THE SIX-DAY WAR, 1967 term paper

Throughout the 1960s there were deep, unresolved tensions among Israel, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), an organization founded in 1964 to free Palestine from Israeli control. United Nations (UN) peacekeepers, assigned to the Sinai Peninsula after the 1956 Suez Crisis, had kept Egyptian and Israeli forces apart, but there were frequent border clashes and guerrilla attacks among Israeli, Arab, and PLO forces.

These tensions came to flash point on 16 May 1967, when President Nasser of Egypt ordered the UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai. On 22 May Nasser announced that the Gulf of Aqaba, Israel’s access to the Red Sea, was closed to Israeli ships. Israel’s prime minister, Levi Eshkol, protested the closure and sought U.S., British, and UN assistance in guaranteeing Israeli ships the right of free passage throughout the Gulf of Aqaba.

Israel, a country of 2.5 million people, had long committed itself to a strong, modern military and a preemptive offensive strategy against its enemies. On 1 June 1967, Eshkol named General Moshe Dayan, an offensive-minded strategist, as minister of war. On 5 June Israeli jets, in a series of lethal air strikes, destroyed the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian air forces. Within two days Israel gained full air superiority. By 11 June 1967, Israel had occupied the Golan Heights, the West Bank territories of the Jordan River, East Jerusalem, and the Sinai. A UN-sponsored cease-fire halted the fighting on 11 June 1967. As a result of the Six-Day War, Israel sustained 1,000 casualties, inflicted more than 25,000 casualties on its enemies, increased the size of its territory by one-third, and added 1.5 million Palestinians to its population. UN Resolution 242, of November 1967, provided for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from some of the territories occupied in the Six-Day War and recognized the right of all states in the region to exist. But neither the Six-Day War nor UN Resolution 242 brought peace to the region. By occupying the Golan Heights, Israel improved its border defenses with Syria, but Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank territories aggravated relations between Israel and its neighbors. PLO commando attacks against Israeli targets dramatically increased after the war, and Israel security forces reacted by engaging in acts of bloody reprisal against Palestinians. Eventually Egypt and Israel entered into negotiations to resolve their differences, but it was not until 1979 that Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty ending the Six-Day War. In 1994 Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin of Israel and King Hussein of Jordan finally signed a peace treaty.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Analyze the strategy and tactics of General Moshe Dayan and the Israeli military command in their planning for the Six-Day War.
2. Examine the role of the Israeli air force in the Six-Day War. Why were the Israeli pilots so successful?
3. Evaluate the role of the United Nations in the war. How effective has UN Resolution 242 (see Suggested Sources) been in reducing tensions in the region?
4. What was the reaction of the United States to the Six-Day War? 5. How did the Egyptian military respond to the defeats of the Six-Day War?
6. Investigate the role of President Jimmy Carter (see Suggested Sources) in persuading Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt to sign a peace treaty in 1979.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The British Mandate of Palestine, 1922” (#13), “The Establishment of the State of Israel, 1948” (#43), “Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Suez Crisis, 1956” (#52), and “Terrorism in the 1970s” (#78). Search under Yasir Arafat, Abba Eban, and President Jimmy Carter.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary sources

Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. New York: Bantam Books, 1982. Useful insights into the Camp David agreements signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979.

Dayan, Moshe. Story of My Life. New York: Morrow, 1976. Israel’swar minister explains how Israel won the war.

Laqueur, Walter, and Barry Rubin, eds. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. The most accessible collection of documents, including key UN documents and Arab views of the war.

Nasser, Gamal Abdel. Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1955. A succinct outline of Nasser’s dream of leading the Islamic world.

Rabin, Yitzhak. The Rabin Memoirs. Translated by Dov Goldstein. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Chapter 6 focuses on the Six-Day War.

Secondary Sources

Luttwak, Edward, and Dan Horowitz. The Israeli Army. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. A solid study with a good bibliography.

O’Balance, Edgar. The Third Arab-Israeli War. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1972. A reliable military history of the Six-Day War.

Ovendale, Ritchie. The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1992. Short chapter on the war with clear maps of the territories occupied in 1967.

Reiser, Stewart. The Israeli Arms Industry: Foreign Policy, Arms Transfers,and Military Doctrine of a Small State. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1989. A good survey of Israeli weapons.

Sachar, Howard M. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. New York: Knopf, 1979. A standard history with good coverage on the 1967 war.

Stoessinger, John G. Why Nations Go to War. 7th ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. A lucid discussion of the war framed within the half-century of Arab-Israeli conflict.

World Wide Web

“Department of History Map Library.” http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/dhistorymaps//MapsHome.htm. Click on “Atlases” for United States Military Academy (West Point) maps of the fighting on all fronts.



Author: essay
Professional custom essay writers.

Leave a Reply