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The Six-Day War (Hebrew: מלחמת ששת הימים transliteration: Milhemet Sheshet Hayamim), also known as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Six Days' War, or June War, was fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It began when Israel launched what was described as a preemptive war on its Arab neighbors; by its end Israel controlled the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.
780 killed, 46 combat aircraft downed, and 3,000 wounded
10,000-17,000 killed
The Jordan salient. June 5-7Conquest of Sinai. June 7-8The Battle of Golan Heights, June 9-10
Background
From 1953-1956 the IDF launched a number of large retaliatory strikes on Arab neighbours, which were designed in part to emphasise Israel's military superiority. Paradoxically, from 1954 onwards under the influence of the the IDF's new chief of staff Moshe Dayan the retaliatory strikes were also intended to provoke Arab states into war with Israel. Dayan wanted war and hoped that "a given retaliatory strike would embarrass or provoke the Arab state attacked into itself retaliating, giving Israel cause to escalate the shooting until war resulted - a war in which Israel could realize such major strategic objectives as the conquest of the West Bank or Sinai, or the destruction of the Egyptian Army" (Morris, 1997, pp. 190-191). The Gaza incident on February 1955, in which the IDF killed forty Egyptian soldiers, was one such attack. Egypt had previously consistently discouraged Palestinian infiltration into Israel, but following this incident Egypt did begin to sponsor raids on Israel.
The 1956 Suez War was a military defeat, but a political victory, for Egypt. Heavy diplomatic pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union forced Israel to withdraw its military from the Sinai Peninsula (hence: Sinai) of Egypt which in exchange had agreed to stop allowing guerrillas to cross the border into Israel. As a result the border between Egypt and Israel quieted for a while.
At the time no Arab state had recognized Israel. The aftermath of the 1956 war saw the region return to an uneasy balance, maintained more by the competition among Egypt, Syria and Jordan than any real resolution of the region's difficulties. Egypt and Syria, aligned with the Soviet bloc, and Jordan, aligned with the West, maintained a constant pressure of guerilla raids on Israel.
In 1956, when the US withdrew its support of Egypt's Aswan High Dam facility, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez canal, a move which incensed Britain and France, who were the majority shareholders. The two former Middle Eastern colonial powers partnered with Israel, which attacked Egypt. This alliance quickly collapsed under the weight of overwhelming world condemnation. The US, USSR, and UN were uncharacteristically in agreement on the issue; the USSR even issued veiled threats to use nuclear missiles against Paris or London. Israel was able to obtain the stationing of a UN peacekeeping force in the Sinai, U.N.E.F. (United Nations Emergency Force), to keep that border region demilitarized.
In 1957, at the UN, 17 maritime powers declared that Israel had a right to transit the Straits of Tiran. Moreover, the Egyptian blockade prior to the 1956 Suez War possibly violated customary international law on innocent passage through international straits.
Several years later, in response to Israel's construction of the National Water Carrier, Syria initiated a plan to divert the waters of the Dan/Baniyas stream so that the water would not enter Israel and the Sea of Galilee, but rather flow through Syria to Jordan and into the Jordan river. In addition to sponsoring attacks against Israel (often through Jordanian territory, much to King Hussein's chagrin), Syria also began shelling Israeli civilian communities in north-eastern Galilee, from positions on the Golan Heights (It has been argued that this shelling was often deliberately provoked by Israeli incursions into, and settlement of, the Israel-Syria demilitarized zone). Although Israel destroyed the water-diversion facilities in 1964, the border remained a scene of constant conflict.
In 1966, Egypt and Syria signed a military alliance, initiated for both sides if either were to go to war.
On April 7, 1967, a minor border incident escalated into a full-scale aerial battle over the Golan Heights, resulting in the loss of seven Syrian MiG-21s to Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft, and the latter's flight over Damascus. Border incidents multiplied and numerous Arab leaders, both political and military, called for an end to Israeli reprisals. Egypt, then already trying to seize a central position in the Arab world under Nasser, accompanied these declarations with plans to re-militarize the Sinai. Syria shared these views, although it did not prepare for an immediate invasion. The Soviet Union actively backed the military needs of the Arab states. It was later revealed that on 13 May a Soviet intelligence report falsely claimed that Israeli troops were massing along the Syrian border.
