Six Days of War June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

by Oren, Michael B.

• ISBN13: 9780195151749
• ISBN10: 0195151747
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-06-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Israel and the West it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War, or simply as "the Setback." Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in West Bank, the intifada and the rise of Palestinian terror: all are part of the outcome of those six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in the summer of 1967. Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War is the most comprehensive history ever published of this dramatic and pivotal event, the first to explore it both as a military struggle and as a critical episode in the global Cold War. Oren spotlights all the participants--Arab, Israeli, Soviet, and American--telling the story of how the war broke out and of the shocking ways it unfolded. Drawing on thousands of top-secret documents, on rare papers in Russian and Arabic, and on exclusive personal interviews, Six Days of War recreates the regional and international context which, by the late 1960s, virtually assured an Arab-Israeli conflagration. Also examined are the domestic crises in each of the battling states, and the extraordinary personalities--Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yitzhak Rabin, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin--that precipitated this earthshaking clash.

Author Biography

Michael B. Oren is the author of The Origins of the Second Arab-Israeli War, and has written extensively on Middle Eastern history and diplomatic affairs. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in Middle East studies, and has served as Director of Israel's Department of Inter-Religious Affairs in the government of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and as an advisor to the Israeli delegation to the United Nations. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Table of Contents

List of Maps
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources and Spellings
Foreword
The Context: Arabs, Israelis, and the Great Powers, 1948 to 1966	p. 1
The Catalysts: Samu' to Sinai	p. 33
The Crisis: Two Weeks in May	p. 61
Countdown: May 31 to June 4	p. 127
The War: Day One, June 5	p. 170
Day Two, June 6	p. 211
Day Three, June 7	p. 240
Day Four, June 8	p. 257
Day Five, June 9	p. 278
Day Six, June 10	p. 294
Aftershocks: Tallies, Postmortems, and the Old/New Middle East	p. 305
Afterword	p. 328
A Conversation with Michael B. Oren	p. 332
Notes	p. 342
Bibliography and Sources	p. 416
Index	p. 434
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