The Six-Day War and the Naksa
In six days Israel defeats Egypt, Jordan and Syria and takes Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, beginning an occupation that still shapes the conflict.
- Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East — Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press (2002)
- 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
- Security Council Resolution 242 — United Nations Security Council, United Nations (1967)
- The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
- Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood — Tarek Osman, Yale University Press (2013)
In May 1967 tension on Israel’s borders turned into crisis. After false Soviet reports of Israeli troop concentrations against Syria, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser moved forces into Sinai, had the UN peacekeepers there withdrawn and, on 22 May, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, which Israel had long said would be a cause for war. Jordan signed a defence pact with Egypt. Arab radio promised Israel’s destruction, and in Israel mass graves were reportedly prepared in parks. Many Israelis remember the “waiting period” as a time of dread.
- Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East — Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press (2002)
- 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
On the morning of 5 June Israel’s air force destroyed most of Egypt’s air force on the ground. Within six days Israel took the Gaza Strip and Sinai from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel lost roughly 800 soldiers; Arab losses ran into many thousands.
- Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East — Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press (2002)
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
Jerusalem
On 7 June Israeli paratroopers reached the Western Wall, and the photograph of them gazing up at it became an icon. Jews could pray there for the first time since 1948. Within days Israel demolished the Mughrabi Quarter in front of the Wall, displacing its Palestinian residents, and soon extended its law to an enlarged East Jerusalem. Defence Minister Moshe Dayan left the Temple Mount, al-Haram al-Sharif, under Muslim religious administration, a status quo that remains sensitive.
- 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
- Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
The Naksa
About 300,000 Palestinians fled or were displaced, mostly from the West Bank to Jordan, many of them refugees for the second time; several villages near Latrun were demolished. Over a million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli military rule.
- 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
- The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
Land for peace?
In November 1967 UN Security Council Resolution 242 called for Israel’s withdrawal “from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and for every state’s right “to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries”. The missing word “the” before “territories” has been argued over ever since. The Arab League summit in Khartoum had already answered with “no peace, no recognition, no negotiations” with Israel.
- Security Council Resolution 242 — United Nations Security Council, United Nations (1967)
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
Seeing the other side
One unexpected result of 1967 was that the line dividing the land disappeared. Israelis flocked to the Old City markets, Hebron and Bethlehem; refugees from the West Bank and Gaza could visit the towns and houses they had lost in 1948, sometimes knocking on the door of the Jewish family now living there. Ghassan Kanafani’s novella Returning to Haifa (1969) imagines exactly that encounter. Palestinian workers soon commuted daily to jobs in Israel, building its houses and picking its fruit.
- 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
- Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories — Ghassan Kanafani (trans. Hilary Kilpatrick), Lynne Rienner (1999)
The war transformed both peoples. For Israel it brought a surge of confidence, a religious-nationalist revival and the start of settlement. For Palestinians it discredited the Arab states and opened the way for the PLO and Yasser Arafat.
- 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
- Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993 — Yezid Sayigh, Oxford University Press (1997)
A war of self-defence. Egypt's Nasser expelled UN peacekeepers from Sinai, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and massed troops while Arab leaders spoke of destroying Israel. Israel struck first to survive and offered land for peace, only to be met by the Arab "three no's".
- Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East — Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press (2002)
- Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
A war of expansion that completed what 1948 began, bringing all of Palestine under Israeli control and creating a new wave of refugees. It also taught Palestinians they could not rely on Arab armies, and gave birth to an independent Palestinian national movement.
- The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
- Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993 — Yezid Sayigh, Oxford University Press (1997)
Most agree Israel faced a real threat in May 1967, but debate whether Nasser actually intended war or stumbled into brinkmanship, and how far Israel's leaders exploited the crisis. Historians such as Tom Segev and Avi Shlaim stress Israeli miscalculation and expansionist impulses; Michael Oren stresses Arab escalation.
- 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
- Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East — Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press (2002)
Nasser's brinkmanship in May 1967 was a catastrophic miscalculation, many Egyptians now admit, but Israel struck first and seized Egyptian land. The defeat was blamed on a politicised, overconfident high command and a regime that lied to its people about the war's first days; it shattered trust in Nasser's state even as millions still rallied to him personally.
- Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood — Tarek Osman, Yale University Press (2013)
- The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
Why it matters today
1967 turned fear of annihilation into euphoria and put the Western Wall and the biblical heartland in Israeli hands. It also began the occupation and settlement of the West Bank, which has divided Israelis ever since between those who see liberated land and those who see a trap.
Palestinians call it the Naksa, "the setback". Some 300,000 more people were displaced, and the rest of historic Palestine came under Israeli military rule, which most West Bank and Gaza Palestinians have lived under all their lives. The 1967 lines are the basis of the two-state idea.
For Egyptians 1967 is the Naksa, a national trauma: the air force destroyed on the ground, Sinai lost, thousands of soldiers killed and Nasser's pan-Arab dream broken. The crowds who begged Nasser not to resign, and the long War of Attrition that followed, are part of family memory, and the defeat is the background to the pride Egyptians feel about the October 1973 crossing.