Line of Fire (38/41) : The Six Day War "1967"
For educational purposes
The story of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the echoes of which are still heard today in the Middle East.
In May of that year, Egypt, under President Nasser, blocked the Tiran Straits to Israeli shipping and began to gather huge numbers of troops in the Sinai Peninsula.
At the same time King Hussein's Jordan allowed Iraqi troops across her border.
Israel was swift to respond to this turn of events and there was a devastating pre-emptive air strike against the Egyptian airforce.
Jordanian and Syrian attacks were halted and repelled, after only six short days Israel had captured East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Sinai itself.
The story of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the echoes of which are still heard today in the Middle East.
In May of that year, Egypt, under President Nasser, blocked the Tiran Straits to Israeli shipping and began to gather huge numbers of troops in the Sinai Peninsula.
At the same time King Hussein's Jordan allowed Iraqi troops across her border.
Israel was swift to respond to this turn of events and there was a devastating pre-emptive air strike against the Egyptian airforce.
Jordanian and Syrian attacks were halted and repelled, after only six short days Israel had captured East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Sinai itself.
Transcript
00:00In 1967, Syria started a process that would stir up Middle East tensions and unite the
00:13Arab states in a war against their hated neighbor, Israel.
00:17But they underestimated the military strength and cunning of the tiny state, and after six
00:22days of fierce fighting, Israel had destroyed three Arab armies and shown that it was a
00:28force to be reckoned with.
01:28It all began with water.
01:36In the mid-1960s, Israel began to use the Sea of Galilee as a freshwater reservoir for
01:41the entire country, transporting water by canal to the Negev Desert.
01:47Most of the streams which feed the Sea of Galilee flow from the Golan Heights, which
01:52was then in Syrian possession.
01:55Syria disputed this exploitation of a shared resource and began to dig a canal which would
02:00divert the Golan streams away from the Sea of Galilee.
02:05As soon as the digging started in 1964, the countdown to war was triggered.
02:16For twenty years, Israel had been on a war footing with its neighbors.
02:21The United Nations Resolution of 1947, which turned a thin slice of British-controlled
02:26Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, had been rejected out of hand by Palestinian Arabs
02:32and most of the Arab world.
02:36As the British left in 1948, seven armies invaded Palestine, overrunning the territory
02:42meant for the Palestinian Arabs and attacking the new state of Israel.
02:49Ever since that war ended in 1949, a state of uneasy truce had existed on Israel's borders.
02:56Between 1948 and 1967, Israel had a problem with defence, because unless you're willing
03:07to conduct a First World War-style attritional defence, where you dig a trench and sit in
03:12there and shoot until everybody's dead, unless you're going to do something like that, you
03:18need to be able to defend in depth. And the Israelis had no depth.
03:27Basically the country was shaped like an hourglass. There was an area in the north, surrounded
03:32by mountains, overlooked by Mount Hermon, 9,000 feet high. There was an area in the
03:38south in the Negev, and it was connected by a narrow corridor. Now at its narrowest, this
03:42corridor was only seven miles wide. And so a Judean artillery in the Judean hills could
03:48actually drop shells onto the coastline of Israel.
03:53She had a very small population. She had a very small land mass, no strategic depth,
03:58but very long borders. And she also had a relatively weak economy, very narrowly based.
04:03And this meant that she couldn't fight long attritional wars. She had to fight wars of
04:07manoeuvre.
04:08So the Israelis would have to defend at the strategic level by attacking at the operational
04:16level. And pre-emptive strike became an important part of Israeli doctrine, because of their
04:22strategic situation.
04:26In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Britain and France convinced Israel to go to war with
04:32Egypt. And for a short period, Israel occupied the vast Sinai Peninsula. Only the deployment
04:39of the first-ever UN peacekeeping mission returned tensions to their usual simmer.
04:46In the 1960s, as the Syrians and the Israelis exchanged border clashes around the Golan
04:51Heights, Egyptian President Nasser saw his leadership in the Arab world slipping away.
04:57He could not allow the Syrians to become the main aggressors against the Israelis.
05:05On the 16th of May, 1967, President Nasser ordered the United Nations peacekeeping force
05:11out of the Sinai.
05:14Nasser just wanted him to take maybe some of the peacekeeping force out. Or maybe, ideally,
05:21Uthant would say, no, that peacekeeping force is going to stay in the interest of international
05:25peace and security. And Nasser could say that the UN was bad, and the UN could say they
05:31didn't care, and Nasser would have made his show of force against the Israelis.
