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MIDDLE EAST HISTORY

In the judgment of diplomat Anthony Nutting, who knew Nasser and wrote a biography of him: "For all his faults, Nasser helped to give Egypt and the Arabs that sense of dignity which for him was the hallmark of independent nationhood....Egypt and the whole Arab world would have been the poorer, in spirit as well as material progress, without the dynamic inspiration of his leadership." (Heikal, 432)

Nasser's greatest defeat was the Six Day War. The Arab world's defeat by Israel resulted in the Israeli occupation of Syria's Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in Palestine and, a heavy blow for Egypt in particular, Sinai. Above all, however, the fall of Jerusalem to Israeli hands, is still seen as the biggest shame associated with 1967 throughout the Arab world (Stephens, 187).

It is generally considered that Egypt initiated the crisis leading to the 1967 war by taking actions which forced the Israelis to plan a preventive war to avoid destruction Nasser planned of a three-way assault against Israel from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. A contrasting view of many Middle East specialists and Arab political leaders is that Israel instigated the crisis by fooling the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Soviet diplomats in turn led both Syria and Egypt to believe that Israel was massing troops to attack Syria, prompting Nasser to begin preparations to come to Syria's aid. President Nasser obviously overreacted in the spring of 1967 by asking that the United Nations forces in the Sinai Peninsula separating Egyptian and Israeli troops be withdrawn. This suddenly put Egyptian forces back in control of the Strait of Tiran, at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, which Nasser then declared closed to Israeli shipping, a move unacceptable to Israel. It also was unacceptable to the U.S. which had secretly guaranteed, when it forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai in 1957, that the strait would remain open (Parker, 175).

Nasser's "mind...

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MIDDLE EAST HISTORY. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:29, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1694720.html