ABSTRACT
Half a century has gone by yet historians have so far failed to agree about the precise degree of responsibility of the two sides for originating the first world war. Before 1967, as before 1956, Soviet arms flowed into the Near East. The Secretary-General of the United Nations may have been acting in accordance with what was legal. The United Nations soldiers kept the peace along the border and symbolized the freedom of all ships to use the Gulf of Aqaba. The very rapidity of this initial success incited the gambler to a second throw of the dice. The American President, weighed down by an interminable war in the Far East and rightly suspecting Soviet influence behind Egypt's defiance, promised diplomatic aid so hesitantly that he provoked a chain reaction on both sides which led infallibly to the explosion. The Arabs were fired by hope, the Israelis, whom everyone had deserted, by the fierce ardour of despair.