05:36But to some extent, to Nasser's surprise, the whole UN peacekeeping force, lock, stock
05:42and barrel, picks up and leaves. And suddenly, Nasser, who has been speaking very belligerently
05:49against the Israelis, who has been saying some pretty blood-curdling things about what
05:54he's going to do to Israel, suddenly Nasser finds himself with nothing between himself
05:59and the Israelis.
06:01Now, Nasser overlooked the Straits of Tehran, Israel's access to the Gulf of Aqaba.
06:10With Egyptian forces commanding the Straits, the Israeli port of Eilat could be cut off
06:15from the sea.
06:18International lawyers knew that this was a frightening development. Although the Straits
06:22of Tehran were within the three-mile limit of Egypt's territorial waters, the Straits
06:26were an international waterway. Barring passage to a country's shipping was an act of war.
06:37The Israelis watched with some trepidation as the Egyptians built up to war. On May 20th,
06:44they mobilized their army, calling up reserves and bringing the country's economy to a standstill.
06:51They watched as Nasser bullied Jordan's young King Hussein into joining the joint Egyptian-Syrian
06:56command structure. They watched as the Syrians dug their canal. They watched as Nasser's
07:03forces built up in the Sinai.
07:08Meanwhile, the American Sixth Fleet went on war alert in the Mediterranean. The Soviet
07:15Black Sea Fleet began moving through the Dardanelles in response.
07:23On May 28th, Nasser announced, we plan to open a general assault on Israel. This will
07:29be a total war. Our basic aim is the destruction of Israel.
07:36This firmed up Israeli resolve. Hawks and doves in the Israeli cabinet were united by
07:41Nasser's threat. And on the 4th of June, a national unity cabinet listened to seven hours
07:47of military briefing, then authorized the Prime Minister to go to war.
07:53Israeli Prime Minister Eshkol told his new defense minister, Moshe Dayan, to commence
07:58hostilities on the 5th of June at 0745 Israeli time, 0845 Cairo time.
08:05The Israeli Air Force had been doing some routine number crunching. They were proud
08:13of their quick turnaround time and were interested to see how it would work in a war game.
08:19The Israeli Air Force could turn an aircraft around in 8 minutes. That means that from
08:24the time the aircraft touched down, it could be refuelled and rearmed, pre-flighted and
08:29launched again in 8 minutes.
08:32The Israelis could do this 8 times a day for each aircraft. The question was, what
08:38if the entire Air Force was committed to operations at this tempo? How much damage could it then
08:44inflict during one single day?
08:52Israeli planners looked at the numbers and looked again. Their analysis said that if
08:57they operated against the Egyptians for one long hard morning, they could destroy their
09:02entire Air Force on the ground and still have time left to attack the much smaller
09:06Jordanian and Syrian Air Forces.
09:13At 0800 hours Cairo time on the 5th of June 1967, the Egyptian dawn patrol took off.
09:23In a well-organized Air Force, in a time of increasing international tension, what tends
09:29to happen is that air patrols are sent up from dawn and they will overlap throughout
09:34the course of the day so that there will be, in effect, a standing air patrol up over one's
09:39military bases, strategic centres, air bases and so on. But it's surprising just how often
09:47a dawn patrol will go up and then land and there will be a gap between the dawn patrol
09:52and the next patrol. It's not just the Egyptians who make this mistake. The Americans, for
09:57example, in the Philippines, on the 8th of December 1941, lost virtually their entire
10:02Air Force by making precisely the same mistake. B-17s, P-40s went up in the morning, landed
10:10and while they were being refuelled, re-armed, the Japanese struck. Now precisely the same
10:15thing is going to happen on the 5th of June 1967.
10:20At 0845, as if on cue, the Israeli dawn patrol disappeared from the Egyptian radar scopes.
10:28The Egyptian War Minister, Field Marshal Amir, was in an airborne command post aircraft with
10:33his Chief of Air Staff and a Soviet Air Commodore. Field Marshal Amir watched from the window
10:39of his airborne command post as a black cloud rose over the vast Cairo West airfield. NASA
10:47had threatened Israel with war and the Israelis had accepted the challenge. As Field Marshal
10:59Amir's pilot frantically looked for a safe airbase to land his plane, 10 of Egypt's forward
11:04airbases between Cairo and the Israeli border were destroyed by Israeli ground attack aircraft.
