Israel Strikes First: Six-Day War Begins

Israeli pilots flew so low over the Mediterranean that Egyptian radar never saw them coming. At 7:45 AM on June 5, 1967, nearly the entire Israeli Air Force launched simultaneous strikes against Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian airfields. Within three hours, 452 Arab aircraft were destroyed, most of them still on the ground. The air campaign decided the Six-Day War before the ground war had properly begun. Tensions had been escalating for weeks. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had ordered United Nations peacekeepers out of the Sinai Peninsula in May, moved 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks to the Israeli border, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Jordan signed a mutual defense pact with Egypt. Syria had been shelling Israeli settlements from the Golan Heights for months. Israel’s military leadership concluded that war was inevitable and that striking first was the only way to offset the numerical advantage of a three-front conflict. The ground offensive moved with a speed that shocked the world. Israeli forces captured the entire Sinai Peninsula and reached the Suez Canal in three days. Jordanian forces were driven from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the Old City and its Western Wall, by June 7. The Golan Heights fell on June 9 after a concentrated armored assault. By the time a ceasefire took hold on June 10, Israel had tripled its territory. The military victory was total and its political consequences remain unresolved. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and Golan Heights created a new reality that defied the predictions of every diplomatic framework. The Sinai was returned to Egypt in 1982 as part of the Camp David Accords. The Golan Heights was annexed in 1981. The West Bank and Gaza became the center of a conflict between Israeli security demands and Palestinian self-determination that, nearly six decades later, has produced neither peace nor a viable state for either side.