A War That Shaped the Modern Middle East
Unfortunately, what might have been intended as bluff seemed all too real from an Israeli perspective. Moreover, the Israelis, who actually were prepared for war, had long wanted an excuse to cut Nasser down to size. So on June 5th, 1967, they launched preemptive air strikes. The result was a disaster for the Egyptian Air Force, which lost ninety percent of its airplanes on ground. The Israelis wrecked the Syrian Air Force as well. Once they had secured aerial supremacy, the Israelis launched ground attacks that routed the Egyptians and seized Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula within three days. They routed the Jordanians and seized Jerusalem and the West Bank within two.
Egypt and Jordan accepted a UN ceasefire but the Syrians unwisely did not. So the Israelis attacked Syria on June 9th, and captured the Golan Heights within a day. The next day, Syria accepted a ceasefire. The war was humiliatingly lopsided. About 24,000 Arabs were killed vs 800 Israelis, with similarly disproportionate rates for wounded and equipment losses. The disaster seriously damaged Nasser’s prestige in the Arab world, which he had sought to burnish with warlike rhetoric and demonstrations short of war. It took a severe hit from which it never recovered.