11:11As each pair of Israeli planes dropped their bombs, they turned and aimed their cannon
11:15missiles at the Egyptian planes refuelling on the aprons. They made two passes, spending
11:21no more than 7 minutes over their targets, then turned for the 20 minute flight home
11:26and a quick 8 minute turnaround. As one wave of Israeli aircraft were dropping their bombs,
11:36another was half way to target and the next wave was already launching. The Egyptian Air
11:42Force was hammered by wave after wave that day, with only 3 minutes respite between attacks.
11:51The first Israeli Mirage aircraft were assigned to destroy Egypt's Soviet-built bombers near
11:55Cairo. The rest pounded fighter bases in the Sinai, while bases in the north of Egypt were
12:02being pounded. Far away bases in Upper Egypt were also not safe. These bases, which supported
12:10NASA's operations in the Yemen, were attacked by Israeli bombers from the Red Sea. First
12:16Ras Banas, then Luxor were attacked by French-built Votour bombers. The first Egyptian planes
12:24to succeed in taking off came from Hoghada in Sinai. 20 MiG-21 and MiG-19 fighters charged
12:31into the fray at 0930 Cairo time. Four of the MiGs were shot down by the Israelis, and
12:38the rest were forced to break off because of low fuel states. The rudest shock of all
12:43for them was discovering that every Egyptian airbase within range had been destroyed. The
12:49fighters all bailed out or crashed as they tried to land on cratered runways. Eight more
12:57Egyptian MiGs became airborne and shot down two Israeli Mistair fighter bombers, but all
13:03were destroyed by the guns of Israeli Mirage interceptors. By 1135 Cairo time, 250 Egyptian
13:11aircraft had been destroyed. 100 of Egypt's 350 pilots were killed. More were injured.
13:20Israel had lost 19 aircraft, 3 to enemy action. Towards noon on the first day of the war,
13:28the Israelis turned their attention to Egypt's remaining airbases. The Syrian airforce, misled
13:37by Egyptian propaganda, launched a sortie against the Haifa oil refineries, and were
13:42destroyed in their entirety by the Israelis. The Royal Jordanian airforce tried to provide
13:48close air support for Jordan's forces around Jerusalem, and they were destroyed too. Even
13:54elements of the Iraqi airforce, which had been deployed forward for operations against
13:58Israel, were destroyed. By noon on the first day of the war, Israel had absolute air supremacy
14:14over Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian airspace. The Israeli airforce could now be
14:20devoted almost exclusively to providing close air support to the ground forces fighting
14:25into Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
14:33Air superiority was absolutely crucial to the Israelis for many reasons. Strategically
14:39it gave them reach. It allowed them to project their force over vast distances, using relatively
14:47few assets. Operationally, it meant that they could be mobile between the various fronts.
14:54Because they had so many enemies surrounding them, they knew they would very probably have
14:58to fight one after another after another, just as they had to in the 1967 war. And this
15:04gave them the flexibility to do that at the operational level.
15:11Once air superiority had been gained, with the air flank open to them, they could use
15:17aircraft in a close air support role. They could actually support the advancing infantry
15:22and armour. They could interdict the enemy as he reinforced or tried to withdraw. They
15:28could also transport logistics using the air flank, and of course could also importantly
15:33drop airborne forces. So that package, that air superiority package, gave the Israelis
15:39the sort of flexibility that they needed at very many different levels.
15:45The Egyptian army had prepared contingency plans for defending the Sinai in depth. Called
15:50Plan Kahir, the plan would allow the Israelis to advance deep into the Sinai, where they
15:55would be destroyed by Egyptian firepower. President Nasser told his army to shelve Plan
16:03Kahir. Instead, Nasser ordered his army to concentrate forward along the Israeli border
16:09to prepare for an invasion of Israel.
16:13The Egyptian army wants to defend the Sinai Peninsula because Cairo is very close. But
16:23once this plan has been developed by the Egyptian general staff, Nasser changes his mind. Because
16:30of his bellicose rhetoric, Nasser has to abandon the idea of using his army to defend Cairo,
16:38to defend the Sinai against an Israeli attack. And instead, he has to go along with his bellicose
16:48rhetoric and position his army to attack.
