Following three weeks of building tension with Egypt, particularly Cairo’s dispatch of 200,000 troops into Sinai, the removal UN peace keeping troops from there, the blockade of Israeli shipping access to its port at Eilat, and blistering verbal barrages from Arab leaders threatening Israel’s destruction, Israel preemptively struck Egypt on June 5.
In six days Israel defeated three Arab armies and increased its size three-fold, without pre-determined plans to take either the Golan Heights or the West Bank. Its victory included the reunification of Jerusalem, divided in the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli War. At the war’s end, Israel found itself unexpectedly in control over more than one million Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Post-war Israeli overtures to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan for peace negotiations were refused. In the years after the war, Arab leaders and Palestinian organizations continued to remain virulently hostile to Israeli existence. Only two decades after the tragedy of World War II, Israelis and diaspora Jewry rejoiced in Israel’s military success.
By November 1967, the UN and the US became engaged in defining a framework for negotiations that called for exchanges of land for peace. It was Israel’s new control of Egyptian Sinai and loss of Egypt’s national honor suffered in the smashing defeat in the 1967 War that prompted Egyptian President Sadat to take on Israel in a limited war in October 1973, open an American diplomatic door to Israel, which in turn led to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty.
Documents
1967.5.23 – LBJ’s call for restraint
1967.5.25 – Nasser Speech at UAR Advanced Air HQ
1967.5.26 – Nasser Speech to Arab Trade Unionists
1967.5.28 – Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s Radio Address to the Nation
1967.5.29 – President Nasser Speech to the Egyptian National Assembly
1967.6.3 – CIA assessment prior to June 1967 war
1967.6.3 – Rusk to US ambassadors Arab world on Israel
1967.6.3 – Israel UN Ambassador, Gideon Rafael to the Security Council
1967.6.3 – Lyndon Johnson to Levi Eshkol
1967.6.9 – Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser: Resignation Broadcast
1967.6.12 – Prime Minister Levi Eshkol Statement to the Knesset at Conclusion of June War
1967.6.15 – Telegram From the US Embassy in Israel to the Department of State
1967.6.19 – Eban Speech at the Special Assembly of the UN
1967.6.19 – The Israeli Government Designed Peace Plan Devised After the June 1967 War
1967.6.19 – Lyndon Johnson’s Principles of Peace
1967.6.28 – Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin: The Right of Israel
1967.7.26 – Israel’s Alon Plan on the Future of the Territories
1967.8.9 – GOI Principles after war
1967.9.1 – Arab League Summit Resolutions
1967.9.22 – Writers For Greater Israel
1967.9.22 – Writers Against Greater Israel
1967.11.22 – UN Security Council Resolution 242
1967.11.23 – PLO Rejection UNSC 242
1969.10.29 – US Rogers Plan for an Arab-Israeli Settlement