Jerusalem: The Biography

On 23 May, Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran, the seaway to Israel’s key port of Eilat. Syria mobilized for war. King Hussein reviewed his forces. Rabin and the generals advised Eshkol to launch a pre-emptive strike against Egypt or face annihilation. But Eshkol refused until he had exhausted all political options: his foreign minister Abba Eban carried out painstaking diplomacy to prevent war – or win support if it came. Yet Rabin was tormented by guilt that he had not done enough to save Israel: ‘I had the feeling, rightly or wrongly, that I had to carry everything on my own. I had sunk into a profound crisis. I had eaten almost nothing for almost nine days, hadn’t slept, was smoking nonstop and was physically exhausted.’

With its drifting prime minister, its chief of staff under sedation, its generals on the verge of mutiny and the nation itself in panic, there was nothing fake about Israel’s trauma. In Washington, President L. B. Johnson refused to back any Israeli strike; in Moscow, Premier Alexei Kosygin strongly advised Nasser to pull back from war. In Cairo, Field Marshal Amer, boasting that ‘This time we’ll be the ones to start the war,’ prepared to attack the Negev. Just in time, Nasser ordered Amer to hold back.

In Amman, King Hussein felt he had little choice but to join Nasser: if Egypt attacked, he had to support his Arab brother; otherwise, if Egypt lost, he would be regarded as a traitor. On 30 May, Hussein, wearing a field marshal’s uniform and packing a .357 Magnum, piloted his own plane to Cairo where he was met by Nasser. ‘Since your visit is a secret,’ said Nasser, towering over the diminutive king, ‘what would happen if we arrested you?’ ‘The possibility never crossed my mind,’ replied Hussein, who agreed to place his 56,000-strong army under the Egyptian General Riyad. ‘All the Arab armies now surround Israel,’ declared the king. Israel faced war on three fronts. On 28 May, Eshkol had given a rambling radio address that only intensified Israeli anxiety. In Jerusalem, bomb shelters were dug, air-raid drills practised. The Israelis feared annihilation, another Holocaust. Eban had exhausted diplomacy and the generals, the politicians and the public had lost confidence in Eshkol. He was forced to call in Israel’s most respected soldier.

DAYAN TAKES COMMAND

On 1 June, Moshe Dayan was sworn in as defence minister and Menachem Begin also joined the new National Government as minister without portfolio. Dayan, who always wore his trademark black eyepatch, was a disciple of Ben-Gurion and despised Eshkol, who privately nicknamed him Abu Jildi after a slippery one-eyed Arab bandit.

Wingate’s pupil, chief of staff during the Suez war and now an MP, Dayan was a contradiction – an archaeologist and looter of artefacts, an avenging wielder of military might and a believer in tolerant coexistence, a vanquisher of the Arabs and a lover of Arab culture. He was ‘supremely intelligent,’ recalls his friend Shimon Peres, ‘his mind was brilliant and he never said a foolish thing’. His fellow general Ariel Sharon thought Dayan ‘would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them ninety-five were dangerous; three more were bad; the remaining two however were brilliant.’ He ‘depised most people’, recalled Sharon, ‘and took no pains to conceal it’. His critics called him ‘a partisan and adventurer’ and Dayan once admitted to Peres, ‘Remember one thing: I am unreliable.’

Dayan radiated the charisma of the new dashing Jew ‘not because he followed rules,’ says Peres, ‘but because he discarded them with ability and charm.’ A classmate described him as ‘a liar, a braggart, a schemer, and a prima donna and in spite of that, the object of deep admiration’. He was a loner without friends, an inscrutable showman and a priapic womanizer, which Ben-Gurion excused because Dayan was ‘cast from biblical material’ like King David – or Admiral Nelson: ‘You have to get used to it’, he told Dayan’s heartbroken wife, Ruth. ‘Great men’s private and public lives are often conducted on parallel planes that never meet.’

As Eban reported that America did not approve military action, but nor would it move to prevent it, Dayan showed his cool grasp of strategy. He stressed that Israel had to strike the Egyptians at once while avoiding any confrontation with Jordan. His Jerusalem commander Uzi Narkiss challenged him: what if Jordan attacked Mount Scopus? ‘In that case,’ replied Dayan drily, ‘bite your lip and hold the line!’