16:52The new Egyptian plan was to begin with a surprise air attack on the Israeli air force
16:56to achieve local air superiority over the Negev desert. Then, while the 20th Palestinian
17:02Liberation Army Division of the Egyptian army attacked the Israelis from the Gaza Strip,
17:07the Egyptian 4th Armoured Division would cut across southern Israel, linking up with the
17:11cracked Jordanian 60th Armoured Brigade to cut off the Israeli Red Sea port town of Eilat.
17:18The Egyptian 6th Motor Rifle Division, with the powerful Egyptian 1st Armoured Division
17:23in support, would take Eilat and consolidate the Egyptian hold over southern Israel.
17:29The Egyptian army's redeployment really put the armed forces in a position of great difficulty.
17:38They weren't expecting it and they weren't flexible. And the redeployment sent them to
17:42ground that they didn't know particularly well and hadn't necessarily trained for. It
17:47meant that the organisation that was so relatively strong whilst in Egypt, when put on a new
17:54piece of ground, all of a sudden showed a lack of cohesion. The sort of lack of cohesion
17:59that the Israeli armed forces knew they had to try and target and exploit when it came
18:04to battle.
18:05They go into Sinai, they dig in to defend the Sinai, they're told, abandon your field
18:12fortifications, move to a new position to attack the Israelis, now dig in. The Egyptian
18:19soldier cannot be bothered to dig in again. He's not well motivated, he's not well led,
18:24he's not being well treated, and yet another pointless movement in the Sinai just further
18:31demoralises the Egyptian soldier. And that means that when the Israelis come, they're
18:36attacking not a dug-in enemy prepared to attack, they're attacking Egyptian soldiers
18:43who are not prepared to fight at all.
18:47The Israeli concept of operations was first to break through the thick skin of the forward
18:52Egyptian units. Next they would exploit westward to cross the Sinai on its three main east-west
18:58routes, heading along the coast and towards the passes through the mountains at the western
19:03edge of the peninsula. During the exploitation phase, they would engage and destroy the Egyptian
19:09reserve formations.
19:19The fiercest fighting came during the initial breakthrough on June 5th, the first day of
19:24the war. Because the Egyptian army had been concentrated forward for an attack into Israel,
19:30it was hard to penetrate.
19:40At Abu Agela, the Egyptians had a prepared defensive position blocking the central route
19:45through the Sinai. The position had been prepared according to Soviet doctrine. Belts of trenches
19:52were anchored on the right by rocky crevices and hills, and on the left by shifting sand
19:57dunes. At their front were minefields covered by machine guns in the trenches and artillery
20:02to the rear. A few miles away, an armoured strike force stood ready to counter-attack.
20:12Brigadier Ariel Sharon sent his tanks by a roundabout route to block the Egyptian armour.
20:21He sent his paras by helicopter to assault the Egyptian artillery, shooting the gunners
20:25in their pits.
20:32His tanks and guns waited in front of the Egyptian defences as his infantry moved through
20:36the shifting sand dunes on the Egyptians' left.
20:44When they had word that the Egyptian artillery had been silenced, the Israeli tanks and guns
20:48fired on the left edge of the Egyptian trenches. As the fire shifted, the Israeli infantry
20:55poured into the trenches, lighting coloured flares to mark their progress. The Israeli
21:00tankers and gunners used these moving beacons to shift fire. Israeli sappers moved across
21:06the minefields, clearing paths for the Israeli armour.
21:11During the furious progress of the battle for the trenches, Brigadier Yofi radioed Sharon,
21:17asking to move forward through the Abu Agela position. Sharon's mission was to allow Yofi
21:23to move forward into the Sinai, so he agreed to one of the most dangerous operations in
21:28war, passing towards the enemy through friendly forces who were already fighting.
21:35Even before the Egyptian trenches had been secured, the leading elements of Yofi's division
21:40were moving along the road past Abu Agela and crossed the Sinai.
21:46Because the Egyptian army had been concentrated so far forward, once the Israelis burst through,
21:52the Battle of the Sinai turned into a pursuit.
21:58Once the Israelis are through the Egyptian forward-deployed forces, once they're through
22:03the forces who are prepared to invade Israel, the Israelis have a much easier time of exploiting
22:10onwards because the Egyptians are on the back foot. From the time the Israelis get through
22:15the forward Egyptian defences, the Egyptians are always reacting to what the Israelis are
22:21doing.
