The tense situation in the Middle East has teetered on the edge of all-out war several times this spring — no more so than when Israel launched its incursion into the West Bank after a Palestinian terrorist killed more than 20 Israelis at a Passover seder. In this context, a new book by Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press), has special relevance. Oren, a former aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and author of 1993’s Origins of the Second Arab-Israel War: Egypt, Israel and the Great Powers 1952-56 (Frank Cass & Co.), is a scholar and senior fellow at the Shalem Center, in Jerusalem. For his latest book, he delved into reams of previously unavailable documents and primary material from Israel, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union.

Q: People often argue that the 1967 war was a war of conquest to effect the occupation of Palestinians. Was that what you found in your research?

A: No. Israel did everything possible not to conquer the West Bank. This was supposed to be a two-day war with very limited objectives: the destruction of the Egyptian Air Force and the neutralization of the first of three Egyptian lines of defense in Sinai. When it came to the West Bank, Israel went to great lengths not to engage in battle there. It essentially sat quietly while Egypt poured thousands of shells into West Jerusalem [and] while Jordanian planes strafed Israeli cities. And it wasn’t until the Jordanians started shelling airfields and then started moving troops into West Jerusalem that there was a reaction.

Q: Didn’t the Israelis also quietly make an overture to King Hussein to get him to stay out of it?

A: There were two overtures. The first one was on June 5th. It said to Hussein, " You don’t open fire, we won’t open fire. " Hussein didn’t answer it. He opened fire. Israel didn’t open fire. The second message was sent on June 7th. That was when Israel had already conquered most of the West Bank and had surrounded the Old City of Jerusalem. This memo was a huge gamble. I was shocked when I found it. It exists only in the archive in Britain. The memo says, " If you, Hussein, retake control of your army and get rid of the Egyptian generals [Egypt had taken control of the Jordanian Army] and declare an unconditional surrender and agree to some kind of future agenda for talks with us, we won’t take the Old City and we’ll stop taking the West Bank. " Levi Eshkol, the prime minister, was willing to forgo the millennial Jewish dream just to stop the fighting.

Q: Explain from your research the kind of pressure these Arab regimes are under. What should Americans understand about the way these governments operate?

A: They’re not under democratic control. The Saudis are a little bit better than most because they have Islamic legitimacy — most of [these regimes] don’t even have that. They can’t trace their ancestry back to the prophet. That means every step they take has to be with an eye to what the [Arab] street is doing, how the street is going to react, whether this is going to touch off a revolt. Recently, we’ve finally seen the explosion of an Arab myth that you could have your belligerency with Israel and despotism too. If you say people can only protest about Israel — they can’t protest about taxes, they can’t protest about lack of habeas corpus, lack of freedom of speech — the protests against Israel invariably become anti-government riots. It just happened with these protests in Egypt and Jordan, which had to be dispersed by the army [recent anti-Israel riots in these countries turned into riots protesting Egyptian and Jordanian government]. That said, these regimes are a little bit more secure today because they have Western intelligence systems that allow them to spy on their own people.