1967 in Israel: The Six-Day War and Its Aftermath

The immediate roots of the 1967 crisis lay in inter-state conflict and terrorist attacks that intensified during the mid-1960s. The 1964 Arab States Summit coordinated a military buildup, while the Palestine Liberation Organization was established during the same period. Syria sought to obstruct Israel's National Water Conduit, and Fatah began carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel in January 1965.[6] After Syrian artillery attacks near the border, the Israeli Air Force retaliated on April 7, 1967, shooting down six Syrian aircraft.[6]

The crisis accelerated in May. On May 13, Soviet officials falsely reported that Israel had concentrated eleven to thirteen brigades on Syria's border.[7] Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser moved forces into Sinai, demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force from Egyptian territory and the Gaza Strip, and later closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and vessels bound for Eilat.[7][8] Israel regarded the closure as a casus belli. Jordan announced on May 29 that it would join a war against Israel if Israel attacked an Arab country, while Jordan and Iraq joined Egypt and Syria in a military alliance.[6][7] Israel mobilized its reserves, placed the home front on alert, prepared shelters, and dug trenches.[6]

Israel pursued diplomatic options while preparing for war. Foreign Minister Abba Eban traveled to Europe and the United States seeking international pressure on Egypt.[7] U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to defuse the crisis and told Eban on May 26: "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone."[8] These efforts failed to reopen the Straits or reverse the regional mobilization.

On June 1, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol broadened the coalition to include Gahal and Rafi, creating Israel's first national unity government.[9][6] Eshkol's previous coalition had held 75 of the Knesset's 120 seats; the enlarged government commanded 111. The former opposition received one cabinet position, the Defense Ministry, which went to Moshe Dayan.[9] Menachem Begin entered the cabinet for the first time, while Rafi included David Ben-Gurion and his allies.[10][6]

On June 4, 1967, Israel's cabinet voted 12–2 in favor of a preemptive strike.[1] The code word "Red Sheet" was broadcast over Israeli radio the following morning, marking the beginning of the war.[6] At dawn on June 5, Israeli aircraft launched Operation Focus against Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian airfields and an Iraqi airfield. More than 350 aircraft were destroyed within several hours; by the end of the war, 451 enemy aircraft and 46 Israeli Air Force aircraft had been destroyed.[3] A Jewish Review of Books account gives the narrower figure of 284 of Egypt's 419 aircraft destroyed during the first three hours.[11]

With Arab air forces badly damaged, Israeli ground forces advanced on three fronts. In the south, the Sinai campaign lasted four days and ended with the defeat of the Egyptian army. Israeli forces reached the east bank of the Suez Canal and took control of the Straits of Tiran.[11][3] Egypt had deployed approximately 100,000 soldiers and nearly 1,000 tanks in Sinai.[3]

The Jordanian front opened after Jordanian forces shelled Israeli positions and Jerusalem on June 5. A JCFA legal study reports that fire from small arms, mortars, and cannons began along Jerusalem's municipal border at approximately 11:30 a.m., killing about 20 residents that day and damaging the Knesset, Dormition Abbey, the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, and the Franciscan Monastery on Mount Zion.[12] The Knesset met in a basement shelter while the building was under fire.[13]

Fighting in Jerusalem included the battle at Ammunition Hill on June 6.[3] On June 7, forces led by Colonel Motta Gur entered the Old City through the Lion's Gate and captured the Temple Mount and Western Wall.[3] Gur announced over the army wireless: "The Temple Mount is in our hands! I repeat, the Temple Mount is in our hands!"[5] Rabbi Shlomo Goren sounded a shofar at the Western Wall during the live radio broadcast.[5] Israeli forces also captured Bethlehem, Hebron, Gush Etzion, and Nablus that day. By June 8, the IDF held the entire Sinai Peninsula and most of the Gaza Strip.[3]

On June 9 and 10, Israeli forces attacked Syrian positions and advanced into the Golan Heights.[3] On June 10, they took the lower Hermon slope, Hamat Gader, and the area around the Sea of Galilee.[3] Major fighting ended on June 10, although the Library of Congress account dates the United Nations-imposed ceasefire to June 11.[3][7]

Casualty totals differ among sources. My Jewish Learning reports 676 Israeli dead and more than 3,000 wounded, while Ynetnews gives 777 fatalities and more than 2,500 casualties.[14][3] Ynetnews also reports more than 15,000 enemy soldiers killed or wounded and approximately 6,000 taken prisoner.[3] These differing tallies should not be silently reconciled.

