Pitting Israel against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, the conflict followed tense weeks of military buildup by Egypt, which had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping with its armoured forces close to the border with Israel. The response was a pre-emptive Israeli air attack by almost 200 planes that targeted the Egyptian air forces on the ground. As Jordan joined the war, Israeli forces quickly fought their way into east Jerusalem, overrunning the positions occupied in the city by Jordanian forces for 19 years.

The West Bank and Gaza also fell quickly to Israeli forces, while in the north they pushed back the Syrian military to take the Golan Heights, and in the south pushed deep into the Egyptian Sinai peninsula.

But if the war was short, its continuing aftermath has dragged on for decades, a reality some would foresee even immediately after the fighting. Writing in August 1967, barely three months after the end of the conflict, a young Amos Oz – now one of Israel’s most celebrated writers – was among a number to caution against the sense of national celebration, recognising that the conquest also meant occupation, not least of the populous Palestinian territories.

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“We are condemned now to rule people who do not want to be ruled by us,” he wrote bleakly in the long-defunct Labour newspaper Davar. “I have fears about the kind of seeds we will sow in the near future in the hearts of the occupied. Even more, I have fears about the seed that will be planted in the hearts of the occupiers.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/20/six-day-war-israel-still-divided-over-legacy-50-years-on

5/20/17