The 1967 ‘Six Day’ Arab-Israeli War

In June 1967, the Israeli armed forces crushed the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in a lightning ‘six-day’ war in which Israeli warplanes wiped out enemy air forces - mostly on the ground – after which Israeli tanks and infantry swept out and conquered Sinai, Gaza Strip, the old walled city of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. Without their warplanes to protect them, Arab soldiers in open, desert country were pounded from the air; many were burnt alive in napalm strikes as they retreated across the Sinai. The war was a military and political earthquake. For the loss of up to 983 soldiers, Israel had humiliated its enemy and their pan-Arab nationalist Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. (Arab losses were much higher, running into the thousands, over 10,000 killed and missing for Egypt and 6,000 for Jordan, accurate statistics for the Arab side being hard to come by.) Photographs from the war show the faces of jubilant Israeli soldiers from a conquering army. Israel had massively expanded its territory to the natural frontiers of the Suez Canal, the Jordan Rover and the mountains of the Golan Heights. The captured land was a buffer zone for Israel in any future war with neighbouring Arab states, there to absorb any attack and give Israel time to mobilise, as would happen in the next war in 1973