File:Al-Farida, Lebanon pre-1967 war.jpgNasser (Egypt), backed by other Arab states, throws Israel into the sea. Pre-1967 War cartoon. Al-Farida newspaper, Lebanon
On May 17, Nasser demanded that U.N.E.F. evacuate the Sinai, a request with which UN Secretary-General U Thant complied. The UN asked to move its force to Israel, but Israel refused to allow UN peacekeepers to deploy on its territory on their belief that it was a breach of the cease fire agreement. Nasser began the re-militarization of the Sinai, and concentrated tanks and troops on the border with Israel. On May 23, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran (Israel's main shipping route to the south and particularly for oil) to Israeli shipping, and blockaded the Israeli port of Eilat at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba. Citing international law (United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, Geneva: UN Publications 1958, pp. 132–134), Israel considered the closure of the straits to be a casus belli. However, there is doubt that Israel had right of access to the port of Eilat via the Straits owing to the fact that the Arab States did not sign the Territorial Sea Covention specifically because of the inclusion of article 16(4) which sought to guarantee Israel that right (Christie, 1999, p. 104). Furthermore, even if an uncontested right of passage did exist under international law Israel was not entitled to attack Egypt to assert that right because the closure was not an "armed attack" as defined by article 51 of the UN Charter. Under the doctrine of proportionality Israel would only be entitled to use such force as would be necessary to secure its right of passage (Quigley, 1990, pp. 166-167). Almost overnight the tense Middle East had slid from a relatively stable status quo to the brink of regional war.
The few regional forces that might have prevented war quickly crumbled. Nasser's pan-Arabism had numerous supporters in Jordan (in spite of Hussein, who felt it threatened his authority); and so, on May 30, Jordan signed a mutual defense treaty with Egypt, thereby joining the military alliance already in place between Egypt and Syria. President Nasser, who had called King Hussein an "imperialist lackey" just days earlier, declared: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."
Several days later Jordanian forces were given to the command of an Egyptian general. Israel called upon Jordan numerous times to refrain from hostilities. Hussein, however, was caught on the horns of a galling dilemma: allow Jordan to be dragged into war and face the brunt of the Israeli response, or remain neutral and risk full-scale insurrection among his own people.
Israel's own sense of concern regarding Jordan's future role originated in Jordanian control of the West Bank. This put Arab forces just 17 kilometers from Israel's coast, a jump-off point from which a well co-ordinated tank assault could cut Israel in two within half an hour. Although the size of Jordan's army meant that Jordan was probably incapable of executing such a maneuver, the country was perceived as having a history of being used by other Arab states as staging grounds for operations against Israel; thus, attack from the West Bank was always viewed by the Israeli leadership as a threat to Israel's existence. At the same time several other Arab states not bordering Israel, including Iraq, Sudan, Kuwait and Algeria, began mobilising their armed forces.
Within Israel, some saw the chance to assure its territorial integrity and security by establishing a buffer zone. As Begin was to admit in 1982, Nasser didn't choose to attack Israel, Israel chose to attack Nasser. The view was, as reporter Mike Shuster put it, that Israel "was surrounded by Arab states dedicated to its eradication. Egypt was ruled by Gamal Abdel Nasser, a firebrand nationalist whose army was the strongest in the Arab Middle East. Syria was governed by the radical Baathist Party, constantly issuing threats to push Israel into the sea." With provocative acts of Nasser, including the blockade of the straits and the mobilisation in the Sinai, creating military and economic pressure, and the United States temporising because of its entanglement in Vietnam War, Israel's political and military elite came to feel that preemption was not merely militarily preferable, but transformative.
