After Washington he returned to Jerusalem, and in the year before the Six-Day War, as Deputy Director-General of the Foreign Ministry, he was the ministry’s point man for the effort to resume El Al flights over the Straits of Tiran, halted since 1955.
Memoranda from El Al, from his assistant Uri Berger and from Foreign Minister Abba EbanForeign Minister, 1966–1974.What they wanted: To present Israel to the world as a country seeking peace, and to win support for it.More on Abba Eban in “People and events” → reached his desk, and on 4 January 1967 he and Naftali Ben-Yehuda of the Transport Ministry sent a joint letter to the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Transport. Five months later Gamal Abdel NasserPresident of Egypt, 1956–1970.More on Gamal Abdel Nasser in “People and events” → closed the straits.
The historian Eitan Barak reconstructed the affair from the file at the State Archives.
A fork in the road
A right on paper, against a danger in the air.
Fly
The price: Risking an incident with Egypt.
Quietly give it up
The price: A right left unused wears away.
And what happened?
In May 1967 Egypt closed the straits to Israeli shipping, and war broke out.
Sources (1)
Israel and the world
The straits, at sea and in the air
The Straits of Tiran are Eilat’s gateway to the Red Sea. After the 1956 Sinai war, in which Israel briefly took the peninsula, they opened to Israeli shipping, but in the air, the research shows, Israel never enjoyed the same freedom. In May 1967 Gamal Abdel NasserPresident of Egypt, 1956–1970.More on Gamal Abdel Nasser in “People and events” → closed the straits, and Israel saw it as a cause for war.
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