rounding American arms sales to the Arabs, and (2) the scope and limit of Israeli and American involvement in the 1990-1991 war in the Middle East. Time-sensitive documents such as newspaper reports will be used to track the issues involved.
The relationship between the United States and Israel, which is often referred to as "special" in various media, can be viewed from 1986 onward only with appropriate reference made to events occurring years earlier, notably the famed 1967 six-day war, in which Israel's selfsufficiency as a nation was put to a decisive test. A capsule review of the event and its implications, coming some 20 years later, sets forth the context in which the emergence of Israel in new terms occurred:
For-the Israelis, the Six-Day War began as a nightmare and ended as a miracle, and it retains a deep and lasting hold on the Israeli psyche. In the dark days before June 5, while Lyndon Johnson urged restraint, Charles de Gaulle canceled arms shipments to Tel Aviv, and Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia moved forces toward Israel's border as Egypt sent thousands of troops into the Sinai and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, visions of a, second Holocaust filled the air here. . . . To the kibbutzniks, the Six-Day War was an act of self-liberation (Frankel, 1987, p. 6)
To put it another way, Israel had "arrived" on the international scene, although with victory in war came problems associated with Arab Palestinian residents of Israel and the territories in the Sinai, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights either occupied or annexed by Israel. The Israeli victory, coupled with the tradition of American support, both enhanced the prestige of Israel and placed it at almost permanent odds with the Arab nations that bordered it. The American dilemma for United States-Israeli relations was to develop myriad aspects over the next 20 years, but it had at its core the American wish to be on reasonable if not affable ...