Quote Originally Posted by Kralizec View Post
Was an Arab attack really a probable scenario then? I've read much about it but my impression was that it probably wasn't. The troops that Egypt sent into the Sinai were more for propaganda purposes than anything else. It was about visibly/theatricly retaking the land after it had been a UN administered buffer zone forcibly imposed on them after the Suez crisis, which unquestionably was an unprovoked attack by Israel (& friends). And the Arab performance during this war suggests that they were not just surprised but completely unprepared for any sort of war, unlike the Yom Kippur war several years later.

In any case, it's hard to see why Palestinians should pay for the policies of their Arab neighbours.
I saw some history channel stuff that said that Egypt and Syria, in particular, were forward deploying air assets and were putting afv's through their "fresh tracks to be ready" maintenance. There is also some suggestion that efforts were being made to up morale prior to an assault. It is, of course, every bit as probable that this was part of the ongoing posturing common to that era. The general assessments that I have read -- admittedly from sources neutral to or even supportive of Israel -- suggest that an attack was likely. Nobody can prove that one had been ordered and the various Arab states publicly asserted that they had no such intention.