59 years since the start of the Six-Day War between Arab countries and Israel. On June 5, 1967, the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
Israel emerged victorious, capturing East Jerusalem, the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula.
"Although the Golan Heights and most of the West Bank of the Jordan River remain under Israeli control, Israel did return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt as part of the Camp David Accords in 1978 and withdrew from Gaza in 2005."
The Six-Day War was a brief but bloody conflict fought in June 1967 between Israel and the Arab nations of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. After years of tense diplomacy between Israel and its neighbors, Israeli forces launched overwhelming preemptive strikes that crippled the air forces of Egypt and its allies. Israel then followed up with successful ground offensives, seizing the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The short war ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire, but it dramatically altered the map of the Middle East and created a persistent political dispute.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict
The Six-Day War came after years of political and military tension between Israel and the Arab nations.
In 1948, following the contentious creation of Israel, a coalition of Arab states launched an unsuccessful attack on the newly formed Jewish state as part of the first Arab-Israeli War.
A second major crisis, known as the Suez Crisis, erupted in 1956 when Israel, Britain, and France launched a controversial attack on Egypt in response to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal.
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw relative calm in the Middle East, but the political situation remained unstable. Arab leaders were chafing from their military losses and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees resulting from Israel's victory in the 1948 war.
Many Israelis continued to believe they were threatened by Egypt and other Arab states.
Origins of the Six-Day War
Border tensions were a major catalyst for the Six-Day War. In the mid-1960s, Syrian-backed Palestinian insurgents began launching attacks along Israel's border, prompting retaliatory strikes from Israeli defense forces.
In April 1967, the fighting escalated after Israel and Syria engaged in a fierce aerial and artillery battle in which six Syrian warplanes were destroyed.
Following the aerial clashes in April, the Soviet Union provided Egypt with intelligence reports suggesting Israel was massing troops on its border with Syria in the north, preparing for a major offensive. The information was false, but it nevertheless spurred Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser into action.
In a show of support for his Syrian allies, he ordered Egyptian troops into the Sinai Peninsula, where they evicted a UN peacekeeping force that had been stationed for over a decade to secure the border with Israel.
The Middle East Crisis Intensifies
In the following days, Nasser continued his saber-rattling: On May 22, he barred Israeli ships from the Straits of Tiran, a narrow strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. A week later, he signed a mutual defense pact with Jordan’s King Hussein.
As events in the Middle East spiraled out of control, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson warned both sides to show restraint and sought support for an international maritime plan to reopen the Straits of Tiran.
That failed to materialize, and in early June 1967, Israeli leaders voted to preempt the looming Arab military plans by launching a surprise attack.
The Six-Day War Breaks Out
On June 5, 1967, Israeli forces launched Operation Focus, a massive aerial strike against Egypt. That morning, some 200 planes took off from Israel and flew west over the Mediterranean Sea before turning south toward Egypt from the north.
Catching the Egyptians completely by surprise, the Israelis struck 18 different airfields, destroying nearly 90 percent of Egypt's air force. Israel then expanded its assault, destroying the air forces of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.
By the end of the day on June 5, Israeli pilots had achieved total air superiority over the Middle East.
The Israelis secured victory through their air power, but intense ground fighting continued for several more days. They began their ground campaign against Egypt on June 5. Backed by continuing airstrikes, Israeli tanks poured across the border into the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip.
The Egyptians resisted fiercely but later fell into disarray after Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer ordered a general retreat. Within just a few days, Israeli forces routed the demoralized Egyptian army, crossing the Sinai Peninsula and inflicting heavy casualties.
A second front in the Six-Day War opened on June 5 when Jordan, in response, began shelling Israeli positions in Jerusalem. Israel retaliated with a devastating assault on East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Israel Celebrates Victory
The final phase of the fighting took place on Israel's northeastern border with Syria. On June 9, after an intense aerial bombardment, Israeli tanks slogged through a heavily fortified area of Syria known as the Golan Heights. The following day, they succeeded in capturing the Golan.
On June 10, 1967, a UN-brokered ceasefire took effect, and the Six-Day War came to an abrupt end. It was later estimated that some 20,000 Arabs and 800 Israelis died during the brief 132-hour conflict.
Arab leaders were devastated by their overwhelming defeat. Egyptian President Nasser was so distraught that he resigned, only to return to power almost immediately after massive street protests by Egyptians rejecting his resignation.
In Israel, citizens were euphoric. In less than a week, their military had captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
The Six-Day War had momentous political consequences in the Middle East. The stunning victory produced a wave of Israeli national pride, tripling the country's size, but it also inflamed the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Still reeling from their defeat in the Six-Day War, Arab leaders convened in Khartoum, Sudan, in August 1967, and signed a resolution promising "no peace, no recognition, and no negotiation" with Israel.
Led by Egypt and Syria, the Arab states later launched a fourth major war against Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
By capturing the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel also occupied more than one million Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands more Palestinians fled their homes, further exacerbating the refugee crisis that began after the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 and setting the stage for persistent political turmoil and violence.
Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982 as part of a peace agreement and withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but it continues to occupy other disputed territories captured during the Six-Day War, notably the Golan Heights and the West Bank. The status of these territories remains a major obstacle to Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.
Sources: The 1967 War: Six Days that Changed the Middle East, BBC; The Arab-Israeli War of 1967, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian; Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, edited by Spencer C. Tucker and Priscilla Mary Roberts; Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren.
Translation by Muhammad Cisse ✍️