Israel & Arabs sans the six days war

It is early May 1967 the Soviets do not bother with false information of an imminent Israeli attack on Syria and Nasser decides to leave well enough alone for the time being, he has that bothersome Yemeni affair to deal with as well after all. Egypt does not send her army in the Sinai, the straits of Tiran are not closed, Israel does not mobilize and operation Moked isn't launched either. Arab-Israeli relations will remain poisonous but there won't be war... this year at least. How do things go from there? Nasser is still going to die in a few years, though someone may argue that without the stresses of OTL he lives somewhat longer. Quite a lot will hang on his successor who may not be necessarily Sadat. And Israel continues being a close French ally, at least for the time being and if the alliance can make it past De Gaulle's retirement without war derailing things it may well be staning long term.

Thoughts?
 
Something's still going to happen, I think. The Six Day war didn't just sorta happen, and I remain skeptical about the theory that it was all because of the Soviets.

The fact is, Nasser looked weak because of his inability to win handily in Yemen; fighting against Israel looked like a good way to distract people (I think he was expecting an easy victory, but even a defeat against Israel would have been good for him at home, as indeed it was).

Syria-wise, Syria had been building the "Headwaters Diversion Project", an attempt to divert water in the Sea of Galilee/River Jordan catchment basin, Israel's major water source at the time (and today). Israel and Syria had been in low-level conflict over it, culminating in Israel bombing the construction sites in late April 1967 (the Six Day War was early June, for comparison).

Plus there had been continuous Fedayeen raids from both Gaza and the West Bank, including occasional action by regular forces from Jordan and Israel

While low-level conflict had been the rule since 1956 (and really, since 1948, this sort of stuff was one of the reasons Israel joined in 1956), the conflict over the Headwaters Diversion seems particularly problematic - Syria would have had to respond sooner rather than later or lose major, major face internally.

It's also worth noting that the French embargo came a little before the war, and was clearly pointed at Israel, which needs the arms more. It's widely seen by many as a part of a general French strategy of pivoting towards the Arab countries in the wake of decolonization, which in practice meant breaking with Israel. America stepping into the role actually predates the war slightly, as evidenced by Israel's sharing of a defected MiG 21 in 1966, which provided very valuable intelligence for the US. The US starting to fully back Israel - which doesn't start until months after the war, which actually left Israel with a period of several months where they basically didn't have a functioning air force because France wouldn't sell them any more parts or munitions - was mostly in response to what was perceived as full Soviet backing of Egypt and Syria...which was also basically the end result of a process running for a few years by then.

tl;dr something was inevitable. Maybe a couple months later, probably not much more than half a year.
 
maybe separate clashes instead of one all out war? One against Syria over the water, and another with Jordan later/sooner over the raiding?
 
It's also worth noting that the French embargo came a little before the war, and was clearly pointed at Israel, which needs the arms more. It's widely seen by many as a part of a general French strategy of pivoting towards the Arab countries in the wake of decolonization, which in practice meant breaking with Israel. America stepping into the role actually predates the war slightly, as evidenced by Israel's sharing of a defected MiG 21 in 1966, which provided very valuable intelligence for the US. The US starting to fully back Israel - which doesn't start until months after the war, which actually left Israel with a period of several months where they basically didn't have a functioning air force because France wouldn't sell them any more parts or munitions - was mostly in response to what was perceived as full Soviet backing of Egypt and Syria...which was also basically the end result of a process running for a few years by then.

tl;dr something was inevitable. Maybe a couple months later, probably not much more than half a year.

Regarding the French quite a bit resides with De Gaulle's perceptions... and given the man it is questionable that anyone sans himself knew what exactly he had in mind. Was it just rational strategic calculation against French common sentiments? Was getting ticked of by Israeli actions? Something in between? In all cases beyond "deliberate plan to dump Israel" which appears somewhat unlikely, survival of the Franco-Israeli relationship is probably within the realms of plausibility.
 
maybe separate clashes instead of one all out war? One against Syria over the water, and another with Jordan later/sooner over the raiding?

