The Six Day War and Its Aftermath, June 1967
A Pre-emptive Strike at Dawn
At 7.45am on 5 June 1967 the Israeli Air Force took off in waves and flew low over the Mediterranean to avoid Egyptian radar. Within three hours about 300 Egyptian aircraft had been destroyed on the ground at airfields across Sinai and the Nile Delta. The pre-emptive strike gave Israel air supremacy on every front from the first morning of the war and made the ground campaign that followed possible. Egypt and Syria announced false victories on the radio for two days; on the ground, Israel was already winning.
On the morning of 5 June 1967 the Israeli Air Force destroyed about 300 Egyptian aircraft on the ground in three hours. Air supremacy on the first day made the rapid Israeli ground victories on every front possible.
The Three Fronts
On the southern front the IDF’s armour pushed across Sinai to the Suez Canal in four days, breaking the Egyptian army at Bir Lahfan and Mitla Pass. On the eastern front Jordan, bound by its 30 May pact with Egypt, opened artillery fire on Jewish West Jerusalem on 5 June. Israel responded by overrunning the West Bank and East Jerusalem in three days; Israeli paratroopers reached the Western Wall on 7 June for the first time since 1948. On the northern front Israeli forces stormed the Golan Heights on 9–10 June, displacing Syrian artillery that had shelled Israeli farms below for years. By 10 June a UN-brokered ceasefire was in force on every front.
Casualties and the Map of June 11th
Israeli casualties were roughly 800 dead and about 4,500 wounded. Arab losses were far heavier: estimates run to between 10,000 and 15,000 Egyptians killed or missing, up to 2,500 Syrians and about 700 Jordanians, with far larger wounded and prisoner figures. Israel had quadrupled the territory it controlled. From Egypt it now held Sinai and the Gaza Strip; from Jordan, the West Bank and East Jerusalem; from Syria, the Golan Heights. These four territories — together known as the Occupied Territories — framed the politics of the conflict for the next half-century. East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel within weeks; the others were placed under military government, with Jewish settlement programmes beginning in the West Bank and Golan within months.
The Second Wave of Palestinian Refugees
Between 280,000 and 325,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank into Jordan during and after the war. Some had been refugees from 1948 and were now displaced for a second time. Jordan’s population swelled overnight, and the refugee camps in the East Bank filled with younger, more militant residents who would shape Black September three years later. Inside the West Bank, the Palestinians who remained came under Israeli military rule for the first time. Arabic-speaking communities in East Jerusalem found themselves residents of a unilaterally annexed Israeli capital, with restricted political rights compared to Israeli Jews.
Some students argue that the Six Day War settled Israel’s borders. The opposite is closer to the truth: the war replaced the relatively short 1949 armistice lines with much longer borders running through hostile populations, and the unresolved status of the Occupied Territories has driven every conflict since — the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Lebanon invasion of 1982, the First Intifada from 1987 and the Oslo era after 1993. Israel’s gain of strategic depth was real; its gain of strategic security was not. Treat 1967 as the start of an occupation problem, not the end of a conflict.
UN Resolution 242, 22 November 1967
After months of negotiation the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242. It set out the land for peace principle: Israel should withdraw from territory occupied in the recent conflict in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist within secure and recognised boundaries. The English text said ‘territories’ rather than ‘the territories’, an ambiguity Israel cited to argue that withdrawal need not be from all the land. The French text said ‘des territoires’, which Arab governments and most international lawyers read as meaning all of them. The same words have been the basis for every peace process since — Camp David, Oslo, the road map, all begin with Resolution 242.
A strong importance answer on Resolution 242 explains why the wording dispute mattered, not just that it existed. Israeli governments cited the indefinite article in the English text to argue that withdrawal need not be total — specifically that Sinai could be returned without giving up the West Bank or Golan. Arab governments and the French and Russian texts said the opposite. The ambiguity meant 242 produced no immediate withdrawal but it also made every later negotiation possible: each side could come to the table without conceding territory in advance. Camp David in 1978 implemented 242 for Sinai; Oslo in 1993 used 242’s language for the Palestinian track. The resolution’s usefulness was in what it left open, not in what it settled.
The Khartoum Three Nos and the Closed Canal
In September 1967 the Arab League met at Khartoum and issued what became known as the Khartoum Resolution — the ‘three nos’: no peace with Israel, no recognition, no negotiation. The resolution closed off the diplomatic route Resolution 242 had opened, at least for the moment. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait agreed to subsidise Egypt and Jordan instead of pressing them to negotiate. The Suez Canal, blocked by sunken ships during the war and now front-line territory, stayed closed to all shipping until 1975 — one of the global economic consequences of 1967.
UN Resolution 242 (22 November 1967) set out the land for peace principle as the basis for ending the conflict. The Khartoum Resolution of September 1967, with its ‘three nos’ — no peace, no recognition, no negotiation — closed off the immediate diplomatic route, but 242 remained the framework for every later negotiation.
The Superpower Aftermath
The war reshaped Cold War alignments in the region. The Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and accelerated the rearmament of Egypt and Syria, sending in Soviet advisers and surface-to-air missile crews. The United States, which had stayed officially neutral during the war, now tilted decisively towards Israel as a Cold War ally; aid figures rose sharply from 1968 onwards. France, traditionally Israel’s arms supplier, broke with Israel under President de Gaulle and became an arms supplier to Arab states instead. The diplomatic positions hardened by 1967 framed every later war and every later negotiation, including the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the shuttle diplomacy that followed.