1967: rage. 2016: calm In 1967, the Arab world went to war ‘to throw Israel into the sea.’ In 2016, the Arab world welcomes Israel to the sea.
The formal cause of the Six Day War in 1967 — when many Arab armies threatened Israel and the rest of the Arab world cheered them on — was the closure of the Straits of Tiran. This would choke Israel, cutting the country off from commerce. This is a formal casus belli.
The closure was quite deliberate. Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser, the leading Arab head of state at the time, boasted that Egypt would throw Israel into the Mediterranean Sea. The goal of the Arab states was clear, explicit, enthusiastic and confident: the destruction of Israel.
Things turned our rather differently. Rather than routing Israel, the Arab armies were routed. The Egyptian air force was destroyed in the first hours of the war. The army of Jordan was repulsed and the Western Wall was reopened to the Jewish people. The army of Syria was repulsed and Israel banished it from the Golan Heights, from which Syria rained down shells on defenseless Israeli kibbutzim below. The West Bank fell into Israeli hands — because Jordan lost a war that it, along with other Arab states, provoked.
In fact, Israel begged Jordan’s King Hussein via secret channels not to invade Israel. Had Hussein listened, Israel never would have fought in and conquered the West Bank — surely a salutary lesson for all those who complain about the Israeli “occupation.”
My, how things have changed, astonishingly so. Forty-nine years after the Six Day War of 1967, Egypt has agreed to hand over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia as part of a plan to build a bridge over the sea between the two countries. Whoa! Would matters revert to the 1967 casus belli? Would ships bound for Israel be closed out of the new Egyptian-Saudi arrangement? Would Israel still have access to the passage through the Straits of Tiran? As if it were the most natural thing in the world, these formerly mortal enemies of Israel — Egypt and Saudi Arabia — voluntarily consulted with Israel on the matter. Israel Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon announced: “An appeal was made to us — and it needed our agreement, the Americans who were involved in the peace agreement [between Egypt and Israel], and the MFO [the Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping forces mandated under the Egypt-Israel peace accord and stationed on the Egypt-Israel borer].”
No war. No massing of armies on the Israel border. No threats of driving Israel into the sea. Rather: consultation.
“We reached an agreement,” said Defense Minister Yaalon, “between the four parties — the Saudis, the Egyptians, Israel and the US — to transfer the responsibility for the islands, on condition that the Saudis fill in the Egyptians’ shoes in the military appendix of the peace agreement.”
Saudi Arabia agreed! Israel consented! JTA reports: “Saudi Arabia, which does not have formal relations with Israel, pledges to abide by the principles that have governed Israeli-Egyptian relations since their 1979 peace treaty, Haaretz reported.”
According to the treaty, the Straits of Tiran and the entire Gulf of Aqaba are interational waterways open to free passage by Israel and overseen by the international observers.
The islands being relinquished to Saudi Arabia, Tiran and Sanafir, stand at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. The Israeli city of Eilat and the Jordanian city of Aqaba are located at the northern tip of the Gulf. They live together in peace.
This is how peace works: Consultation. Reason. Good will. Communication. Peace could work this way with the Palestinians, too — if they want it.
It’s as simple as that.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