That's definitely possible. As it was, Jordan almost didn't involve itself (Israel would almost certainly have respected its neutrality).

The problem is, as I said in my first post, in 1967 Israel's running low on spare parts. Some people estimate they had only a few months' flight left, and it's uncertain whether they would have been able to fly two big campaigns, so there's a strong incentive to attack both Egypt and Syria at the same time, if there's any question that the other might attack if Israel attacked the one. Now, considering the presence of the UN in the Sinai before Nasser politely asked them to leave in mid May, it's possible that Israel would have just attacked Syria, believe that Egypt would stand by. For Egypt to stand by, though, would have been the final nail in the coffin of Egyptian claims of leading the Arab world. As Nasser was currently in the process of being embarrassed in Yemen, it seems unlikely that he'd want to let that happen...or, at least, it's likely that fairly paranoid Israeli generals would have felt that way.

In theory, I guess, with a UN peacekeeping force that doesn't completely fail at their job, the 6 Day War could have ended up just being an engagement with Syria, likely still ending in the annexation of something like the OTL Golan Heights. It's possible that without other distractions, Israel could have pressed a little further, but honestly there's not much to press - the present border is about 50km from Damascus, as the crow flies. And the Golan was fairly thinly populated, and with a lot of Druze; every further kilometer is more and more "regular" Sunni Arabs. Plus the Golan is a great defensive position - they form a pretty distinctive little plateau.

I still see conflict with Egypt in the future over Fedayeen raids from Gaza, though...though I guess Egypt could at some point actually cut them loose, in which case Israel would probably occupy them pretty quickly unless they could get a UN occupying force.

Funnily enough, if Egypt waits until Israel blows its load over Syria, and then invades even a few weeks later, they might catch Israel completely flat footed and might even be able to roll over Tel Aviv (though I suspect that Israel would be able to stop them around Netanya, especially if Jordan didn't cooperate with them - still, that's basically 2/3 of the Israeli population and like 80% of their land). I can't see Egypt withdrawing short of a UN sponsored intervention.

And Jordan remains tricky, though I guess that the conflict there could be kept to a low simmer until something like Black September happens - which, since this Jordan will have way more Palestinians, and more territory for the same smallish army to cover, probably go to the Palestinians, resulting in the establishment of the Republic of East Palestine where the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was. Honestly, Israel did Jordan a favor by conquering the West Bank (and Jordan knew that, which is why they refused its return).

Regarding the French quite a bit resides with De Gaulle's perceptions... and given the man it is questionable that anyone sans himself knew what exactly he had in mind. Was it just rational strategic calculation against French common sentiments? Was getting ticked of by Israeli actions? Something in between? In all cases beyond "deliberate plan to dump Israel" which appears somewhat unlikely, survival of the Franco-Israeli relationship is probably within the realms of plausibility.

Everything I've read says that De Gaulle actually really liked Israel and the Israelis. The issue was more one of realpolitik. In 1967, France had relatively recently pulled out of most of its African colonies, many of whom were Arab. It wanted to capitalize on its former colonies as potential economic partners - after all, they already spoke French and were used to French standards and such, and their militaries used French equipment, etc etc. But a lot of the Arab countries weren't so happy about France being Israel's main patron, so France had to choose between Israel and basically the whole Arab world.

As far as I can tell, "it wasn't personal, it was just business".

If France doesn't pivot towards the Arabs, there's no compelling reason that they and Israel can't stay friendly for as long as you want.
 
According to Wikipedia (yes, yes, I know, I know), Israel had one or two nuclear weapons by that time. So Egypt won't be getting as far as Tel Aviv Michandre. Which could end up being extremely nasty indeed!

Given where Israel's borders were in '67, they wouldn't have long to chose whether to use them or not either.
 
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