What happened, and when
The Arab-Israeli confrontation of 1967 was not a year of continuous war. It was a spring crisis, a short war fought from 5 to 10 June 1967, and a long diplomatic aftermath that lasted to the end of December. The June fighting is usually called the Six-Day War in Israel and the West. In much of the Arab world it is remembered as the June War or the Naksa, meaning “setback”. Seeing the year as three phases helps explain why a military result that looked decisive left the underlying disputes unresolved.
The road to the May crisis
Tension had been building for months. Along the Syrian-Israeli frontier there were repeated exchanges of fire, often over farming in disputed zones, and in April 1967 an air clash over Syria ended with several Syrian aircraft being shot down. Palestinian guerrilla raids from neighbouring states added to the pressure, and in November 1966 an Israeli raid on the West Bank village of Samu had already shaken Jordan.
In mid-May, Soviet-sourced reports claimed that Israel was massing troops near Syria. Israel denied it, and the reports were widely doubted at the time, but Egypt responded by moving large forces into the Sinai Peninsula. President Nasser then asked the United Nations to withdraw the emergency force that had separated the two armies since 1957, and Secretary-General U Thant agreed. On 22 May, Egypt announced that Israeli shipping would be barred from the Straits of Tiran, the narrow passage to the Israeli port of Eilat. Israel had long said it would treat such a closure as grounds for war.
Late in May, King Hussein of Jordan flew to Cairo and signed a defence pact with Egypt. In Israel, the government was widened in early June and Moshe Dayan became defence minister. Diplomatic efforts, including American attempts to organise an international response on the shipping question, had produced nothing by the start of June.
The war of 5 to 10 June
On the morning of 5 June, Israel launched air strikes on Egyptian airfields and quickly destroyed most of Egypt’s air force on the ground. Jordan and Syria then entered the fighting, and Israel hit their air forces as well. The land campaigns went differently on each front:
- Egypt: Israeli forces took Gaza and most of the Sinai within days and reached the Suez Canal. Egypt accepted a ceasefire on 8 June.
- Jordan: Israel took East Jerusalem, including the Old City, on 7 June and then the rest of the West Bank. Jordan had agreed to a ceasefire the same day.
- Syria: Israel attacked the Golan Heights on 9 June and had taken the plateau, with the town of Quneitra, by the time the ceasefire took effect on 10 June.
On 8 June, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the American intelligence ship USS Liberty off the Sinai coast, killing 34 crew members; Israel called it a tragic mistake, and the incident has remained the subject of debate. Within a week of the first strike, Israel controlled territory several times larger than its own pre-war area, and the captured territories would shape every later negotiation.
The Soviet Union and the diplomacy of summer
The Soviet Union, which had armed Egypt and Syria, broke diplomatic relations with Israel, as did most of the Eastern bloc. Moscow also began replacing lost Egyptian equipment. This reaction fitted a wider pattern in Soviet Middle East policy, which treated the Arab states as clients in a Cold War contest. At the United Nations, an emergency General Assembly session in the summer produced no agreed outcome, and both superpowers kept looking for a formula that the Security Council could accept.
The Khartoum summit
The Arab League heads of state met in Khartoum, Sudan, between 29 August and 1 September 1967. The summit is remembered for what became known as the “three noes”: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations with it. The final statement also affirmed the rights of the Palestinian people.
Historians still debate how rigid the stance was. The same meeting endorsed political and diplomatic efforts to remove the effects of the war, and the oil-producing states agreed to lift the oil restrictions imposed during the fighting. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya also agreed to give financial support to Egypt and Jordan, whose economies had been hit hard by the war and, in Egypt’s case, by the loss of Suez Canal revenue. Syria did not attend. Whatever the intent, Israel and many outside observers read the three refusals as a closed door.
Reactions beyond the region
Outside the region, governments were cautious. The United States had urged restraint in May and publicly said it was neutral in the fighting, while the Soviet Union backed its Arab clients diplomatically. A direct superpower confrontation was avoided, and a hotline exchange between Washington and Moscow during the fighting is often cited as part of that. Many newly independent states in Africa and Asia criticised Israel, while Western European governments were divided. These positions mattered because the shape of any settlement would depend on the great powers as well as the parties.
Resolution 242 and the end of the year
On 22 November 1967 the Security Council adopted Resolution 242, a British-drafted text that linked “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” with respect for the sovereignty and security of every state in the area. It also called for a just settlement of the refugee problem. The English and French versions differed slightly on whether it meant “territories” or “the territories”, and that ambiguity has fed argument ever since.
Where the year left the region
By the end of December 1967, Israel held the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Egypt, Jordan and Syria were rebuilding their forces and refusing direct talks. The Suez Canal was closed by the war and the sunken ships left in it, and it stayed closed until 1975. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been displaced, and the Palestinian refugees from this war joined the many already living in camps from 1948.
Nasser remained in power despite his army’s defeat, and the next three years saw a low-intensity conflict along the canal, the rise of Palestinian guerrilla groups as independent political forces, and a gradual hardening of positions on all sides. The war did not make peace nearer; it created a map that the region has been negotiating over ever since.