ABSTRACT
The years between 1967 and 1973 can truly be termed the ‘crisis years’ of the Cold War era in the Middle East.1 This is not to say that regional conflict was unique to this period. But the concentration of important events – from the outbreak of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, through the March 1969-August 1970 War of Attrition, the September 1970 crisis in Jordan and the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war – makes this period exceptional even in the contemporary history of the Middle East.2 Not only that, but the events of 1967-73 have left a lasting mark on the subsequent history of the region. If the 1967 war changed the fundamentals of the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of land and legitimacy, the War of Attrition and the October 1973 war confirmed that it could not be resolved by way of conventional interstate military struggle. Not only that, but the subsequent terms of the Palestinian national conflict were largely defined during this period. Although the ‘Jordan is Palestine’ slogan remained a favourite of certain Israeli politicians, such as Ariel Sharon, through the 1980s,3 in reality the Hashemite regime’s success in defeating the PLO challenge in Jordan during 1970 ruled out the possibility of any solution to the Palestinian national problem outside the boundaries of the post-1922 Palestine mandate. If the label ‘crisis years’ is eminently applicable to this period, then,
what of the claim that these events can be defined as being part of the ‘Cold War era’. To contemporary protagonists, this claim would have been uncontroversial. The Cold War was the main defining feature of the international political landscape between at least 1948 and 1989. Key statesmen who shaped policy between 1967 and 1973 did so as though the Cold War, in one form or another, would be an enduring feature of international politics for the foreseeable future. For all his operational skill within this system, US National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, like most of his contemporaries, gave little thought to the possibility that the end of the Cold War system itself might be in sight.4 Since the end of the Cold War, though, scholars have increasingly questioned the nature and significance of its impact on the Middle East. This is no doubt in part for the simple reason that the end of
the Cold War did not witness the resolution of conflict in the region. For Fred Halliday, ‘for all its participation in a global process, and the inflaming of inter-state conflict, the Cold War itself had a limited impact on the Middle East.’ 5 Amplifying his thoughts in respect of the key developments in the period, Halliday contends that ‘most of what occurred in the Middle East during this period could have taken place without the Cold War at all: the Arab-Israeli dispute, the rise of Arab nationalism, the emergence of the oil-producing states . . . – none of these was centrally reliant on the Cold War for its emergence and development.’ 6 But, the post-Cold War historiographical current has not flowed only in one direction. On the contrary, for Fawaz Gerges, ‘the intrusion of the Cold War into regional politics exacerbated regional conflicts and made their resolution more difficult. This intrusion had devastating repercussions for the security and stability of the whole area.’7
