Alt-Hist Post-Six Days War

[Viking]

This is why we need someone to make a good PC game about this.

is there a TOAW scenario?

[Alatriste]

Alright, fine: American support of Israel becomes politically untenable and there's no one to save your asses in '73, no more Israel. 

Refresh my memory...how did we save their asses in '73?

Actually Israel fought in 1967 with European equipment, mostly French (and M48 tanks... but they were West German) The period 1967-1973 saw French and German weapons substituted by US ones, because European governments didn't support undefinite occupation of Sinai, Gaza, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, some would argue that the airlift provided ammo without which Israel wouldn't have been able to wage war for so long in 1973.

* * *

Regarding the original question, the most probable outcome has a name: Masadah (Hebrew מצדה, pronounced Metzada, from מצודה, metzuda, "fortress")

If Israel had expelled a whole community of hundreds of thousands of persons at bayonet point and destroyed all the mosques (why destroy the Dome alone? In this scenario you have no Muslims to visit them, not even one) American support would have become a political impossibility, Israel would have become a pariah state, as isolated as North Korea. In addition 'Islamic solidarity' would perhaps have become a reality rather than an empty word, and most Muslims, by far, aren't Arabs but Indonesians, Pakistanis, Indians, Bengalis, Central Asians, Afghans, Persians... 

Way to go, behaving like Pieter Botha or worse, losing all your friends and probably acquiring hundreds of millions of new enemies... all just to make the country a rectangle ethnically clean gaining some dry, hilly, generally barren lands not worth a dime. And regarding 'cleansing', it really pays to remember that there were lots of Arabs in Israel before 1967 including Druses. I bet Israelis would have seen with unreserved approval Druze veterans and their families (Israel's citizens all of them if I'm not wrong) expelled from harbours and airports, or worse, put in the borders and delivered to Egypt's and Syria's tender cares, weeks after having fought in the war...

And then - probably, I'm not a licensed augur, birds are not flying over me, and the pig's liver is ambiguous - when the Arabs (and others) had attacked in 1973 they would have overrun Israel and expelled everyone too... with a lot lof luck, because we can imagine far uglier outcomes.

This is the problem with most Alt-Hist scenarios. They dont depart from the real world to explore interesting, new alternatives, but happen in imaginary worlds from the start.

[Valmy]

because European governments didn't support undefinite occupation of Sinai, Gaza, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, some would argue that the airlift provided ammo without which Israel wouldn't have been able to wage war for so long in 1973.

So the Euros wanted Israel to hand those territories back without a peace treaty in exchange for nothing?

[Alatriste]

because European governments didn't support undefinite occupation of Sinai, Gaza, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, some would argue that the airlift provided ammo without which Israel wouldn't have been able to wage war for so long in 1973.

So the Euros wanted Israel to hand those territories back without a peace treaty in exchange for nothing?

That would assume all European countries shared the same posture, which even today would be doubtful and in 1967, a ludicrous idea... in short and very, very generally, we could say European position was that Israel wasn't even trying to negotiate a peace treaty, and using the absence of such a treaty to retain the territories.

More in detail, we are speaking almost exclusively about France, and only in a very secondary place about West Germany (sometimes we forget how different the world was in the 60s, West Germany was only beginning to build heavy military equipment, the Bundeswehr still used US weapons). The rest, including Great Britain, wasn't really committed one way or the other.

And the relations between Israel and France, that had been extremely friendly (in fact France was heavily involved in Israel's nuclear program in the 50s), had cooled significatively since De Gaulle became president. In fact, he declared an arms embargo against Israel three days before the war started (by the way, everyone knew a war was very probably going to start any day; Israel's surprise attack shouldn't have been surprising at all) but in true Gaullist fashion it didn't forbid the supply of spare parts and ammo, only the transfer of actual planes and vehicles; and even then, some were 'smuggled' to Israel, including small warships... items highly unlikely to have been built, tested and delivered without unofficial official approval (as Sir Humphrey Appleby would say).

The question became a part of the De Gaulle - United States extremely difficult relationship; the matter of France imposing a weapons embargo on Israel and America stepping in can't be treated without mentioning France's abandonment of NATO military structure, the 'Vive le Québec libre!' address, De Gaulle's polemic positions on Biafra and Vietnam...     

[CountDeMoney]

While useful, very little of the Airlifted equipment managed to be used by Israel during the War.

Great, so we got the embargo for nothing.

[Josquius]

RIP Israel.
It'd be interesting to think how Israel would be remembered after its wiped from the earth and all its citizens killed. Quite some irony there in the Jews being persecuted by the Nazis only to go that way themselves- I know some idiots say that these days but in this case it really would be so.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Given that the cold war was still going on I doubt Israel would left hanging out to dry in full. One of the sides would have no choice but to maintain links, even if just to counter the opposing party. Israel would, in effect, be no more than one of the other reprehensible regimes either side had as allies during the cold war.
Assuming Israel already had it's nukes by the time the next round comes along there'd be nuclear fire raining down on the mid-east. And in worst case: elsewhere too if excalation happens.

Let me put it differently: Rwanda, where the current regime is surrounded by at least a whiff of complicity in genocide, as well as being an active party in a war that killed millions, isn't isolated by Africans, Asians or Westerners. It has, in other words, done far worse than what the Jewish state would be guilty of had it expelled its muslims.

Anyways, any chance the Israelis had to clean the area of muslims was in 1948. It didn't happen, despite what many people think.

[Warspite]

I think a more interesting question is how Israel could have better handled the aftermath of '67 to its long-term political advantage - ie some sort of solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict and the Palestinian question.

[Alatriste]

Given that the cold war was still going on I doubt Israel would left hanging out to dry in full. One of the sides would have no choice but to maintain links, even if just to counter the opposing party. Israel would, in effect, be no more than one of the other reprehensible regimes either side had as allies during the cold war.
Assuming Israel already had it's nukes by the time the next round comes along there'd be nuclear fire raining down on the mid-east. And in worst case: elsewhere too if excalation happens.

Let me put it differently: Rwanda, where the current regime is surrounded by at least a whiff of complicity in genocide, as well as being an active party in a war that killed millions, isn't isolated by Africans, Asians or Westerners. It has, in other words, done far worse than what the Jewish state would be guilty of had it expelled its muslims.

Anyways, any chance the Israelis had to clean the area of muslims was in 1948. It didn't happen, despite what many people think.

Very good point, but we have better examples, because they are from the 60s and 70s and much closer to the hypothesis we are debating: South Africa and Rhodesia. On one hand the Cold War didn't avoid their isolation, but on the other that isolation wasn't complete, far from it...

Uhmmm... for starters, let's forget the NATO-Israel, WP-Arabs equivalence. Many Middle East countries, like Lebanon, Jordania, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. were on the Western side and used western weapons in the 60s and 70s. One could argue with some justification that perceived western support of Israel opened the door to the Soviets in the Arab countries, above all in Egypt and Syria (I mean British and French support in 1956, not US).

This said, the West would have faced a very difficult decision if Israel (or South Africa in the real world) had been on the verge of destruction due to a Soviet-backed invasion. Here nuclear weapons enter the scene, most experts think Israel acquired its first bombs after 1967, but before 1973... in other words, they didn't dissuade Sadat and Assad but we don't know what would have happened if Israel had felt national survival was unlikely and threatened to use them.

[Neil]

Does a limited nuclear exchange in the Mideast really matter?