The same discussion was occurring in reverse in Egypt. Nasser gained effective military control over the forces of Jordan on May 30th with an alliance, and already had an alliance in hand with Syria. At the same time, Nasser believed that the Israeli's striking first would be disastrous for Israel's standing in world opinion, and he decided that his forces could manage the damage done by a first strike by Israel and still have enough force remaining to cut Israel in two, although some of his commanders believed that Egypt was in no position to fight. A third of its troops were bogged down in a civil war in Yemen, while Egyptian military communication and supply lines were in bad shape. With the blockade working on Israel's economic and military capacity, Nasser saw it as a matter of time before Israel would have to strike first. In the mean time, he continued to take actions intended to increase the level of mobilisation of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, in order to bring unbearable pressure on Israel.
Israel viewed the closure of the straits with some alarm, and tried various diplomatic routes to try settling them. The U.S. and U.K. were asked to open the Straits of Tiran, as they guaranteed they would in 1957. Jordan was asked by the Jewish lobby in the USA through numerous channels, weeks before the war, to refrain from entering the conflict. US officials assured Israel that Egypt's troop movements were demonstrative and without military intent. Israel's own government and intelligence officials concurred in this analysis. Nasser himself wrote that "I am not in a position to go to war" and Egypt believed that the issue of navigation in the Straits of Tiran was amenable to peaceable resolution. However, from the outset of the conflict Israel favoured war and rejected multilateral diplomacy or the use of the United Nations (see Rubenberg, 1989 pp. 107-110).
According to Israeli historian Michael Oren it was this situation in which the so-called "red telephone" that linked the White House with the Kremlin during the Cold War was used for the first time in history: On May 26, 1967, Foreign Minister of Israel Abba Eban landed in Washington with the goal of ascertaining from the American administration its position in the event of the outbreak of war. As soon as Eban arrived, he was handed an ultra-secret cable directly from the Israeli government, and in it the information that Israel had learned of an Egyptian and Syrian plan to launch a war of annihilation against Israel within the next 48 hours. Eban met with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary McNamara, and finally with President Lyndon Johnson. The Americans said their intelligence sources could not corroborate the claim; that the Egyptian positions in the Sinai remained defensive. Eban left the White House distraught. Johnson sat around with his advisors and said, ‘What if their intelligence sources are better than ours?’ Johnson decided to fire off a Hotline message to his counterpart in the Kremlin, Alexey Kosygin, in which he said, ‘We've heard from the Israelis, but we can't corroborate it, that your proxies in the Middle East, the Egyptians, plan to launch an attack against Israel in the next 48 hours. If you don't want to start a global crisis, prevent them from doing that.’ At 2:30 AM on May 27, Soviet Ambassador to Egypt Dimitri Pojidaev knocked on Nasser's door and read him a personal letter from Kosygin in which he said, ‘We don't want Egypt to be blamed for starting a war in the Middle East. If you launch that attack, we cannot support you.’ Egyptian Minister of Defense, Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer consulted his sources in the Kremlin, and they corroborated the substance of Kosygin's message. Despondent, Amer told the commander of Egypt's air force, Major General Mahmud Sidqi, that the operation was cancelled.”
Within Israel's political leadership, it was decided that if the US would not act, and if the UN could not act, then Israel would have to act. On June 1, Moshe Dayan was made defense minister, and on June 3 the Johnson administration gave an ambiguous statement; Israel continued its plans for war. Israel's attack against Egypt on June 5 began what would later be dubbed the Six-Day War.
Israel's first and most important move was a pre-emptive attack on the Egyptian Air Force. It was by far the largest and the most modern of all the Arab air forces, sporting about 385 aircraft, all of them Soviet-built and relatively new.
