Overview

The June 1967 war was a watershed in the history of the modern Middle East. In six days, the Israelis defeated the Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and seized large portions of territory including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. With the hindsight of four decades and access to recently declassified documents, two veteran scholars of the Middle East bring together some of the most knowledgeable experts in their fields to reassess the origins of the war and its regional reverberations. Each chapter takes a different perspective from the vantage point of a different participant, those that actually took part in the war, and also the world powers - the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France - that played important roles behind the scenes. Their conclusions make for sober reading. At the heart of the story was the incompetence of the Egyptian high command under the leadership of Nasser and the rivalry between various Arab players who were deeply suspicious of each other's motives. Israel, on the other side, gained a resounding victory for which, despite previous assessments to the contrary, there was no master plan.