May 21, 1967
Egypt calls up its full military reserves, moves the troops into the Sinai Peninsula and cuts off the Straits of Tiran from Israeli shipping, steps that lead toward war between Israel and its neighbors the next month.
Addressing air force officers in the Sinai on May 22, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser says,
We are ready for war. … These waters are ours. War might be an opportunity for the Jews, for Israel, to test their strength against ours. The Israeli flag shall not go through the Gulf of Aqaba. Our sovereignty over the entrance to the Gulf cannot be disputed. If Israel wishes to threaten war, we tell her: “You are welcome.” (Boston Globe, May 23, 1967)
Israel had taken control of the peninsula as a result of the 1956 Suez crisis but was pressured by the United States to withdraw from the Sinai in 1957. The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was stationed there to protect Israel’s right of passage through the Straits of Tiran (between Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula) and to keep Sinai from being remilitarized. As a result, the port of Eilat became Israel’s second-busiest seaport and its main source of oil imported from Iran.
On the other side of the Straits of Tiran, Nasser had been humiliated by the 1956 defeat. In early May 1967, the Soviet Union circulated false reports that Israeli troops were massing on the Syrian border. Nasser feared that Israeli troops would also gather on the Egyptian border and felt compelled to uphold the mutual defense pact he had signed with Syria. On May 19, Nasser banned the 3,500 UNEF troops from Sinai so that he could mobilize Egyptian forces without interference. He began to close the Straits of Tiran.
“It is high time to put a decisive end to Israel’s policy of bragging and arrogance,” Egyptian Vice President Abdel Hakim Amer said (Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 1967).
Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sees the Egyptian closure of the strait and militarization of the Sinai as acts of aggression. The United Nations and other countries try unsuccessfully to defuse the situation. On June 5, Israel pre-emptively strikes Egypt and begins the Six-Day War.
