Six-Day War
Israel destroyed the air forces of three countries in a morning in June 1967 and tripled the territory it held. The crisis had built through May. Soviet intelligence, apparently false, told Egypt that Israel was massing on the Syrian border; Nasser moved troops into Sinai, demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations force there and got it, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping — which Israel had said for a decade would be a cause of war. Jordan signed a defence pact with Egypt on 30 May. Israel struck first on the morning of 5 June, sending almost every combat aircraft it had at low level against Egyptian airfields during the change of the morning watch, and destroyed some 300 aircraft on the ground in about three hours; the Syrian and Jordanian air forces were destroyed the same afternoon. With complete air superiority the ground campaign took four days in Sinai, two days on the West Bank, and one on the Golan Heights. Israel took Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan. Egypt's radio had been announcing victories throughout, and Nasser's admission of defeat and offer to resign produced crowds in Cairo demanding that he stay. Some 20,000 Arab soldiers and under a thousand Israelis died, and around 300,000 Palestinians were displaced. Security Council Resolution 242 called for withdrawal from territories occupied in exchange for peace, in language whose ambiguity was deliberate. The occupation is now in its sixth decade. The victory also transformed Israel's own politics. A state that had understood itself as small and threatened acquired a religious-nationalist settlement movement in the territories within months, and every Israeli election since has turned in part on what to do with what was taken in six days.
- Year: 1967 CE
- Category: Military
