The 1967 War and the Occupation That Followed
In less than a week of fighting in June 1967, Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria , and seized the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights. The map of the Middle East changed overnight. The political reality that emerged has shaped the region's conflicts, diplomacies, and daily lives ever since.
Part I: The World Before the War
The Six-Day War's roots lie in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which ended with Israeli victory, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, and a coalition of Arab nations refusing to recognize Israel's existence. A second conflict, the 1956 Suez Crisis, restored an uneasy calm. By the mid-1960s, that calm was fraying: Syrian-backed Palestinian guerrillas staged cross-border attacks into Israel, Israeli reprisals were severe, and an April 1967 air battle ended with six Syrian jets destroyed.
Then came the critical spark. In May 1967, the Soviet Union passed Egypt false intelligence claiming Israel was massing troops for a full invasion of Syria. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser responded by expelling the UN peacekeeping force from the Sinai, closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping , an act Israel had declared an act of war , and signing a mutual defense pact with Jordan and Syria. Israel was encircled. Diplomatic efforts failed. Israel decided to act first.
Part II: Six Days of War (June 5–10, 1967)
On June 5, Israel launched Operation Focus , a preemptive airstrike that destroyed roughly 286 of Egypt's 420 combat aircraft while still on the ground. Syrian and Jordanian air forces were crippled within hours. Without air cover, Arab ground forces were fatally exposed. Israeli armored units rolled across the Sinai and into Gaza within days. Jordan, which had signed a defense pact with Egypt just a week earlier, began shelling Jerusalem despite Israeli warnings to stand down. Israel counterattacked decisively.
On June 7, Israeli paratroopers fought through the Old City and took control of East Jerusalem and the Western Wall , Judaism's holiest accessible site , while capturing most of the West Bank. On June 9, Israeli forces stormed the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau from which Syrian artillery had shelled northern Israeli communities for years. A UN ceasefire took effect on June 11. The war was over.
Part III: The Occupation Begins
Israel had more than tripled the territory under its control. East Jerusalem was formally annexed almost immediately , a move the international community refused to recognize. Civilian settlements began appearing in the occupied territories within months. Between 280,000 and 325,000 Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank; approximately 100,000 Syrians fled the Golan.
"Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict... acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area." , UN Security Council Resolution 242, November 22, 1967
The UN Security Council responded in November 1967 with Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and recognition of every state's right to live in peace. A single missing word , "the" before "territories" , has fueled decades of legal dispute: Arab states read the resolution as requiring full withdrawal; Israel argued only partial withdrawal was required. That ambiguity was never resolved.
In August 1967, Arab heads of state responded at the Khartoum summit with the "Three No's": no peace, no recognition, no negotiation with Israel. The defeat also shattered pan-Arab nationalism, pushing Palestinian militant organizations , operating under the PLO umbrella , to the forefront of resistance.
Part IV: Fifty Years of Consequence
The Sinai Peninsula was eventually returned to Egypt through the 1978 Camp David Accords , the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab nation. Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, a move the UN declared "null and void"; the United States became the only country to recognize Israeli sovereignty there in 2019. The West Bank and Gaza Strip remain the most unresolved legacy.
Israel withdrew settlers and forces from Gaza in 2005, but Hamas seized control in 2007, Israel imposed a blockade, and Gaza has remained sealed ever since. West Bank settlements , begun in the months after 1967 , now number in the hundreds, housing hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens. In 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's ongoing occupation violates international law and called for it to end "as soon as possible."
The approximately 5.1 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza continue to exist under conditions shaped fundamentally by those six days in June 1967 checkpoints, permits, blockades, military law, and an unanswered question of statehood. Understanding the Six-Day War is not a matter of taking sides. It is a matter of understanding how the present came to be.