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Historians will long argue whether a real chance for peace existed after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War. Perhaps the Arabs were too beaten and humiliated to negotiate. In any case, the Israeli offers of "generous" terms and the return of most of the conquered Arab lands gradually turned to a popular satisfaction in Israel with the extended space that the nation now had to breathe in, beyond the reach of Arab guns. Plenty of room and a strong arm, always at the ready, became the Israeli formula for survival, and anything else—U.N. resolutions, roving ambassadors, third-party mediations, Arab proposals—was politely listened to, but in the end rejected as false security. Against Arab hate and Soviet arms, Israelis were scornful of promises and leary of guarantees; by their own strength they had survived, and would survive.
Though the U.S. is the best friend the Israelis have, and President Nixon is steadfast in their support, the U.S. Government has never agreed with the hardening Israeli line on territorial expansion as its only and surest protection. A month before the fighting broke out, Nixon acknowledged that "both sides are at fault" for the failure of a peace settlement in the Middle East. Israel, though dismissing the U.N. and often caustic about the validity of world opinion, is not indifferent to the reactions of others, particularly in the U.S. The proof is its decision deliberately to await an Arab attack rather than to strike preemptively.
As the battle rages distantly and violently on both sides of the canal, anyone who questions Israel's wisdom in having hung onto the vast uninhabited buffer space that it seized in the Sinai apparently cannot now get much of a hearing in the streets of Tel Aviv. The answer that will not be listened to is really a question: Would the fourth round of fighting have come so soon, and would it have been fought with such Arab tenacity, had not the Egyptians felt a just grievance at the loss of their lands east of Suez, and believed that what was held by the sword could only be freed by the sword?