Seattle: In the early months of 1967, Soviet intelligence confirmed Syria’s and Egypt’s own estimation that Israel was preparing for a major attack on Syria.
Under immense pressure, Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser, understood that his great oratory skills must translate into action, strong enough to send a message to Israel that the Arabs were prepared for war, too.
He ordered the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to withdraw some of its units between Sinai and Israel (but not units stationed in Sharm Al Shaikh). The international force insisted that a withdrawal would have to include all of its forces stationed in Sinai. Nasser obliged. Egyptian forces quickly deployed in its place.
On May 25, Nasser declared his country’s intent to block the Strait of Tiran, leading to the Gulf of Aqaba. War was all but a matter of time.
On June 5, Israel launched a massive ‘pre-emptive’ aerial attack against Egypt, and moved in force against the West Bank, Jordan and Syria. Israeli warplanes attacked all of Egypt’s 17 airbases, and within hours, most of the country’s air force was obliterated.
The war’s outcome was largely determined before any real combat had begun. The Egyptian army was exposed in the naked desert. Within the next 24 hours, the air forces of Jordan and Syria were also pounded.
By June 7, Jordan had ceded Jerusalem, and the rest of the West Bank. By June 10, Israel had captured the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula to the Suez Canal and down to Sharm Al Shaikh. Syria was forced to concede its strategically and economically prized Golan Heights.
Within days, Israel had occupied three times more territories than it did post-1948.
Israel had lost 766 soldiers, while Arabs lost tens of thousands of troops and civilians, between dead and wounded. Egypt alone lost more than 10,000 soldiers and Jordan, much smaller in size and population, over 6,000.
More, demographic realities were fundamentally altered, as all of historic Palestine fell under Israeli control, and the Jewish state dominated four times as many Palestinians, a mix of old and new occupied people and occupied territories.
In the West Bank, many villages were forcefully evacuated; new lines demarcated freshly designated security zones, buffer belts and so on.
Hundreds of thousands of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians instantly became refugees in Jordan, Egypt and, subsequently, other countries.
But 600,000 remained in the West Bank, and 300,000 more held in Gaza. The Israeli army reigned supreme and uncontested. The Arabs were soundly defeated.
For years Israel had been arming itself with American HAWK missiles, West German Patton tanks and French Mirage Jets. Moreover, American intelligence on the side of Israel was of immense value to its victory.
What happened in June 1967 was not just a Second Nakba, or “catastrophe”, but a ‘Naksa’ as well, meaning the great “setback”. The term was not randomly coined, for it expressed the collective sense of complete dismay and disillusionment that permeated Arab peoples’ consciousness at the time.
