Israeli PM Sharon considered staging military coup in 1967

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has acknowledged he considered a military coup as the only way to force Israel into war against Egypt in 1967, in a military review published on Tuesday.

The army has been widely reported to have exerted fierce pressure on the government to declare what has become known as the Six-Day War, but that Sharon or any other generals contemplated a military putsch comes as a revelation.

In a first-hand account published in the defence ministry’s Maarakhot review, Sharon admitted to having seen a time when the army could "take power to persuade the government" to launch a pre-emptive strike against Egypt.

"For the first time, I felt such a thing could happen in Israel and that it would be welcomed," by the people, Sharon was quoted as saying in the study.

"That isn’t to say that the army would have seized power and led the country, but made decisions" instead of civil administrators, Sharon added. At the time, he commanded an armoured division in southern Israel.

Stressing that no concrete plot was ever drawn up, Sharon confirmed that the then army chief of staff and future prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, did not rule out the option after he discussed it with him.

In what historians have called the "generals’ revolt", Sharon and other senior officers demanded the then Labour prime minister, Levy Eshkol, declare war against Egypt in a meeting on May 28, 1967.

The military maintained that Israel must strike first, regarding a huge buildup of Egyptian armed forces in the Sinai peninsula and in the Red Sea as a clear casus belli. Eshkol refused, holding out for international assistance that never arrived. Finally, he ordered an attack on June 5, setting off the Six-Day War.

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-daily/17-11-2004/world/w10.htm