The Six Day War

It took three weeks of waiting and six days of fighting to change the face of the Middle East. The military countdown to the war started on May 15, 1967, with the crossing of the first Egyptian tanks from the Suez Canal into the Sinai. Although this action surprised Israel, it was closely related to tensions and military clashes that had taken place much earlier along Israel’s borders, especially with Jordan and Syria. The 1956 Suez War had ended with Israel having to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and the Tiran Straits, but with two major achievements: First, the Eisenhower administration pledged to Israel that the United States would regard the re-closure of the Straits by Egypt as a casus belli that would allow Israel to act in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter concerning self-defense. The second was the placement of UN observers (the United Nations Emergency Force, UNEF) along the Israeli-Egyptian border.