Six-Day War and Loss of Jerusalem

# Six-Day War and Loss of Jerusalem

Background: The Road to June 1967

The Six-Day War of June 5-10, 1967 CE / Safar 1387 AH was the most consequential military conflict in the modern history of the Muslim world. Its consequences — particularly the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza — have shaped the politics, theology, and daily lives of millions of Muslims to the present day. Understanding the war requires understanding the volatile political environment that preceded it.

After the Suez Crisis of 1956, Israel had withdrawn from Sinai and Gaza under American pressure, and a UN Emergency Force (UNEF) was stationed in Sinai to separate Israeli and Egyptian forces. The Palestinian fedayeen problem — cross-border guerrilla attacks launched primarily from Gaza and Jordan — continued to produce Israeli retaliatory raids and diplomatic crises throughout the late 1950s and 1960s.

In May 1967, tensions escalated rapidly. Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser, responding to (false) Soviet intelligence reports that Israel was massing forces on the Syrian border, took a series of dramatic steps: he deployed the Egyptian army into Sinai, requested the withdrawal of the UNEF (which UN Secretary-General U Thant immediately honored), and on May 22-23 closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The strait closure was the proximate casus belli — Israel had previously declared it would treat a closure as an act of war. Jordan signed a mutual defense pact with Egypt on May 30. Iraq subsequently joined the Egyptian-Jordanian alliance.

The Israeli Preemptive Strike

Israel's military leadership concluded that a preemptive strike was necessary to prevent what they perceived as an imminent Arab military attack. At 7:45 am on June 5, 1967 / 25 Safar 1387 AH, the Israeli Air Force launched Operation Focus (Moked) — a massive surprise air assault against Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, and Iraqi air forces. Approximately 200 Israeli aircraft flew low over the Mediterranean before turning to approach their targets. Within three hours, the Egyptian Air Force — the largest and most capable Arab air force — was destroyed on the ground. The operation was executed with extraordinary precision: 286 of the Egyptian Air Force's 420 aircraft were destroyed in the first strikes alone.

With air superiority established, Israeli ground forces drove into Sinai and Gaza. Egyptian forces retreated in disorganization. The Jordanian and Syrian air forces, which launched retaliatory attacks, were also destroyed in subsequent strikes. The loss of air cover made Arab ground forces vulnerable to air attack throughout the campaign.

The Fall of East Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa

Jordan's entry into the war proved decisive for the fate of Jerusalem. When Jordanian forces shelled West Jerusalem and Israeli-held positions on the morning of June 5, Israel made the decision to take the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israeli forces advanced through the West Bank and encircled East Jerusalem.

On the morning of June 7, 1967, Israeli paratroopers entered the Old City through the Lions' Gate (Bab al-Asbat). At 10:15 am, Paratroop Brigade Commander Motta Gur announced over the radio: "The Temple Mount is in our hands." Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin entered the Old City and proceeded to the Western Wall.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and the entire Al-Haram al-Sharif compound fell under Israeli military control. Dayan made a politically significant decision: he returned the keys of the Al-Aqsa compound to the Waqf (Islamic Endowment) administration, allowing the Jordanian-appointed Islamic authorities to continue managing the holy sites. Israeli sovereignty was declared over all of Jerusalem, but the day-to-day administration of the Al-Aqsa compound remained with the Islamic Waqf — an arrangement that has continued, with significant tensions, to the present.

Israeli authorities subsequently demolished the Mughrabi Quarter (Harat al-Magharbeh) — a neighborhood adjacent to the Western Wall occupied by Moroccan families for centuries — within days of capturing the city, to create an open plaza in front of the Western Wall. Hundreds of families were displaced.

On June 27-28, 1967, Israel passed legislation formally annexing East Jerusalem and extending Israeli law to the city. The annexation was immediately condemned by the UN Security Council as invalid. No government in the world recognized Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem until the United States' controversial recognition in 2017.

The Theological Significance of Jerusalem in Islam

The fall of Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock under Israeli control was an event of profound religious significance for Muslims worldwide. The Quran explicitly references the Night Journey (Isra') in Surah 17:1: "Glory be to Him who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque (Al-Aqsa), whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs." The Farthest Mosque — Al-Masjid al-Aqsa — is universally identified by Islamic scholarship as the mosque in Jerusalem from which the Prophet ﷺ ascended to the heavens in the Mi'raj.

