Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970 (review)

Abstract

128 SHOFAR Summer 1993 Vol. 11, No. 4 quantity and quality of data is due in no small measure to the richness of documentation from the Cairo Geniza and to the impressive corpus of publisned Geniza research by Goitein, Mann, Assaf, Gil himself, and many others. Gil describes PalestinianJewry from within and without. The complexities ofcommunal organization are carefully delineated, as are the ongoing relations between it and the rest of world Jewry. Gil emphasizes the elements ofJewish communal continuity in the land from the days of the Second Commonwealth to the Islamic Middle Ages. The Palestinian Yeshiva was, as he repeatedly points out, not the heir but the living continuation of the Sanhedrin. The final brief chapter (pp. 826-837) surveys the event that not only marked the end of nearly five centuries of Muslim rule in Palestine, but constituted the death blow for its autochthonous Jewish community. The Crusader conquest totally transformed the demography of Palestine and brought to a disastrous close the period that Gil has so admirably reconstructed. Scholars will debate many of the points made by Gil, but none who deal with this period will be able to ignore his work. Norman A. Stillman Judaic Studies and History Departments State University of New York, Binghamton Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970, by David A. Korn. Boulder, co: Westview Press, 1992. 326 pp. $36.00. The War ofAttrition ofMarch 1969 to August 1970 between Israel and Egypt, which has been regarded as a passing event in the course of the Arab-Israeli Wars, is the one most disregarded by researchers. But the War of Attrition was a major confrontation and acquired a unique character distinguishing it frol]l the other wars for two main reasons: the special type of war it was, and Soviet direct military intervention in the war. David A. Korn's book on the War of Attrition is an important contribution to the understanding of this chapter of violence in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Based on interviews with Americans, Israelis, and Egyptians as well Book Reviews 129 as on documents that were never published, including his personal notes from the period he was a deputy chief and the chief of the political section at the American embassy in Israel from 1967 to 1971, the book offers a very detailed account of the events between 1967 and 1970. There are two main sections in this book-the first (the first four chapters) describes the background of the War of Attrition, while the second (the remaining ten chapters) gives the account of the war itself. In the first section Korn reviews the problems created by the Six-Day War that led to the War of Attrition. The Six-Day War had had decisive results on three levels, and therein lay the seeds of the War of Attrition. The most momentous result was the new territorial situation that was seen from the start by all parties concerned-Israel, the Arab States, and the superpowers -as a situation that would have to be altered. The second outcome of the Six-Day War was the decisive gap in the relative military power ofIsrael and Egypt, given the overwhelming Israeli victory in the war. The third outcome was a central function of the other two: the increased involvement of the superpowers, mainly the Soviet Union, in the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the close of the Six-Day War both sides to the conflict, Israel and Egypt, sought to find a political solution to the crisis created in the war's aftermath, but the kind and shape of the political solution was conceived of in different fashion by each side. While Egypt insisted that Israel get out of all the territories occupied in the Six-Day War but would not agree to give Israel full peace even if it did withdraw, Israel aspired to gain full peace with its Arab neighbors while still retaining some of the territory it captured from them in the Six-Day War. The international attempts, including Gunnar Jarring's mediating efforts and U.S.-Soviet exchanges, failed not only to resolve the conflict but also to...