They were digging graves in parks
Efraim Halevy, who joined Mossad in 1961 and served as its head from 1998-2002, talks about his view of the war from inside Israel’s intelligence agency
EFRAIM HALEVY served as head of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, between 1998 and 2002. Born in London in 1934, his family emigrated to Israel just before it gained independence in 1948. He joined Mossad in 1961 and, three weeks before the Six-Day War, was promoted to deputy head of TEVEL, the department in charge of relations with foreign intelligence services. A day later, Egypt began massing troops near Israel’s border in Sinai and President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the UN peacekeeping forces to leave the peninsula. Even 50 years later, Mr Halevy is not at liberty to disclose many of the details of the Mossad’s activities during those fateful six days.
Were you as surprised in Mossad on May 16 by Egypt moving troops into Sinai as the rest of the Israeli security establishment? service’s research department was founded only seven years later, as part of the lessons of the Yom Kippur War], but the entire intelligence community was surprised. There were no indications or expectation that it would happen. The annual national intelligence assessment [which is prepared in Israel by the IDF’s intelligence branch] was that war was unlikely to take place in 1967. The economic situation in Egypt had taken a downturn, they needed financial assistance and they were stuck in a failed military campaign in Yemen. All this led to the assumption that they wouldn’t want a war with Israel.
How did the intelligence community respond to the surprising developments?
The day after the Egyptian moved their forces, kicked out the UN observers and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, Mossad chief Meir Amit sent me to represent him at a meeting held by Aharon Yariv, head of the IDF intelligence branch. All the officers of his research department were there, trying to explain what Nasser was aiming at. They raised various theories and after 15 minutes Yariv lost patience, banged his fist on the table and shouted in English
— he had been an officer in the British Army during the Second World War — “not intentions, capabilities!”. In other words, there was no point in trying to understand Nasser. We had to assume we were going to war.
One of the key moments of secret diplomacy leading to the war was Mossad chief’s visit to Washington, where he received the understanding that the Johnson administration would not oppose Israel’s plans.
I helped prepare Amit’s visit to Washington. Foreign Minister Abba Eban had returned from Washington with the news that America was going lead an international armada to open the Straits of Tiran, but the intelligence community was very skeptical that was going to happen. The US was of course a key player, though they weren’t supplying us with arms at the time. Israelis were still traumatised by the way Eisenhower had joined [Russian leaders] Khrushchev and Bulganin in 1956 in forcing Israel to withdraw from Sinai after the Suez campaign. We needed to know how America would respond this time around. Amit returned with the understanding that for the Americans it was very important how the war would start, who fired the first shot. Which is why when Israel said at the start of the war that we acted because we knew the Egyptians were about to attack Israel. When Amit returned, he said to Prime Minister Eshkol, I’ve laid the foundations for the war.
The US government told us that it was very important for them how the war would start