Tu-16 of the Egyptian Air Force
Of particular concern were the 45 TU-16 Badger medium bombers, capable of inflicting heavy damage to Israeli military and civilian centers. On 5 June at 7:45 Israeli time, as air alarms sounded all over Israel, the Israeli Air Force left the skies of Israel, sending all but twelve of its jets in a mass attack against Egypt's airfields. Egyptian defensive infrastructure was extremely poor, and no airfields were yet equipped with armored bunkers capable of protecting Egypt's warplanes in the event of an attack. The Israeli warplanes headed out over the Mediterranean before turning towards Egypt. Meanwhile, the Egyptians didn't help themselves by turning off their air defense radars at that time: they were worried that rebel Egyptian forces would shoot down the Egyptian military leaders, who were about to perform an inspection. The Israelis employed a mixed attack strategy; bombing and strafing runs against the planes themselves, and tarmac-shredding penetration bombs dropped on the runways that rendered them unusable, leaving any undamaged planes unable to take off, helpless targets for the next wave. The attack was successful beyond the wildest dreams of its planners, destroying virtually all of the Egyptian Air Force on the ground with few Israeli casualties. Nearly 300 aircraft and 350 combat pilots were lost. The Israelis lost 19 of their planes mostly to operational losses. This attack guaranteed Israeli air superiority during the rest of the war.
Israeli forces concentrated on the border with Egypt included 3 divisions, which consisted of 9 brigades, of which 5 were armored; there were also three reserve brigades. The Egyptian forces consisted of 7 divisions, five of them infantry and two armored. Four infantry divisions were near the Egyptian-Israeli border in the Sinai, an infantry and an armored division in central Sinai, and a second armored division in the west. In addition, a reinforced brigade (with 200 tanks) under Colonel Shazly was deployed in the southern Sinai with orders to encircle Eilat in the case of war. Overall, Egypt had over 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks in the Sinai, backed by appropriate artillery. This arrangement was based on the Soviet doctrine, where mobile armor units at strategic depth provide a dynamic defense while infantry units engage in defensive battles.
The northernmost Israeli division, consisting of three brigades and commanded by Israel Tal, one of Israel's most prominent armor commanders, found itself slowly advancing through the Gaza strip and El-Arish, which were not heavily protected. The central division (Avraham Yoffe) and the southern division (Ariel Sharon), however, entered the heavily defended Abu-Ageila-Kusseima region. Egyptian forces there included one infantry division (the 2nd), a battalion of tank destroyers and a tank regiment.
At that moment, Sharon initiated an attack, precisely planned and carried out. He sent out two of his brigades to the north of Um-Katef, the first one ordered to break through the defenses at Abu-Ageila to the south, and the second to block the road to El-Arish and to encircle Abu-Ageila from the east. At the same time, a paratrooper force was landed there and destroyed the artillery, preventing it from engaging Israeli armor. Combined forces of armor, paratroopers, infantry, artillery and combat engineers attacked the Egyptian disposition from the front flanks and rear, cutting the enemy off. The breakthrough battles which were in sandy areas and minefields, continued for 3 and-a-half days until Abu-Ageila fell.
Many of the Egyptian units remained intact and could be scrambled to prevent Israeli units from reaching the Suez Canal or engage in heavy combat in the attempt to reach the canal. However, when the Egyptian Minister of Defense, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer heard about the fall of Abu-Ageila, he panicked and ordered all units in the Sinai to retreat. This order effectively meant the defeat of Egypt.
Due to the Egyptians' retreat, the Israeli Command decided not to pursue the Egyptian units but rather to bypass the Egyptian units and destroy them in the mountainous passes of West Sinai. Therefore, in the following two days (June 6 and 7) all three Israeli divisions (Sharon and Tal were joined by an armored brigade each) rushed westwards and reached the passes. Sharon's division first went southward then westward to Mitla Pass. It was joined there by parts of Yoffe's division, while its other units blocked the Gidi Pass. Tal's units stopped at various points to the length of the Suez Canal.
Israel's blocking action was only partially successful. Only the Gidi pass was captured before the Egyptians approached it, but at other places Egyptian units did manage to pass through and cross the Canal to safety. Nevertheless the Israeli victories were impressive. In four days of operations, Israel defeated the largest and most heavily equipped Arab army, leaving numerous points in the Sinai filled with hundreds of burning or abandoned Egyptian vehicles.
On 8 June, Israel had captured the Sinai by sending infantry units to Ras-Sudar on the western coast of the peninsula. Sharm El-Sheikh, at its southern tip, had already been captured a day earlier by units of the Israeli Navy.
