Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s International Editor (former Middle East Editor), has been covering the region since 1989 and is uniquely placed to explain its complex past and its troubled present. We have decided that this battle will be one for the final liberation from imperialism and Zionism...We shall meet in Tel Aviv. This is a well researched book and weaves the palace intrigues as reported by various key political and military players with information gleaned from official records and first hand accounts from the field to give a blow by blow account of the war. It takes its time to establish the context of the war, which I appreciated given how dynamic the Middle East is/ was. The six days of action are also well narrated and I had little trouble if any with following the action, though I did digress several times to look up maps and Wikipedia entries on people, places, and events, as any good history buff should when reading. I just wish the author had been as careful in recounting the aftermath and that the book had elaborated on the thesis implied by that subtitle: the last chapter does a somewhat hurried job of this and disappoints a bit in by questioning whether or not this conflict on its own was as significant as suggested or not! I felt a bit cheated! One laughs (or cries, it depends) at the yawning gap between the Arab leaders grandiose and extravagant claims and military moves in the months prior to the war (whether they meant any of it or not is almost besides the point; they probably did not, but they all said it, and they, especially the Egyptians, moved troops around as if they meant it) and the actual abilities of their tinpot regimes. The lower level Arab units were brave enough, but the senior echelons (except in the relatively competent Jordanian army) were sub-standard and the top leadership was criminally incompetent and utterly buffoonish. Whether Israel laid a trap and they fell into it, or it was a series of accidents and bad decisions, or something in between, the bare facts are brutal. Perhaps the best way to look at it is to note that the gap between the two cultures was just too great; the Arab buffoonery and grandstanding itself being just one manifestation of that tremendous cultural gap. And 15-20,000 ordinary soldiers and junior officers paid the ultimate penalty for it.

The Making of the Modern Middle East - Pan Macmillan The Making of the Modern Middle East - Pan Macmillan

This is a wonderfully original book, a merciless reconstruction of the British and French mandates in the Middle East as local contemporaries would have experienced them.'Area “A” was to be under French influence and control, while “B” was to be under British influence and control. The Sykes-Picot Agreement also proposed an “international administration” for Palestine. The book offers some much-needed relief from fatalism. If anything emerges with any clarity in reconsidering the details of what Israelis call "The Six Day War" and Arabs try not to call anything at all, it's the minute distance that can separate one course of events from another.

The Making of the Modern Middle East | University of Oxford

Bowen tells a conventional political history. He's very good at getting inside key ruler's heads and uncovering the political calculus. This was powerful when explaining Syria from the perspective of Assad, someone who married a Londoner and friend of Blair and saw himself as a moderniser but went on to butcher his own people. Soviet Ambassador Sergei Chuvakhin privately informs Abba Eban that his government has decided to sever relations with Israel, "then, to the foreign minister's astonishment, the Soviet ambassador burst into tears." As documented well by Ari Shavit, in the aftermath of the war Jews were rapidly expelled from all over the Arab territories. Confidence in Arab regimes was perhaps tainted, but not shattered. In 1973 everyone would again make a go at it before suffering similar humiliation and no liberation of occupied territories. Meanwhile, Israel would be left with a long legacy of occupation and abuse of Palestinians. Interestingly, the author does not mention much about the nuclear question. As Shavit points out, the Israelis had long since completed a nuclear reactor with the aid of France, and likely had nuclear arms by 1967. If Tel Aviv had been in danger of falling, might Israel have started a nuclear war? I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.To get a sense of the broken promises, it’s worthwhile comparing the Sykes-Picot Agreement to two other contemporary documents. These are the McMahon-Hussein letters and the 1917 Balfour Declaration.