Six Days of War

Oren opens his account of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war with a failed sabotage mission on New Year's Eve, 1964, when Palestinian guerrillas from the militant al-Fatah organization crossed from Lebanon into Israel to destroy a water pump. The explosives did not detonate, yet al-Fatah's leader, Yasser Arafat, issued a triumphant communiqué. Oren uses this episode to illustrate the flashpoints that would converge into war: Palestinian militancy, Syrian sponsorship of terror, Soviet backing for Syria, and the centrality of water. He cautions against identifying any single cause, arguing that the war required the specific context of the postcolonial Middle East, torn by inter-Arab feuds, superpower rivalry, and the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict.

The book traces that context from the growth of Zionism and Jewish settlement in Palestine. The UN's 1947 partition vote led to civil war and, upon Israel's declaration of independence in May 1948, to the first Arab-Israeli war. The 1949 Armistice Agreements perpetuated the conflict, as Arab states denied Israel recognition. The rise of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser reshaped the region. In 1952, a clique of Free Officers overthrew King Faruq; within a year, Nasser emerged as the regime's true strongman. The 1956 Suez Crisis, in which Israel, Britain, and France invaded Egypt, ended in a forced withdrawal, but a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was deployed along the border and at Sharm al-Sheikh, overlooking the Straits of Tiran, the waterway connecting the Red Sea to Israel's port of Eilat, guaranteeing Israeli shipping rights.

By the mid-1960s, these arrangements were unraveling. Nasser's military intervention in Yemen had overextended Egypt. Syria, governed after a 1966 coup by a radical faction of the Ba'th Party, an Arab nationalist movement, escalated border provocations and sponsored Palestinian guerrilla raids. The Soviet Union, which had invested heavily in Arab military power, encouraged militancy while fearing the war it could provoke. Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who succeeded David Ben-Gurion in 1963, faced pressure from Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin for a decisive strike against Syria but feared Soviet retaliation.

Oren identifies the November 1966 Israeli raid on the West Bank village of Samu' as the catalyst. Intended to punish Palestinian guerrilla attacks, the operation triggered a battle with Jordanian soldiers, killed civilians, and drew censure from the Security Council. Arab capitals accused Jordan's King Hussein of collusion with Israel and taunted Nasser for hiding behind UNEF. On April 7, 1967, six Syrian MiG fighters were shot down over Damascus in an air battle, humiliating Syria and exposing the Egyptian-Syrian defense pact as hollow.

In late April, the Soviet Union delivered false warnings to Egypt asserting that Israel was massing troops to invade Syria. On May 14, Nasser ordered his army into Sinai, calculating the move would restore his prestige at minimal risk. His field marshal and political rival, 'Abd al-Hakim 'Amer, seized the opportunity to expand his personal power, placing loyalists in key commands. Secretary-General U Thant swiftly acquiesced to Egypt's demand for UNEF's withdrawal. On May 22, Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, constituting the casus belli, or act justifying war, that Israel had long defined.

Eshkol refused to authorize a preemptive strike, dispatching Foreign Minister Abba Eban to seek Western support. In Paris, President Charles de Gaulle warned, "Do not make war." In Washington, President Lyndon Johnson told Eban the United States would pursue an international convoy to reopen the Straits but cautioned, "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone." The convoy plan collapsed amid congressional opposition sharpened by the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, 'Amer prepared Operation Dawn, an Egyptian offensive into the Negev desert, canceled only after Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin urgently contacted Nasser. The Israeli Cabinet deadlocked nine to nine on preemption.

King Hussein flew to Cairo on May 30, signed a mutual defense treaty with Nasser, and placed his army under Egyptian command, confronting Israel with a three-front war. Domestic pressure forced Eshkol to appoint former general Moshe Dayan as defense minister on June 1. On June 4, the Cabinet voted 12 to 2 to authorize war.

At 7:10 A.M. on June 5, nearly 200 Israeli aircraft struck Egyptian air bases at extremely low altitude. Within hours, 311 Egyptian planes were destroyed, almost all on the ground. Three Israeli divisions attacked simultaneously through Sinai, breaking through fortified positions in fierce fighting. Jordan entered the war after Egyptian General 'Abd al-Mun'im Riyad, commanding Jordanian forces under the defense pact, ordered an attack based on false reports from Cairo of massive Israeli losses. The Israeli Air Force destroyed the air forces of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq the same day.

The battle for Jerusalem became the war's most emotionally charged theater. Israeli paratroopers fought through northern fortifications in savage nighttime combat; at Ammunition Hill, 35 Israelis and 71 Jordanians died in four hours of trench-by-trench fighting. On June 7, Colonel Mordechai "Motta" Gur's paratroopers entered the Old City through the Lions Gate. Gur radioed: "The Temple Mount is in our hands." In Sinai, 'Amer's chaotic command turned the Egyptian retreat into a rout. In an intercepted phone call, Nasser and Hussein agreed to blame the United States and Britain for their defeats, a fabrication known as the "Big Lie."

On June 8, the USS Liberty, an American surveillance ship off Sinai, was attacked by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats, killing 34 sailors in what Israel called mistaken identity. The war's final battlefield was the Golan Heights. Dayan, who had opposed a third front, reversed himself on June 9 after intelligence showed Syria's army collapsing. Israeli forces scaled the steep escarpment under heavy fire. Resistance crumbled when Radio Damascus prematurely announced the fall of Quneitra, triggering panic and desertion. The Soviet Union severed relations with Israel and threatened military action; Johnson ordered the Sixth Fleet toward the coast. A cease-fire took effect on June 10.

In 132 hours, Israel controlled territory three and a half times its pre-war size. Egypt lost between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers; Jordan, 700 dead; Syria, approximately 450. Israel's 679 dead represented, per capita, the equivalent of 80,000 Americans. Between 175,000 and 250,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank; 95,000 Syrian civilians left the Golan. Nasser announced his resignation but rescinded it after massive demonstrations. 'Amer plotted a coup, was arrested, and died from poisoning. At the Khartoum Arab Summit in August, Arab leaders issued the "three no's": no recognition, no peace, and no negotiations.

On June 19, the Israeli Cabinet secretly voted to return Sinai and the Golan in exchange for peace treaties but reached no consensus on the West Bank. Jerusalem was declared Israel's united capital. In November, UN Security Council Resolution 242 called for Israeli withdrawal from "territories occupied in the recent conflict" in exchange for acknowledgment of every state's right to live in peace. The deliberate omission of "the" before "territories" in the English text allowed both sides to claim the resolution supported their position. Resolution 242 became the foundation for all subsequent peace efforts.

Oren concludes that the war changed the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict without resolving it. It opened possibilities eventually realized in treaties with Egypt and Jordan but also produced occupation, settlement expansion, and the rise of Palestinian radicalism. The modern Middle East created in 1967, he writes, is "a hybrid: a region of incipient promise but also of imminent dangers, a mixture of old contexts and new."