Several tactical elements made the swift Israeli advance possible: first, the complete air superiority the IAF had achieved over its Egyptian counterpart; second, the determined implementation of an innovative battle plan; and third, the lack of coordination among Egyptian troops. These would prove to be decisive elements on Israel's other fronts as well.
Jordan was reluctant to enter the war. Some claim that Nasser used the obscurity of the first hours of the conflict to convince Hussein that he was victorious; he claimed as evidence a radar sighting of a squadron of Israeli aircraft returning from bombing raids in Egypt which he claimed to be Egyptian aircraft en route to attacking Israel. One of the Jordanian brigades stationed in the West Bank was sent to the Hebron area in order to link with the Egyptians. Hussein decided to attack.
Prior to the war, Jordanian forces included 11 brigades (total of 60,000 troops), equipped by some 300 modern Western tanks. Of them, 9 brigades were deployed in the West Bank and 2 in the Jordan valley. The Jordanian ground army was relatively well-equipped and well-trained. Furthermore, Israeli post-war briefings claimed that the Jordanian staff acted professionally as well, but was always left "half a turn" behind by the Israeli moves. The Royal Jordanian Air Force, however, consisted of only about 20 Hawker Hunter fighters, obsolete by all standards.
Israeli Central Command forces consisted of five brigades. The first two were permanently stationed near Jerusalem and were called the "Jerusalem" brigade and the mechanized "Harel" brigade. A paratrooper brigade was summoned from the Sinai front, Mordechai Gur's 35th. An armored brigade was allocated from the General Staff reserve and brought to the Latrun area. The 10th armored brigade was stationed north of Samaria. The Northern Command provided a division (3 brigades) which was stationed to the north of Samaria and led by Elad Peled.
On the morning of 5 June, Jordanian forces made thrusts in the area of Jerusalem, occupying Government House used as the headquarters for the UN observers and shelled the city. Units in Qalqiliya fired in the direction of Tel-Aviv. The Royal Jordanian Air Force attacked Israeli airfields. Both air and artillery attacks caused little damage. Israeli units were scrambled to attack Jordanian forces in the West Bank. In the afternoon of that same day, Israeli Air Force (IAF) strikes destroyed the Royal Jordanian Air Force. By the evening of 5 June, the infantry Jerusalem brigade moved south of Jerusalem, while the mechanized Harel encircled it from the north.
On June 6, the Israeli units attacked: The reserve paratroop brigade completed the Jerusalem encirclement in the area called "The Ammunition Hill" (which was the site of a bloody battle). The infantry brigade attacked the fortress at Latrun capturing it at daybreak, and advanced through Beit Horon towards Ramallah. The Harel brigade continued its push to the mountainous area of north-west Jerusalem, linking the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University with the city of Jerusalem. By the evening, the brigade arrived in Ramallah.
The Jordanian forces in Samaria amounted to 4 divisions, one of them being the elite armored 40th. The IAF caught the 60th Jordanian Brigade on the road from Jericho to reinforce Jerusalem and destroyed it. One battalion from Peled's division was sent to check Jordanian defenses in the Jordan Valley. A brigade belonging to Peled's division captured Western Samaria, another captured Jenin and the third (equipped with light French AMX-13s) engaged Jordanian Pattons main battle tanks to the east.
On 7 June heavy fighting ensued. Gur's paratroopers entered the Old City of Jerusalem via the Lion's Gate, and captured the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. The Jerusalem brigade then reinforced them, and continued to the south, capturing Judea, Gush Etzion and Hebron. The Harel brigade proceeded eastward, descending to the Jordan river. In Samaria, one of Peled's brigades seized Nablus; then it joined one of Central Command's armored brigades to fight the Jordanian forces which held the advantage of superior equipment and were equal in numbers to the Israelis.
Again, the air superiority of the IAF proved paramount as it immobilized the enemy, leading to its defeat. One of Peled's brigades joined with its Central Command counterparts coming from Ramallah, and the remaining two blocked the Jordan river together with the Central Command's 10th (the latter crossed the Jordan river into the East Bank to provide cover for Israeli combat engineers while they blew the bridges, but was quickly pulled back because of American pressure).
