FROM LEFT: Central Command head Uzi Narkiss, defense minister Moshe Dayan and IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin walk through the Lions’ Gate into Jerusalem’s Old City in June 1967
With the current Israeli/Hamas war as a backdrop, today marks the 57th anniversary of the start of the 3rd Arab-Israeli war. This conflict is also known as the June war and the 1967 war.
The proximate cause of the war was the closure of the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping by Egyptian strongman Gamal Nasser on 22 May 1967. (I’m oversimplifying to be sure, but the most immediate cause of the war was the closure.) The closure of the straits effectively closed the Israeli port of Eilat. He had closed the straits before, during the 1956 Suez crisis, and Israel had made repeated statements that closure of the straits would be considered an act of war.
After the war, President Johnson said:
If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations.
Egypt, Syria and Jordan had entered into mutual defense pacts in the months leading up to the war. Based on faulty – purposely so – Russian intelligence, Nassar moved much of the Egyptian armed forces into the Sinai,
On 5 June 1967, the Israeli Air Force launched Operation Focus (Moked). All but 12 of its nearly 200 operational jets launched a mass attack against Egypt’s airfields. Egyptian forces were caught by surprise, and nearly all of Egypt’s military aerial assets were destroyed, giving Israel air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula as well as the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip. After some initial resistance, Nasser ordered an evacuation of the Sinai Peninsula; by the sixth day of the conflict, Israel had occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt wasn’t the only Arab country involved, nor were they the only one to lose territory. Jordan, backed by Iraq and Saudi Arabia, lost the ‘West Bank’ to the IDF while Syria lost the Golan Heights.
Casualties were relatively light given the numbers of combatants involved. Somewhere between 700 and 1000 Israelis were killed and 4,517 were wounded. Arab casualties were far greater. Between 9,800 and 15000 Egyptian soldiers were listed as killed or missing in action. I should note that Nasser gave orders that stragglers should be shot and left where they dropped. An additional 4,338 Egyptian soldiers were captured or surrendered. Jordanian losses were estimated to be 700 killed in action with another 2,500 wounded. The Syrians were estimated to have sustained between 1000 and 2,500 killed in action. Between 367 and 591 Syrians were captured.