CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

and state practice evinced by the Osirak episode to be one firmly set against a right to
pre-emptive self-defence. 192
Yet this has not always been the case. By contrast, when Israel attacked Egypt pre-
emptively in 1967, there was general acceptance that she had acted with justification.
The series of UN Security Council Resolutions passed following the Israeli attack
demanded a cease-fire but fell short of any condemnation of the Israeli action. 193
UNSCR 242 of 22 November 1967 194 does, however, call for the withdrawal of Israeli
forces from the occupied territories. Hugh Beach concludes, therefore, that ‘the
international community condoned Israel’s pre-emptive action on the grounds that the
UAR had clearly signalled its imminent intention to attack, while rejecting as
disproportionate Israel’s occupation of the whole of Sinai.’ 195 Walzer, whilst fully
accepting the Israeli action as legitimate, nevertheless sees it requiring a major revision
of the legalist paradigm. 196 This is because, despite Egyptian rhetoric and aggressive
deployment of troops close to Israel’s borders, it is far from clear than any actual attack
was intended. Rather, argues Walzer, Nasser’s intention was to create a climate of fear
and thus seriously undermine Israel’s security without actually attacking at that time; he
could do this because of the imbalance of forces. Israel was almost entirely dependent
on the mobilization of reservists who could not be kept on active duty indefinitely,
whilst Egypt and her allies, Syria and Iraq, could keep large numbers of troops
deployed, threateningly, along the frontier for as long as they wished. Walzer describes
the Israeli position, therefore, as one of ‘just fear’. He formulates the revised legalist
paradigm as: ‘States may use military force in the case of threats of war, whenever the
failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence.
Under such circumstances it can fairly be said that they have been forced to fight and
that they are victims of aggression.’ 197 Taking a domestic law analogy, he asks us to
consider the circumstances of an unstable society: ‘a state under threat is like an
individual hunted by an enemy who has announced his intention of killing or injuring
him. Surely such a person may surprise his hunter, if he is able to do so.’ 198
The different international responses to the Caroline Case, Osirak and the 1967 Six-Day
War suggest that rather than a clear cut right or wrong view of anticipatory action,
227