During the evening of 5 June, Israeli air strikes destroyed two thirds of the Syrian Air Force, and forced the remaining third to retreat to distant bases, without playing any further role in the ensuing warfare. A minor Syrian force tried to capture the water plant at Tel Dan (the subject of a fierce escalation two years earlier). Several Syrian tanks are reported to have sunk in the Jordan river. In any case, the Syrian command abandoned hopes of a ground attack, and began a massive shelling of Israeli towns in the Hula Valley instead.
7 June and 8th passed in this way. At that time, a debate had been going on in the Israeli leadership whether the Golan Heights should be assailed as well. Military wisdom, however, suggested that the attack would be extremely costly, as it would be an uphill battle against a strongly fortified enemy. The western side of the Golan Heights consists of a rock escarpment that rises 1700 feet from the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River to a more gently sloping plateau. Moshe Dayan believed such an operation would yield losses of 30,000, and opposed it bitterly. Levi Eshkol, on the other hand, was more open to the possibility of an operation in the Golan Heights, as was the head of the Northern Command, David Elazar, whose unbridled enthusiasm for and confidence in the operation may have eroded Dayan's reluctance. Eventually, as the situation on the Southern and Central fronts cleared up, Moshe Dayan became more enthusiastic about the idea, and he authorized the operation.
The Syrian army consisted of about 50,000 men grouped in 9 brigades, supported by an adequate amount of artillery and armor. Israeli forces used in combat consisted of two brigades (one armored led by Albert Mandler and the Golani Brigade) in the northern part of the front, and another two (infantry and one of Peled's brigades summoned from Jenin) in the center. The Golan Heights' unique terrain (mountainous slopes crossed by parallel streams every several miles running east to west), and the general lack of roads in the area channeled both forces along east-west axes of movement and restricting the ability of units to support those on either flank. Thus the Syrians could move north-south on the plateau itself, and the Israelis could move north-south at the base of the Golan escarpment. An advantage Israel possessed was the excellent intelligence collected by Mossad operative Eli Cohen (who was captured and executed in Syria in 1965) regarding the Syrian battle positions.
The IAF, which had been attacking Syrian artillery for four days prior to the attack, was ordered to attack Syrian positions with all its force. While the well-protected artillery was mostly undamaged, the ground forces staying on the Golan plateau (6 of the 9 brigades) became unable to organize a defense. By the evening of 9 June, the four Israeli brigades had broken through to the plateau, where they could be reinforced and replaced.
On the next day, June 10, the central and northern groups joined in a pincer movement on the plateau, but that fell mainly on empty territory as the Syrian forces fled. Several units joined by Elad Peled climbed to the Golan from the south, only to find the positions mostly empty as well. During the day, the Israeli units stopped after obtaining maneuver room between their positions and a line of volcanic hills to the west. To the east the ground terrain is an open gently sloping plain. This position later became the cease-fire line known as the "Purple Line".
War in the air and at sea
During the Six-Day War, the IAF demonstrated the crucial importance of air superiority during the course of a modern conflict. It was able to thwart and harass the Arab forces and to grant itself air superiority over all fronts; it then complemented the strategic effect of their initial strike by carrying out tactical support operations. Of particular interest was the destruction of the Jordanian 60th armored brigade near Jericho and the attack on the Iraqi armored brigade which was sent to attack Israel through Jordan.
In contrast, the Arab air forces never managed to mount an effective attack: Attacks of Jordanian fighters and Egyptian TU-16 bombers into the Israeli rear during the first two days of the war were not successful and led to the destruction of the aircraft (Egyptian bombers were shot down while Jordan's fighters were destroyed during the attack on the airfield).
War at sea was also extremely limited. Movements of both Israeli and Egyptian vessels are known to have been used to intimidate the other side, but neither side has ever engaged the other at sea. The only moves that yielded any result were the unleashing of 6 Israeli frogmen in Alexandria harbor (they were captured, having sunk a minesweeper), and the Israeli light boat crews capturing the abandoned Sharm El-Sheikh.
