Dis67a01:  June '67 War, 1967 

	Arab-lsraeli Relations from 1957 to 1967 
	leading to the June 1967 War

	With Israel restored to the borders established under the 1949 armistices, armed clashes between Arabs and Israelis continued to occur in the decade following the 1956 Suez war.  There were a number of incidents on the Israel-Gaza border in May-June 1957, but by December of that year the area was comparatively peaceful, mainly because of the presence of UNEF.  Israeli and Jordanian troops clashed in the Mount Scopus demilitarized zone of Jerusalem in August 1957 and May 1958, each side accusing the other of violation of the armistice agreement in the Jerusalem area.  The main trouble area in this period, however, was the Israeli-Syrian border in the demilitarized zone south-east of the Sea of Galilee, which the Israelis claimed to be under their jurisdiction.  The most serious incidents in this region took place in March 1962 and August 1963, although clashes were of frequent occurrence from 1957.  In August 1963 Syria alleged that there were Israeli troop concentrations on!
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he S
yrian border, but an investigation by the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) revealed no evidence of a military build-up.
	In 1959 Egypt began a new blockade of Israeli trade through the Suez Canal, after having refrained, between 1956 and 1959, from interfering with the passage of Israeli goods when such cargoes were carried in vessels not flying the Israeli flag.  During 1959 Egypt detained a number of ships of various nationalities carrying exports from Israel and impounded their cargoes.  Egyptian sources justified their action on the ground that there was still a state of war between Israel and the Arab countries, and that Israel therefore had no right to ship goods through the Suez Canal.
	A further cause of Arab-lsraeli friction was the longstanding dispute over the waters of the River Jordan.  A number of plans for an equitable division of the waters between Palestine and the riparian Arab states (Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon) were proposed between 1944 and 1955, the last of which was agreed at technical level by Israel and the Arab states under US auspices, but broke down at political level, largely because of Syrian opposition.  Israel and Jordan subsequently went ahead with separate schemes, Israel pumping water from the Sea of Galilee to be carried by pipeline to the Negev in the south, and Jordan tapping the waters of the two tributaries, the Yarmuk and the Zarqa.  Israel's action aroused the anger of the Arabs, whose heads of state, meeting in Cairo in January 1964, decided on a plan to reduce the flow of the northern tributaries of the Jordan, thus reducing the quantity of water Israel would be able to divert.  It was some time before work could begin !
on!
 this scheme, however, as Lebanon and Syria required assurances of their security from Israeli attack during implementation of the diversion projects. 
	The January 1964 Arab summit also adopted important resolutions endorsing the creation of Palestinian Arab representative bodies, on the basis of which the inaugural meeting of the Palestine National Council (PNC)-a Palestinian parliament-in-exile-was held in the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem in May-June 1964. This first session of the PNC took the decision to establish the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the armed wing of the Palestinian struggle and also adopted (on June 2) the Palestine National Charter (or "Covenant") as the basic statement of Palestinian Arab aims, which it remains today. Regarded by the Israelis as enshrining the Arab objective of destroying the Jewish state, the 33-article Charter states inter alia that "Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian Arab people . . . [and] is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland" (Art. 1); that "Palestine, within the boundaries it had during the British mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit" (Art.!
 2!
); t
hat "the Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny after achieving the liberation of their country in accordance with their wishes and entirely of their own accord and will" (Art. 3); that "the Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there" and also all those born after that date of a Palestinian father "whether inside Palestine or outside it" (Art. 5); that "the Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionism invasion will be considered Palestinians" (Art. 6).
	The Charter also declares that "armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine" (Art. 9); that "the liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual point of view, will provide the Holy Land with an atmosphere of safety and tranquillity, which in turn will safeguard the country's religious sanctuaries and guarantee freedom of worship and of visit to all, without discrimination of race, colour, language or religion" (Art. 16); that "the partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right to self-determination" (Art. 19); that "the Balfour declaration, the mandate for Palestine and everything which has been based on them are deemed null and void" on the grounds that "claims of histor!
ic!
al o
r religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood" (Art. 20); that "the Palestinian Arab people , . . reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all proposals aiming at the liquidation of the Palestinian problem or its internationalization" (Art. 21); that "Zionism is a political movement originally associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world [and] is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist and colonial in its aims and fascist in its methods" (Art. 22); and that "the Palestine Liberation Organization . . . is responsible for the Palestinian Arab people's movement in its struggle-to retrieve its homeland, liberate and return to it and exercise the right of self-determination in it-in all military, political and financial fields and also fo!
r !
whatever may be required by the Palestine case on the inter-Arab and international levels".
	As the principal guerrilla arm of the PLO, the Al Fatah ("Conquest") group led by Yassir Arafat mounted numerous incursions into Israel, initially mainly from Jordan and increasingly during 1965 from Syrian territory. An intensification of such attacks in October and November 1966 gave rise to a serious political crisis which led directly to the third Arab-Israeli war. After a resolution calling on Syria to strengthen its measures for preventing guerrilla activities had been vetoed in the UN Security by the Soviet Union on Nov. 4, Israeli forces carried out a reprisal raid on a Jordanian village on Nov. 13, which was condemned by the Security Council on Nov. 25. In late November and early December 1966 violent rioting occurred in the principal towns of the Jordanian West Bank, where the population demanded arlns to defend themselves against further Israeli attacks. By the end of 1966 both Israel and Jordan had taken military steps suggesting an anticipation of possible war,!
 w!
hile
 from January 1967 tension between Israel and Syria increased sharply amid repeated armed clashes on the ground and in the air. During Israel's independence day celebrations on May 14, 1967, the Israeli Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, warned that a serious confrontation with Syria was inevitable if Syrian-backed guerrilla activities continued.
