The Military Defeat
Then came the second Tripartite Aggression, whose causes were more closely tied to the manner in which the Suez Canal was nationalized than to the Palestine issue. Nevertheless, its motives and objectives were no different from those of the first Tripartite Aggression, despite differences in the sophistication of its execution and the meticulousness of its orchestration.
This latest aggression inflicted upon the Arabs - all Arabs - a military defeat and a diplomatic defeat of such magnitude that it amounted to humiliation and disgrace. It reaffirmed to the Arabs their profound need for friendship with international communism, prompting them to cling to it in a way that nearly reached the point of no return.
This was precisely the Soviet Union’s goal: to encourage the Arabs - through both implicit and explicit signals - to rely on its intervention whenever the West intervened. It was also the Soviet strategy to entangle the Arabs in military armament so that they would bear hostility from the West far beyond what they could handle. The Soviets knew with certainty that the more the Arabs antagonized the West, the stronger their feeling of needing Soviet friendship would become.
When we were militarily defeated, the Soviet Union did not intervene to assist us, as the West did to support its ally, Israel. Very well! Their supporters explained that it could not intervene in a regional conflict where it lacked military bases, as the West had. The only option left to the Soviet Union was direct confrontation, which could lead to a global war involving nuclear weapons - a prospect it feared for its own sake and for the sake of humanity.
But why, then, did it not disclose this to the Arabs beforehand, before they became entangled in a conflict and burdened themselves with enmity they could not handle without its support? And why did it, in response to the movement of the Sixth Fleet, mobilize ten of its warships from the Black Sea through the straits toward the Arab regional waters? Did this not, in itself, suggest to the Arabs that it intended to intervene on their behalf if the West intervened on Israel’s behalf?
The Diplomatic Defeat
If only it had stopped at this betrayal and allowed the Arabs to rely on sound reasoning to secure a diplomatic victory after losing the military battle. For those who cannot depend on the power of arms may still find salvation through cunning and be guided by intellect. However, the Soviet Union, as if seeking to compensate the Arabs for its failure to support them militarily, rushed their cause to the United Nations and arrogated to itself the right to speak on their behalf. When the matter became deadlocked in the Security Council, the Soviets demanded, again on behalf of the Arabs, that an extraordinary session of the General Assembly be convened. Once more, they assumed the right to speak for the Arabs and present their cause and demands in a manner so excessive that it portrayed the Arabs as immature adolescents - incapable of action and wishing for the impossible.
It seemed as though the Soviet Union wanted to suggest to the Arabs - and indeed, it succeeded - that they could achieve in diplomacy what they had failed to achieve on the battlefield. The Arabs swayed by this suggestion, which led them into a diplomatic defeat that was, in truth, far more devastating than the military defeat.
The Soviet Union, in its stance toward the Arabs, revealed one of two tendencies - or perhaps both simultaneously: Either it was deliberately setting a trap for the Arabs, ensuring their defeat in every arena to drive them into dependence upon and subservience to it, or it was acting with good intentions, but with unparalleled degree of naivety and foolishness that knew no bounds. In either case, there is nothing in such behavior that should encourage the Arabs to befriend the Soviet Union.