On June 6 the second day of the war, King Hussein and Nasser declared that American and British aircraft took part in the Israeli attacks. This announcement was intercepted by the Israelis and turned into a media frenzy. This became known as "The Big Lie" in American and British circles (see 'Claims of U.S. and British combat' support below).
Two days later, on June 8 the USS Liberty, an American electronic intelligence vessel sailing 13 miles off al-Arish, was attacked by Israeli air and sea forces, nearly sinking the ship and causing heavy casualties. Israel claimed the attack was a case of mistaken identity, but whether or not this is true is still heavily debated to this day (see USS Liberty incident).
By June 10, Israel had completed its final offensive in the Golan Heights and a ceasefire was signed the following day. Israel had seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights. Overall, Israel's territory grew by a factor of 3, including about one million Arabs placed under Israel's direct control in the newly captured territories. Israel's strategic depth grew to at least 300 kilometers in the south, 60 kilometers in the east and 20 kilometers of extremely rugged terrain in the north, a security asset that would prove useful in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War six years later.
The political importance of the 1967 War was immense; Israel demonstrated that it was not only able, but also willing to initiate strategic strikes that could change the regional balance. Egypt and Syria learned tactical lessons, but perhaps not the strategic ones, and would launch an attack in 1973 in an attempt to reclaim their lost territory.
"on June 19, 1967, the National Unity Government voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for a peace agreements. The Golans would have to be demilitarized and special arrangement would be negotiated for the Straits of Tiran. The government also resolved to open negotiations with King Hussein of Jordan regarding the Eastern border.
The Israeli decision was conveyed to the Arab nations by the United States but unfortunately it met with a negative response. Meeting in Khartoum, an Arab Summit Conference resolved that there would be no peace, no recognition and no negotiation with Israel."
The June 19 cabinet decision did not include the Gaza Strip, and left open the possibility of Israel permanently acquiring parts of the West Bank. On June 25-27, Israel incorporated East Jerusalem together with areas of the West Bank to the north and south into Jerusalem's new municipal boundaries.
Yet another aspect of the war touches on the population of the captured territories: of about one million Palestinians in the West Bank, 300,000 (according to the US State Department) fled to Jordan, where they contributed to the growing unrest. The other 600,000 remained. In the Golan Heights, an estimated 80,000 Syrians fled . Only the inhabitants of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were allowed to receive Israeli citizenship, as Israel annexed these territories in the early 1980s. See also Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Both Jordan and Egypt eventually withdrew their claims to West Bank and Gaza (the Sinai was returned on the basis of Camp David Accords of 1978 and the question of the Golan Heights is still being negotiated with Syria). After Israeli conquest of these newly acquired 'territories' a large settlement effort was launched to secure Israel's permanent foothold. There are now hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in these territories.
The casualties of the war, far from Israel's anticipated heavy estimates, were quite low. On the Egyptian front Israel lost 338 soldiers, and the Egyptians between 10,000-15,000. On the Jordanian front, Israel lost some 300 soldiers and Jordan roughly 800. In the conquest of the Golan Heights, 141 Israelis died, and according to Israeli estimates 500 Syrians lost their lives.
The 1967 War also laid the foundation for future discord in the region - as on 22 November1967, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, the "land for peace" formula, which called for Israeli withdrawal "from territories occupied" in 1967 in return for "the termination of all claims or states of belligerency."
The framers of Resolution 242 recognized that some territorial adjustments were likely and deliberately did not include words all or the in the English language version of the text when referring to "territories occupied" during the war, although it is present in other, notably French, Spanish and Russian versions. It recognized the right of "every state in the area" - thus Israel in particular - "to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982, after the Camp David Accords.