The campaign transformed the map of the Middle East. Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank — Judea and Samaria — and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.[1] The Library of Congress gives the additional territory as 7,477 square kilometers: 5,879 for the West Bank, 378 for the Gaza Strip, 70 for East Jerusalem, and 1,150 for the Golan Heights.[7] The gains more than doubled the size of pre-1967 Israel and brought more than one million Palestinian Arabs under Israeli administration.[7]

Israel consequently assumed responsibility for a large Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The government did not initially define a strategic end state for these territories, leaving the IDF as the governing authority and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan as the principal political official involved in their administration.[15]

Jerusalem's reunification under Israeli control carried profound religious and national significance. Jews had been barred by Jordan from the Western Wall and the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives between 1948 and 1967. Following the war, Jewish worshippers returned to the Wall, and Israel gave each religious community control over its holy sites.[1][4]

A JCFA legal study records that on June 27, 1967, the Knesset enacted the Law and Administration Ordinance (Amendment No. 11), and that on June 28 the government applied Israeli law, jurisdiction, and administration to a scheduled area encompassing the Old City and eastern and northern parts of Jerusalem.[12] The municipal area expanded from 38,100 dunams to 108,500 dunams. The added territory included approximately 6,000 dunams of Jordanian Jerusalem and 64,500 dunams drawn from 28 villages in Judea and Samaria.[12] Israel presented the measures as administrative steps intended to benefit residents and secure freedom of worship and access to holy places.[12]

At a government vote on June 19, 1967, reported as 10–9, Israel decided not to annex the Golan Heights or Sinai. It proposed peace agreements with Egypt and Syria based on the international borders, security arrangements, and Israel's security needs.[16] The government stated: "Israel proposes peace agreements with Egypt and Syria, which will include security arrangements, based on the international border and the security needs of Israel."[16] It reached no final decision on the West Bank and instead established an interim military-administration regime.[16]

The national unity government had decided to launch the war before Eshkol informed the Knesset of the coalition change. Because parliamentary approval was required, he notified the Knesset after the attack had begun. The enlarged coalition was approved with relatively little debate and remained in that form for 38 months, until Eshkol's death on February 26, 1969.[9]

Defense Minister Dayan became the principal political authority in the territories, while the IDF exercised governing authority and administered the daily lives of the Palestinian population.[15] The pacification program in the West Bank and Gaza Strip included suppressing strikes and noncooperation campaigns, combating armed activity, deporting residents considered subversive, demolishing homes believed to shelter anti-Israeli activists, and imposing administrative detention for up to six months. These policies drew heavily on emergency regulations originating during the British Mandate.[7]

In November 1967, Eshkol accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, while his government also announced plans to resettle Jerusalem's Old City, the Etzion Bloc, and the northern Golan Heights.[7] The capture of Jerusalem and the IDF victory produced a wave of religious nationalism and were widely interpreted in Israel as a vindication of political Zionism.[7] The future of the territories became a defining division in Israeli politics, separating advocates of territorial compromise from supporters of Israeli retention or sovereignty.[15][7]

At the end of August 1967, Arab leaders met in Khartoum. On September 2, they adopted a resolution that became known as the "three no's": no negotiations with Israel, no peace with Israel, and no recognition of Israel.[16] The declaration followed Israel's June 19 proposal for peace agreements with Egypt and Syria based on international borders and security arrangements.[16]

The INSS account states that the Khartoum decision reduced Israel's willingness to make concessions under a land-for-peace formula involving Sinai and the Golan Heights.[16] The war also weakened Nasserism and Egypt's dominant position in Arab politics, while helping the PLO emerge as a leading representative of the Palestinian people and a principal organization of resistance against Israel.[7]

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted unanimously on November 22, 1967, and became a framework for subsequent Arab-Israeli diplomacy.[17] It emphasized "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and called for a just and lasting peace. Its operative principles included withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from "territories occupied in the recent conflict," termination of claims or states of belligerency, recognition of every state's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the right of states to live within secure and recognized boundaries.[17] It also addressed freedom of navigation, a just settlement of the refugee problem, territorial inviolability, and the appointment of a special representative.[17]

