Guy Laron is a Lecturer in the International Relations Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and visiting fellow at St. Antony’s College (2014-2015). Previously he had been a visiting scholar at Maryland, Tel-Aviv and Nortwestern universities. He researches the Cold War in the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. His first book is Origins of the Suez Crisis: Postwar Development Diplomacy and the Struggle over Third World Industrialization, 1945–1956 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and his articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as Journal of Cold War Studies, Middle East Journal and Third World Quarterly.

Abstract:
Syria’s claim in early May 1967 that Israel was about to attack it was one of the reasons that Egypt mobilized its troops, a decision which had initiated a wave of counter-mobilizations and started the slide toward the June 1967 war. On a more fundamental level, Syria was also the reason that the Arab-Israeli conflict was heating up in the mid-1960s. Since 1963, its Baath regime hosted and supported Palestinian guerrilla organizations, retaliated forcefully against any Israeli attempt to till fields in the demilitarized zones, and tried to divert the tributaries of the Jordan River, one of Israel's main sources of water. On the face of it, Syrian moves made little sense. Syria was too weak to confront Israel. Why would it court military disaster? The explanation lies in the conflict between officers from impoverished background with socialist leanings and the affluent commercial and land owning elite.

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