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The Six-Day War

Israel, the Sinai, and Six Days That Redrew the Middle East — A TLDR Primer

Trying to make sense of the 1967 Six-Day War before a test or a class discussion — and getting lost in decades of Middle East backstory? This primer gives you the whole story in one clean pass: how tensions between Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan boiled over in the spring of 1967, why Israel's June 5 airstrike on the Arab air forces decided the war almost before it began, and how three simultaneous ground campaigns left Israel in control of the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights within a week.

Written for high school and early college students, this is a six-day war summary for students that skips the jargon and gets straight to what actually happened and why it matters — the Straits of Tiran closure, the expulsion of UN peacekeepers, the Khartoum Resolution's 'three no's,' and the still-contested UN Resolution 242, the framework that was supposed to resolve the land-for-peace question and never fully did.

Each section leads with the one sentence you need to know, then unpacks it with dates, maps-in-words, and the specific decisions that turned a regional standoff into a war that redrew borders that are still argued over today. A closing section connects 1967 to the Yom Kippur War, Camp David, and the First Intifada, so you understand not just what happened in June 1967 but why historians still debate it.

No filler, no textbook bloat — just the causes, the six days, and the aftermath, laid out so you can walk into class or an exam and explain it clearly. Perfect for students cramming the night before, and for parents or tutors who want a fast, reliable refresher.

Get oriented in one sitting — pick up your copy today.

What you'll learn
  • Explain the political and military tensions between Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan that led to war in June 1967
  • Trace the key events of each day of the war, including the opening airstrike, the capture of the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights
  • Identify the main figures — Nasser, Eshkol, Dayan, Rabin, King Hussein — and their roles in the conflict
  • Understand the war's outcomes: UN Resolution 242, the occupied territories, the Palestinian refugee question, and the shift in Cold War alignments
  • Recognize common misconceptions about the war's inevitability, its 'preemptive' framing, and its long-term consequences
What's inside
  1. 1. The Powder Keg: Roots of the 1967 Crisis
    Sets up the political, territorial, and ideological tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors from 1948 through the spring of 1967.
  2. 2. May 1967: The Countdown to War
    Walks through the three-week crisis in May 1967 — Soviet misinformation, the expulsion of UN peacekeepers, the closure of the Straits of Tiran, and the failure of diplomacy.
  3. 3. Day One: Operation Focus and the Destruction of the Arab Air Forces
    Details the June 5 Israeli preemptive airstrike that destroyed most of Egypt's, Syria's, and Jordan's air forces within hours and effectively decided the war.
  4. 4. The Ground War: Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan
    Traces the three simultaneous ground campaigns — the armored push through the Sinai, the battle for Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the assault on the Golan Heights.
  5. 5. Aftermath: Territory, Refugees, and Resolution 242
    Examines the immediate consequences — Israel's tripled territory, a new wave of Palestinian refugees, the Khartoum Resolution, and the ambiguous UN framework meant to resolve it all.
  6. 6. Why the Six Days Still Matter
    Connects 1967 to what followed — the Yom Kippur War, Camp David, the First Intifada, and the still-unresolved status of the West Bank and Golan — and explains historiographical debates.
Published by Solid State Press
The Six-Day War cover
TLDR STUDY GUIDES

The Six-Day War

Israel, the Sinai, and Six Days That Redrew the Middle East — A TLDR Primer
Solid State Press

The Six-Day War

Israel, the Sinai, and Six Days That Redrew the Middle East — A TLDR Primer

Copyright © 2026 Solid State Press.

Published by Solid State Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission, except for brief quotations in critical reviews and educational use.

Part of the TLDR Study Guides series.

Contents

  1. 1 The Powder Keg: Roots of the 1967 Crisis
  2. 2 May 1967: The Countdown to War
  3. 3 Day One: Operation Focus and the Destruction of the Arab Air Forces
  4. 4 The Ground War: Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan
  5. 5 Aftermath: Territory, Refugees, and Resolution 242
  6. 6 Why the Six Days Still Matter
Chapter 1

The Powder Keg: Roots of the 1967 Crisis

Israel did not appear in a vacuum in 1967, and neither did the hostility surrounding it. To understand why war broke out that June, you need to go back almost two decades, to the war that created the state's borders in the first place.

In May 1948, Israel declared independence, and five Arab armies — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq — invaded within days. Israel won that war, but the fighting ended not with a peace treaty but with a set of armistice lines: temporary cease-fire boundaries drawn in 1949 between Israel and its neighbors, never intended as permanent borders. The line running through the middle of Jerusalem, splitting it between Israeli and Jordanian control, was one of these. So was the line separating Israel from the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip, and the line — later nicknamed the "Green Line" for the color used to draw it on the map — separating Israel from the West Bank, which Jordan annexed outright in 1950. A common misconception is that these lines were recognized international borders. They were not. Every Arab state involved treated them as a pause in an unfinished war, not a settlement, and that ambiguity would matter enormously in 1967, when Israel captured territory beyond them and the question became whether those new lines were any more permanent than the old ones.

The 1948 war also produced a refugee crisis: roughly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from the territory that became Israel, and neither Israel nor the surrounding Arab states absorbed them as citizens. Instead, most lived for generations in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Their unresolved status became a rallying point across the Arab world and a permanent source of instability, since armed groups drawing on this refugee population would launch cross-border attacks into Israel throughout the 1950s and 60s. These attacks became known as fedayeen raids — fedayeen being an Arabic term (roughly, "those who sacrifice themselves") used for irregular fighters conducting guerrilla-style incursions, often from Egyptian-controlled Gaza or Jordanian territory. Israel routinely responded to these raids with retaliatory strikes, and this action-reaction cycle kept the borders simmering for years before 1967 without ever escalating to full war — until it did.

About This Book

If you're a high school student tackling world history or AP World, a college freshman in a Middle East studies survey, or a parent trying to help with homework, this is a six day war 1967 summary for students built to get you oriented fast. It works just as well if you're simply curious why did the six day war start and want the real story without wading through a 400-page academic tome.

This guide is an Israel-Arab war 1967 explained from the ground up: the roots of the crisis, the tense countdown of May 1967, the air strikes that opened the war, and the ground campaigns across the Sinai, Golan Heights, and West Bank history that followed. It closes with the diplomatic aftermath, including UN Resolution 242 explained simply, and a clear-eyed look at six day war causes and effects that still shape headlines today. Consider it a 1967 Middle East war study guide with no filler.

Read it straight through first, then revisit the sections that map onto your syllabus or exam review sheet.

Keep reading

You've read the first half of Chapter 1. The complete book covers 6 chapters in roughly fifteen pages — readable in one sitting.

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