The resolution was largely American-inspired but formally presented by the United Kingdom representative. Ambassador Gunnar V. Jarring of Sweden was appointed as the Secretary-General's special representative.[17] Its wording generated conflicting legal and political interpretations, especially over the relationship between territorial withdrawal and secure, recognized boundaries.[18] Israel maintained that withdrawals to agreed lines could occur only within a comprehensive peace, whereas Arab states initially insisted that total withdrawal had to precede negotiations.[17]

Unlike after the 1956 Sinai campaign, Israel did not withdraw from the territories captured in 1967.[7] Many Israeli strategists regarded the new territory as providing strategic depth, early-warning time, defensible terrain, and a buffer against attacks on Israel's principal population centers. The ability to absorb a first strike without immediately imperiling the country's core was viewed as a significant military advantage.[7]

Other Israeli analysts disputed the continuing protective value of territorial buffers. They argued that mechanized forces and missiles had reduced the security supplied by distance and terrain, and that retaining the territories gave Arab states incentives to continue the conflict rather than end it.[7] The disagreement paralleled the political division between those who viewed the territories as security assets and those who regarded them primarily as diplomatic liabilities.

The territorial changes also created an unanticipated governing challenge. The state had no settled strategic plan for administering a large Palestinian population, and responsibility consequently fell to the IDF under Dayan's political direction.[7][15] What began as an interim military arrangement therefore acquired long-term political and institutional consequences.

The war transformed Israeli political and social life beyond its military and territorial effects. The capture of the Old City and the return to the Western Wall produced widespread national euphoria despite the war's casualties.[5] For Jews who had been excluded from the area under Jordanian rule, renewed access represented a historic restoration and an affirmation of Jewish continuity in Jerusalem.[1][4]

The war also elevated military figures into the national consciousness. Moshe Dayan, appointed defense minister shortly before the fighting, became one of its principal public symbols.[9] A JCFA account credits Dayan and IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin with deciding that Israel should strike first to prevent an expected Arab attack.[10] Gur's announcement from the Temple Mount became an emblematic record of the Jerusalem campaign.[5]

The national unity government demonstrated that Israel's divided party system could cohere during a severe security crisis. It also brought Menachem Begin and Herut into the governing coalition for the first time, marking a significant change in the political status of the Israeli right.[9][10]

Resolution 242 became a central framework for later Arab-Israeli diplomacy and subsequent U.S. peacemaking efforts.[17][8] Khartoum's "three no's," by contrast, reduced the immediate prospect of negotiations and contributed to diminished Israeli willingness to offer territorial concessions.[16] Within Israel, the territories generated a durable political and moral division: some Israelis viewed them as "liberated," while others described them as "occupied" and regarded their retention as legally or strategically problematic.[14] Questions of sovereignty, peace, security, and Palestinian political rights remained central to Israeli public life and regional diplomacy.

The causes and characterization of the war remain contested. Several sources describe Israel's June 5 attack as a preemptive response to Egyptian actions and the expectation of a coordinated Arab assault.[1] The U.S. Department of State account places the decision within a broader escalation involving Palestinian guerrilla attacks, Israeli reprisals, Israeli-Syrian clashes, Egyptian mobilization, and unsuccessful diplomacy, while noting that President Johnson continued to caution Israel against preemption.[8] The distinction between a preemptive act of self-defense and a preventive war therefore remains an interpretive dispute.

The legal status of East Jerusalem after Israel's June 1967 measures was disputed from the outset. A JCFA legal study records that Foreign Minister Abba Eban told the UN Secretary-General that no annexation had occurred and described the measures as administrative. The same study records that the United Nations treated the measures as an illegal unification or annexation of occupied territory and called on Israel to rescind them.[12]

Reported casualty and territorial figures also vary. My Jewish Learning gives 676 Israeli dead and more than 3,000 wounded, while Ynetnews reports 777 fatalities and more than 2,500 casualties.[14][3] The Library of Congress says the captured territory more than doubled the size of pre-1967 Israel, whereas an INSS study describes the territory under Israeli control as having tripled.[7][16] These formulations use different baselines and should be presented as separate source estimates rather than reconciled into a single figure.