No Samu Incident

[luakel]

See here for info.

Just assume that either the soldiers miss the mine or Israel doesn't attack afterwards. What kind of consequences would this have, especially if the Six-Day War still happens?

 

[Dave Howery]

the article is a bit misleading in that it claims that the mine was the sole cause of the raid... the Israelis had been dealing with cross border raids by the PLO for some time, and determined that al-Samu was the base of some of them. The mine was more of a 'last straw', not the sole cause. Even without the mine, it's likely that further raids would have prompted the reprisal....

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

the article is a bit misleading in that it claims that the mine was the sole cause of the raid... the Israelis had been dealing with cross border raids by the PLO for some time, and determined that al-Samu was the base of some of them. The mine was more of a 'last straw', not the sole cause. Even without the mine, it's likely that further raids would have prompted the reprisal....

The Israelis had been in secret meetings with King Hussein for three years to coordinate dealing with terror attacks. The raid was entirely counterproductive in that it greatly raised tensions, didn't strike at the real problem (Syria), undermined the only friendly leader and made his future cooperation problematic, and perhaps made war inevitable, which voluminous records show is what the Israeli military wanted.

This is an interesting site reprinting a TIME article about the events in 1966 - it sounds like an atrocity plain and simple. The Israelis moved into a town, detroyed the houses and the mosque, and ambushed and massacred Jordanian soldiers, who had had nothing to do with the raids on Israel. The raid even managed to unite the USSR and USA in condemnation.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,843082,00.html

 

[Dave Howery]

The Israelis had been in secret meetings with King Hussein for three years to coordinate dealing with terror attacks. The raid was entirely counterproductive in that it greatly raised tensions, didn't strike at the real problem (Syria), undermined the only friendly leader and made his future cooperation problematic, and perhaps made war inevitable, which voluminous records show is what the Israeli military wanted.

This is an interesting site reprinting a TIME article about the events in 1966 - it sounds like an atrocity plain and simple. The Israelis moved into a town, detroyed the houses and the mosque, and ambushed and massacred Jordanian soldiers, who had had nothing to do with the raids on Israel. The raid even managed to unite the USSR and USA in condemnation.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,843082,00.html

oh, I'll agree that the raid was entirely unhelpful and unwise... that Israel wanted war, I don't agree. War was always hugely costly to Israel, as it tied up workers in reserve duty, workers who weren't producing anything. When the Arabs basically went a bit hysterical and surrounded Israel in '67, the Israelis weren't jumping for joy and saying "oh boy, it's war!"... they were damn near terrified....

but... I'm not going to argue on this subject anymore, as we're just rehashing what we've argued about on that other thread Instead, I'm going to respond to the original post and say that if the raid on al-Samu hadn't occurred when it did, it would likely have occurred later, or something similar to it. No matter what Hussein intended to do, he seemed to have little control of the West Bank, and the PLO were crossing the border at will. Thus, the Israelis were bound to make a reprisal sooner or later...