Claims of U.S. and British combat support
Some Arabs believe the US and Britain provided more support for the Israelis than the American and British governments admit. Claims of American and British combat support for Israel began on the second day of the war. Radio Cairo and the government newspaper Al-Ahram made a number of claims, among them: that US and British carrier-based aircraft flew sorties against the Egyptians; that US aircraft based in Libya attacked Egypt; that US spy satellites provided imagery to Israel. Both Syria and Jordan broadcast similar reports on Radio Damascus and Radio Amman. Michael Oren claims that the purpose of these claims was to secure Soviet support. If this were true, it would in many ways mirror claims Israel made during this time in attempts to get US support. In reaction to these claims, Arab oil-producing countries announced either an oil embargo on the United States and Britain or suspended oil exports altogether.
One thing that contributed to this belief, other than general US support for Israel, was US intelligence-gathering during this period. Although this intelligence gathering was not disputed, the question arose as to whether the intelligence was handed over to the Israelis, perhaps to help them coordinate attacks. The US government denies doing this.
High school and lower grade textbooks in Egypt claim that American and British troops fought on behalf of Israel during the Six-Day War. The following example comes from ‘Abdallah Ahmad Hamid al-Qusi, Al-Wisam fi at-Ta'rikh (Cairo: Al-Mu'asasa al-‘Arabiya al-Haditha, 1999), p. 284.
The United States' role: Israel was not (fighting) on its own in the (1967) war. Hundreds of volunteers, pilots, and military officers with American scientific spying equipment of the most advanced type photographed the Egyptian posts for it (Israel), jammed the Egyptian defense equipment, and transmitted to it the orders of the Egyptian command.
On 9 June1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser stated in his resignation speech (his resignation was not accepted):
What is now established is that American and British aircraft carriers were off the shores of the enemy helping his war effort. Also, British aircraft raided, in broad daylight, positions of the Syrian and Egyptian fronts, in addition to operations by a number of American aircraft reconnoitering some of our positions … Indeed, it can be said without exaggeration that the enemy was operating with an air force three times stronger than his normal force.
After the war ended, the Egyptian government and its newspapers continued to make claims of collusion between Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States. These included a series of weekly articles in Al-Ahram, simulaneously broadcast on Radio Cairo, by Muhammad Heikal in Al-Ahram. Heikal attempted to uncover the "secrets" of the war. He presented a blend of facts, documents, and interpretations. Heikal's conclusion was clear-cut: there was a secret U.S.-Israeli collusion against Syria and Egypt.
Both London and Washington issued strenuous denials of these claims.
Her Majesty's Government are shocked by reports emanating from the Middle East … that planes from a British aircraft carrier have been involved in the fighting. This is a malicious fabrication. There is not a grain of truth in it. It is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to avoid taking sides in this conflict and to do everything they can to bring about a cease-fire as soon as possible.
Nonetheless, these claims, that the Arabs were fighting the Americans and British rather than Israel alone, took hold in the Arab world. As reported by the British Representative in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a country at odds with Egypt as a result of the Yemen war:
President Abdel Nasser's allegation … is firmly believed by almost the whole Arab population here who listen to the radio or read the press … Our broadcast denials are little heard and just not believed. The denials we have issued to the broadcasting service and press have not been published. Even highly educated persons basically friendly to us seem convinced that the allegations are true. Senior foreign ministry officials who received my formal written and oral denials profess to believe them but nevertheless appear skeptical. I consider that this allegation has seriously damaged our reputation in the Arab world more than anything else and has caused a wave of suspicion or feeling against us which will persist in some underlying form for the foreseeable future … Further denials or attempts at local publicity by us will not dispel this belief and may now only exacerbate local feeling since the Arabs are understandably sensitive to their defeat with a sense of humiliation and resent self-justification by us who in their eyes helped their enemy to bring this about.
A British guidance telegram to Middle East posts concluded: "The Arabs' reluctance to disbelieve all versions of the Big Lie springs in part from a need to believe that the Israelis could not have defeated them so thoroughly without outside assistance."
In early 1969, fighting broke out between Egypt and Israel along the Suez Canal. The Egyptian forces, relying upon the Soviet model of military operations, made heavy use of artillery. By contrast, Israeli planes made deep strikes into Egypt. The United States helped end these hostilities in August 1970. Subsequent U.S. efforts to negotiate an interim agreement to open the Suez Canal and achieve disengagement of forces were not successful.
