli psyche - what kind of messianic, post-Israeli, loopy powers a too-big victory would have aroused in a country where a ghetto mentality and Holocaust trauma commingle with the megalomania that comes with ruling another people... Scary!"
Others, of course, have a different take on the events. They maintain that only after a rapid, crushing victory, one without precedent - such as after a stunning blitz that would last, say, six days - would the dumbfounded Arabs have convened a conference and agreed on the "three yeses": yes to peace with Israel, yes to recognition of Israel, yes to negotiations with Israel. "A pity," one of these eulogizers clucks, "we might have missed a one-time opportunity for peace."
But why pick at these "If only" sores? The fact is that Eshkol, in no small measure inspired by Truman's behavior in the General MacArthur affair - stood up heroically to those awesome pressures, and even fired some of the wilder generals who almost threatened him physically; on top of which the pressure exerted by the group dubbed the "Merry Wives of Windsor" to crown Moshe Dayan ("Abu Jilda," Eshkol called him) as an all-powerful "Mr. Security" - a move that could have had incalculable political and mental consequences - was rebuffed. People with particularly vivid imaginations even posit a nightmare scenario in which - if the "Tabenkin mentality" of the Ahdut Ha'avodah faction of the time had triumphed - "pioneer" religious phalanxes, driven by a kind of inertia-like madness of messianic nostalgia, would have "continued the Zionism of settlement" deep into the areas of Jordanian Palestine, leaving us like a country without borders, without defined demarcation; a state whose identity would have been defined by its very occupation of the territories, and which would have been isolated internationally.
Cynics say that even so, without an occupation, the world doesn't exactly love us - you know, because of the land expropriations in the Galilee, the establishment of the Carmiel "outpost," the messianic settlements in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa and in Taibeh, and so on and so forth. But mundane reality has its effect - without miracles and without apocalyptic victories, without much security and without peace, but with plenty of energy, as we flourish even within our minuscule borders.
The "Tiran Agreements," which enable passage to Eilat only of ships flying the Panamanian flag, continues to be perceived as a humiliation and as a "surrender to the Egyptian tyrant"; but, on the other hand, the Egyptians continue to curse the fact that the Gaza Strip - with its lawlessness, overcrowding and violent disorder - remains in their hands and under their responsibility ("I was willing to suffer a major defeat just to be rid of that," Mohammed Hassanein Heikal was later quoted as saying, after often expressing the wish that "Gaza would drown in the sea").
True, the biweekly convoy to Mount Scopus is sometimes harassed, mainly by militant Palestinians, but the soldiers of Jordan's Arab Legion are faithfully executing their mission to stamp out the Palestinian uprising, as this is an internal Jordanian problem. Just imagine what would have happened if we had been compelled to occupy the Palestinian people, which would have separated from Jordan and developed a hostile national identity, or even demanded, heaven forbid, with the world's support, another suffocated "state" between us and the Jordan River.
Yes, the frequent incursions of fedayeen and terrorists sometimes result in horrific attacks in the city centers, as well as thefts of cars and farm machinery; and yes, the roads in the Sharon district are sometimes blocked for hours because of a hot alert - but the situation is much improved now, thanks to the activity of the Arab Legion and the building of the "separation wall" along the cease-fire lines. The fence has also reduced the frequency of border crossings into Jordan, either accidentally or crazily, next to Megiddo and at the Mandelbaum Gate, because only crazies would think they could find something of interest on the rock-strewn hills across the border or in the dense, ominous casbahs of the Palestinian cities and refugee camps.
Kibitzers say we benefited from an architectural miracle by not being given a free foothold on, say, Mount Scopus, or the hills around Jerusalem, which would surely have been turned into unconscionable concrete monstrosities. Other clowns say that if the Western Wall were in our hands it would become a domain of the Religious Affairs Ministry and "a divine mailbox for God," as well as a stomping ground for soccer players and politicians.
Jokes aside, though, sometimes there enter into even the hardest heart reflections about that redeeming war we might have missed. Who knows? Maybe, after that great victory, we would not be walking the streets without fear of terrorism, without strict security checks at the entrance to every public building; maybe we would have military service lasting two-and-something years, as in the country's first two decades; maybe the Negev would not be shelled daily with Qassam rockets and the whole north of the country would not be threatened by Katyusha rockets, and the heart of the country would not be threatened by ballistic missiles, and the whole country would not be under existential nuclear threat. Maybe then, after that missed victory, there wouldn't be such a split between right and left over the question of "Judaizing" the Galilee; maybe then, if we were a great power, the British union of lecturers, for example, would not be calling for a boycott on us because of the "apartheid policy" in Jaffa and the Triangle...
"What if and what if and what if..." What if Grandma had wheels, and what if the president of the state had been accused of rape, and what if Shimon Peres were still in politics, and what if Uri Zohar had become a rebbe? Well, one could pursue such imponderables to the point of absurdity, but it's pointless, so we'll stop here.