	The sequence of events immediately prior to the June 1967 war was as follows. May 16: The Egyptian Government declared a state of emergency throughout the country and announced that its forces were "in a complete state of preparedness for war".  May 17: Syria and Jordan similarly announced that their forces were being mobilized. May 18: Egypt made an official request to the UN Secretary-General, U Thant, that UNEF forces should be withdrawn from Egyptian territory and the Gaza Strip (recalling that their presence was subject to Egyptian approval) and Iraq and Kuwait announced the mobilization of their forces.  May 19: The UNEF was officially withdrawn, with U Thant explaining that "there seemed to me to be no alternative course of action which could be taken by the Secretary-General without putting into question the sovereign authority of the [Egyptian Government] within its own territory".  May 21: Both Egypt and Israel announced the call-up of reservists, and the PLO anno!
un!
ced that its forces had been placed under the military commands of Egypt, Syria and Iraq.  May 22: It was announced in Cairo that President Nasse
r had accepted an offer of Iraqi army and air force units to assist Egypt in the event of an outbreak of hostilities.  May 23: Nasser announced the closing of the Straits of Tiran to ships flying the lsraeli flag and to any other vessel carrying strategic goods to Israel (including oil), this action being described by Eshkol as an act of aggression against Israel and as a violation of the freedom of navigation assurances given when Israel withdrew from Sharm el Sheikh in 1957.  May 24: Egypt announced that the Gulf of Aqaba had been effectively sealed off, while contingents of Saudi Arabian troops were reported to have arrived in Jordan.  May 26: Following a visit by Abba Eban (Israel's Foreign Minister) to Paris, London and Washington (May 24-25), Israel warned that it had the right to break the blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba if the United Nations or the maritime powers failed to act.  May 27: U Thant reported to the UN Security Council that Egypt had assured him that it wou!
ld!
 "no
t initiate offensive action against Israel" but that Israeli shipping would not be allowed to pass through the Straits of Tiran.  May 28-29: General mobilization was proclaimed in Sudan (May 28) and Algeria announced that military units were being sent to assist Egypt (May 29).  May 30: King Hussein of Jordan visited Cairo and signed a defence pact with Egypt under which each country would consider an attack on either as an attack on both, while Abba Eban warned that if the Gulf blockade was not lifted soon Israel would "act alone if we must . . , but with others if we can".  May 31: Iraqi troops and armoured units were reported to be moving into Jordan towards the Israeli border, while several Arab countries threatened to take action against the oil interests of Western states who aided Israel.  June 2-3: More than 20 maritime nations were presented with a UK-US draft declaration affirming the right of free and innocent passage through the Gulf of Aqaba but containing no pr!
ov!
ision for any enforcement actlon.  June 4: Nasser said that an
y such declaration would be regarded as a transgression of Egyptian sovereignty and "a preliminary to an act of war", while Iraq joined the Egypt-Jordan defence pact and Libya pledged troops to assist Egypt in the event of war.   June 5: Early in the morning the Israeli Air Force launched pre-emptive strikes against airfields in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq, destroying virtually all the air capability of these countries on the first day of what subsequently became known as the Six-Day War.
	With the benefit of complete air supremacy, Israeli forces achieved a rapid and complete victory in the June 1967 war.  By the time hostilities ended in a ceasefire on June 10 Israel had (i) captured the Gaza Strip and overrun the entire Sinai peninsula up to the Suez Canal, including Sharm el Sheikh; (ii) gained control of the Old City of Jerusalem and overrun all of Jordanian territory west of the Jordan; and (iii) captured the Golan Heights from Syria and penetrated some 12 miles into Syrian territory (this advance being achieved in the final stages of the fighting after both Israel and Syria had signified acceptance of a ceasefire).  By the end of the war the Israeli armed forces were in occupation of an area more than three times greater than the territory of Israel at the outbreak of hostilities (see map 23 on page 188), the newly occupied territories extending to some 27,000 square miles (70,000 sq km) as compared with the 8,000 square miles (20,000 sq km) of the Jew!
is!
h state within the 1949 armistice lines.  Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting totalled 766 and Arab losses (never definitively announced) were thought to include about 10,000 Egyptian and 6,000 Jordanian dead.
	An important feature of the 1967 war was a four-fold increase in the number of Palestinian Arabs under Jewish rule, from a pre-war total of some 300,000 to about 1,200,000 (as against a mid-l967 Jewish population of some 2,500,000).  Although up to 200,000 Palestinians fled from the West Bank during the war, about 600,000 remained under the new Israeli adminstration, as did approximately 300,000 in the Gaza Strip.  Virtually the entire population of the Syrian territory captured by Israel-about 60,000-fled eastwards during the fighting, leaving the Golan Heights practically uninhabited in the immediate post-war period.