Moshe Dayan - Six-Day War (1967)

Six-Day War (1967)

Moshe Dayan was covering the Vietnam War to observe modern warfare up close after his political life. In fact, he was on patrol as an observer with members of the US Marine Corps. Although Dayan did not take part in most of the planning before the Six-Day War of June 1967, he personally oversaw the capture of East Jerusalem during the 5 – 7 June fighting. During the years following the war, Dayan enjoyed enormous popularity in Israel and was widely viewed as a potential Prime Minister. At this time, Dayan was the leader of the hawkish camp within the Labor government, opposing a return to anything like Israel's pre-1967 borders. He once said that he preferred Sharm-al-Sheikh (an Egyptian town on the southern edge of the Sinai Peninsula overlooking Israel's shipping lane to the Red Sea via the Gulf of Aqaba) without peace, to peace without Sharm-al-Sheikh. He modified these views later in his career and played an important role in the eventual peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. In 1997, years after Dayan died, an Israeli journalist, Rami Tal, published conversations he had with Dayan in 1976. In that conversation Dayan claimed that 80 percent of the cross-border clashes between Israel and Syria in the years before the war were a result of Israeli provocation (Dayan was not Defense minister at the time). He admitted:

I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.

Also, later, he stated his regrets:

I made a mistake in allowing the Israel conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time .

He also portrayed the desire of the residents in the Kibbutzim beneath the Golan Heights that they be captured as stemming from the desire for their agricultural land and not primarily for security reasons. This description was hotly denied by the Kibbutz leaders (the Hula Valley kibbutzim did not get any land on the Golan).

Dayan's contention was denied by Muky Tsur, a longtime leader of the United Kibbutz Movement who said "For sure there were discussions about going up the Golan Heights or not going up the Golan Heights, but the discussions were about security for the kibbutzim in Galilee," he said. "I think that Dayan himself didn't want to go to the Golan Heights. This is something we've known for many years. But no kibbutz got any land from conquering the Golan Heights. People who went there went on their own. It's cynicism to say the kibbutzim wanted land."

About Dayan's comments, Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren has said

There is an element of truth to Dayan's claim, but it is important to note that Israel regarded the de-militarized zones in the north as part of their sovereign territory and reserved the right to cultivate them—a right that the Syrians consistently resisted with force. Syria also worked to benefit from the Jordan river before it flowed into Israel, aiming to get use of it as a water source; Syria also actively supported Palestinian resistance movements against Israel. Israel occasionally exploited incidents in the de-militarized zones to strike at the Syrian water diversion project and to punish the Syrians for their support of the Palestinian resistance. Dayan's remarks must also be taken in context of the fact that he was a member of the opposition at the time. His attitude toward the Syrians changed dramatically once he became defense minister. Indeed, on June 8, 1967, Dayan bypassed both the Prime Minister and the Chief of Staff in ordering the Israeli army to attack and capture the Golan.