Al-Aqsa was also the first qibla of Islam. Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem for approximately seventeen months after the Hijra before the qibla was changed to the Ka'bah in Mecca. The Prophet ﷺ said that prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque are worth five hundred times more than in other mosques, and only the mosques of Mecca and Medina are accorded greater sanctity. Jerusalem is called in Islamic tradition "al-Quds" (the Holy) — a designation of singular reverence.

The fact that the third-holiest site in Islam had passed under the military control of a non-Muslim state was an event without precedent in modern Islamic history. The shock reverberated through the Muslim world, catalyzing institutions and movements that have shaped Islamic politics ever since.

The Military Campaign: Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, and Golan

In the south, Israeli armor drove into Sinai along three axes, routing Egyptian forces and reaching the Suez Canal by June 8. The entire Sinai Peninsula — including Gaza, which Egypt had administered since 1948 — was conquered in three days. Egyptian President Nasser announced his resignation on June 9, before retracting it in response to massive public demonstrations.

On June 9-10, Israeli forces attacked the Golan Heights — the elevated plateau in southwestern Syria from which Syrian artillery had periodically shelled Israeli settlements in the Galilee since 1948. The Syrian forces, demoralized by the air campaign, collapsed in thirty-six hours. Israel captured the Golan Heights, including the strategic town of Quneitra, before a UN ceasefire took effect on June 11.

UN Resolution 242 and Its Non-Implementation

On November 22, 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 242 — one of the most cited and debated resolutions in UN history. The resolution called for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" and "termination of all claims or states of belligerency." The formula "land for peace" — Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for Arab recognition and peace — became the basis of all subsequent diplomatic efforts.

The ambiguity of the resolution's English text — "from territories" rather than "from the territories" — has been exploited by Israel to argue it does not require complete withdrawal. Arab states have consistently argued that "territories" refers to all territories occupied in 1967. Resolution 242 has never been implemented. Israel has retained the West Bank and Gaza (and occupied the Golan Heights, later annexed in 1981), and the occupation now extends over fifty-five years.

Formation of the OIC

The Al-Aqsa arson attack of August 21, 1969, in which an Australian Zionist tourist set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque causing damage to the historic pulpit (minbar) built by Nur al-Din Zangi and sent by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, shocked the Muslim world. This event accelerated the formation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), established by royal decree in Rabat, Morocco, on September 25, 1969. The OIC brought together Muslim-majority states in an institutional framework explicitly oriented around the liberation of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque as central organizing purposes.

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was among the most vocal in his grief and anger over Jerusalem. His statement that he hoped to pray in Al-Aqsa before his death — he was assassinated in 1975 — captured the widespread Islamic sentiment that the liberation of Jerusalem was a personal religious duty.

Consequences and Legacy

The Six-Day War of 1967 was a watershed in Islamic and Arab political history. The comprehensive defeat of Arab armies — despite their numerical superiority in some categories — shattered the prestige of pan-Arab nationalism as a political project. Nasser's model of secular Arab socialism, which had promised liberation and dignity, had produced catastrophic defeat. The defeat opened the political space for Islamic alternatives: if Arab nationalism had failed, many Muslims concluded, an explicitly Islamic politics was needed.

The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza created a new reality: millions of Palestinians under direct Israeli military rule. The Palestinian fedayeen organizations, now operating from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, intensified their operations. The PLO gained prominence as the representative of Palestinian resistance. The first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993) and second (2000-2005) were direct products of the occupation.

Jerusalem remains the central question. The city's status — claimed as the eternal capital of Israel by Israeli law, recognized as occupied Palestinian territory under international law, and home to Islam's third-holiest site — makes it the most contested piece of land on earth. For Muslims, the liberation of Al-Aqsa and the return of East Jerusalem to Muslim sovereignty is not merely a political aspiration but a religious obligation that will not diminish with time.

Sources: Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2002); Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East (Metropolitan Books, 2007); Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (W.W. Norton, 2000); Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life (Morrow, 1976); UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967); Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (Metropolitan Books, 2020); Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem: A History (William Morrow, 2008)