وثيقة من المخابرات الأمريكية قبل عدوان يونيو 67 بأيام

 

أهم ما في الوثيقة هو تقييم مائير عاميت لخطوة إغلاق خليج العقبة: أنها لم تكن ضرورية لعبدالناصر كي يغير موازين القوة – السياسية – فالأهم هو حشد قواته في سيناء مع سحب القوات الدولية

يفتح هذا التقييم على النقاش الذي دار في اللجنة العليا مساء ٢١ مايو ٦٧ , في منزل عبدالناصر , بين هؤلاء الذين نادوا  ب”السيطرة” على خليج العقبة (وعندي ان زكريا محي الدين كان على رأسهم)  وأولئك الذي قالوا ب”الإغلاق” (وجليّ أن عبدالحكيم عامر في الصدارة منهم) .. وحسم النقاش لصالح الفريق الثاني

ما حسم النقاش كان تأكيد عبدالحكيم عامر في الجلسة على قدرة قواته على خوض الحرب , فالإغلاق يرفع احتمالها الى ٨٠٪ .. أما السيطرة – دون الإغلاق – فتبقي نسبتها عند ٥٠٪ , ما يكفل تدبر حل سياسي للأزمة بنسبة كبيرة

الأهم ثانياً كان وضوح عاميت في شرحه: لقد أتيحت لنا فرصة شن حرب ندمر فيها عبدالناصر لصالحنا معاً , فاسمحوا لنا أن نهتبلها .. وإلا فالرجل سوف يسيطر على الشرق الأوسط , ومثال خضوع الملك حسين له في ٣٠ مايو ساطع .. وسيتبعه , خضوعاً أو سقوطاً , حسن المغرب وفيصل السعودية وبورقيبة تونس وبهلوي ايران وأتاتوركيي تركيا

لذا مُنح الضوء الأصفر يوم ٢ حزيران من ماكنمارا

التعقيب من دكمال خلف الطويل

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Document : 

Memorandum for: The President, From Richard Helms, CIA Director, June 2, 1967; From private collection.

On the eve of the 1967 Six Day War in the Middle East, President Lyndon Johnson learned through intelligence channels that despite his urgent pleas for restraint by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs were bent on taking the country to war to destroy the Egyptian army and its leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser, who had rallied the Muslim world against the Jewish state. 

Johnson had been counting on Eshkol, with whom he had established a strong personal relationship, to restrain Israel’s generals long enough for Johnson to convince Nasser to withdraw his army from Israel’s frontier and re-open the shipping lanes to Israel’s second largest port.

A warning that the forces of restraint were losing ground in Israel came from the chief of Israel’s intelligence service, Meir Amit.

The message and was delivered to Johnson’s CIA Director, Richard Helms, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, both of whom were met with Amit during his secret mission to Washington on June 1-2, 1967. 

Amit’s determination to portray war as the only available option for Israel may explain why Johnson did so little in the final days of the build up to war to head off the conflict that proved disastrous for the Arab states and left Israel holding Arab lands whose occupation continues to bedevil a comprehensive settlement until today.

“The success of Egyptian President Nasser in manipulating the current crisis in the Middle East will, if left unimpeded, result in the loss of the area to the United States,” Amit boldly asserted to CIA officials, who transcribed his “views” and presented them to Johnson. 

Amit also confided that “Internal pressures are at work against the present Israel Government,” setting up a situation where Eshkol would be blamed “for the lives that will be lost” as a result of “the government’s decision not to react quickly” to the Egyptian military buildup.

A memorandum from Helms to Johnson shows that those pressures were coming from Amit himself, along with Moshe Dayan, both of whom believed that Israel had a unique opportunity to destroy Nasser’s army and buy 20 years worth of security for the Jewish state.

Much about Amit’s mission has been written in histories of the war that proved a devastating defeat for the Arabs, but Amit’s precise conversations with top CIA and Johnson administration officials have been somewhat blurred. 

Amit came to Washington ostensibly to determine whether the United States and other nations would act swiftly to counter Egypt’s naval blockade of Israel’s Red Sea port. This was the provocation that Israel considered an act of war.

President Johnson, beleaguered by the War in Vietnam, pressed the Israeli prime minister, Eshkol, to hold off any decision to go to war until Washington could organize an international response to Nasser’s assault on freedom of navigation. Johnson had made his appeal to Abba Eban, Israel’s foreign minister on 5/26/1967.

But Amit argued, “The commitments of the United States in the Middle East are no less than those in Vietnam, but the Middle East offers the United States a chance to demonstrate its commitment at a much lower price than Vietnam.”

Helms, in his memorandum to Johnson, pointed out that Amit and Dayan were close allies in the Israeli leadership. “Both are sabras – men born in Israel,” he said. “It seems clear from Amit’s remarks that the ‘tough’ Israelis, who have never forgotten that they are surrounded by hostile Arabs, are driving hard for a forceful solution, with us and with their own government.”

Almost as Helms was writing, Eshkol was forced to accept Dayan as defense minister, which meant the “war camp” had won. 

Amit returned from Washington, arguing that Johnson was doing little to open the Egyptian naval blockade, an assertion that is contradicted by the urgent secret efforts the Pentagon and State Department were making to build an international maritime coalition to assert freedom of navigation in the shipping lanes approaching Israel.