22:22The Israelis had a fairly comprehensive intelligence picture of Egyptian deployments. They'd been
22:28able to pick this up from a combination of human intelligence and signals intelligence
22:33and some reconnaissance patrols. And in essence, they knew that a gap had opened up between
22:38the Palestinian 20th Division, which is based in Gaza, and the Egyptian 7th Division, which
22:45was based to the west of Gaza. There was a place called Rafah Junction, and they knew
22:51that if they struck north at Rafah Junction, they would be actually driving along the boundary
22:56between the Egyptian 7th and the Palestinian 20th Divisions.
23:01They knew their objectives and they could get behind the Egyptians and destroy their
23:06cohesion and then destroy the Egyptians actually in situ in the Sinai itself. And what it shows
23:12us is splendid Israeli military doctrine. They knew what objectives they could achieve.
23:18They had the all-arms cooperation with which to achieve that. They got the initial pre-emptive
23:23strike, then they had the speed and momentum to carry them through. And they get to the
23:27Suez Canal in just 100 hours. And it's got to go down as one of the remarkable manoeuvre
23:32warfare victories in the 20th century.
23:3615,000 Egyptians were killed or wounded in four days of fighting. 5,000 soldiers were
23:42captured, along with 500 of their officers. 80% of Egypt's military hardware had been
23:48captured, including hundreds of tanks and hundreds of guns. Israel had lost 300 killed
23:55and over 1,000 wounded.
24:01It took four days of the six-day war for the Israelis to overrun the Egyptian army in the
24:05Sinai. By the 8th of June, the Egyptians were ready to accept a ceasefire. The task force
24:13set to drive to the southern tip of the Sinai were not needed. Israeli sailors came ashore
24:18at Sharm el-Sheikh to raise the Israeli flag over the Straits of Tehran.
24:26Israel expected to fight Egypt and Syria, possibly Jordan, plus forces from elsewhere
24:38in the Arab world. But they did not have the combat power to fight two or even three enemies
24:43at the same time. They therefore pursued Napoleon's strategy of the central position. When fighting
24:51a more powerful enemy, Napoleon said, put yourself between the enemy armies and fight
24:56them one at a time.
25:01While the Israelis were fighting Egypt, they defended against Jordan and Syria. When they
25:06saw that the battles in the Sinai were going well, late on the 5th of June, they threw
25:11their reserves into battle on the central front around Jerusalem.
25:21The Jordanian army, with some Egyptian support, had six infantry brigades defending the west
25:26bank, three in Samaria to the north, two in Jerusalem and one in the Judean hills south
25:34of Bethlehem. Another brigade was in reserve near Jericho. Two armoured brigades made up
25:41Jordan's striking force, 40 brigade in the Jordan valley and 60 brigade ready to link
25:47up with Egyptian forces in the south. When the Egyptian attack across the Negev desert
25:52was checkmated by the Israeli attack, 60 brigade was free to operate against the Israelis around
25:58Jerusalem. The Israelis faced Jordan with a very large Jerusalem brigade, a reserve
26:04infantry brigade around Lod airport and a reserve infantry brigade near Netanya at Israel's
26:10narrowest point. One division could be borrowed from forces facing Syria in the north. This
26:16was enough to defend against the small but well-trained Royal Jordanian army, but not
26:22enough to attack. Only when Jordan was committed to the war, and once Egypt was no longer a
26:31threat, could the General Staff release its operational reserve to the battle against
26:35Jordan. The attacking force against Jordan would be ten mechanised brigade, under the
26:43brilliant Colonel Uri Ben Ari, the German-born father of the Israeli armoured corps. The
26:50cigar-chomping Ben Ari was called up as a reservist to command the armoured thrust against
26:55Jerusalem. With him were the reserve paratroops of 55 para brigade, prepared for a combat
27:02drop in Egypt, but no longer required. Ben Ari moved his mechanised force through the
27:09rough hills to the north of Jerusalem, cutting the West Bank in half by the morning of the
27:136th of June. At the same time, the Israeli brigade at Lod airport moved up to the old
27:19British fortress at Latrun and took it from Egyptian commandos. King Hussein, encouraged
27:28by his allies, launched an air attack against the Israelis. When we look at King Hussein,
27:34we must remember the geopolitics of Jordan's position. Jordan was in control of what was
27:41going to become the West Bank, and Jordan was deeply suspicious of both Syrian motivations
27:49and Egyptian motivations. And in order to keep the Jordanians fighting, and in order
27:56to keep the Jordanians attacking the Israelis, Nasser lies through his teeth to King Hussein.
28:04And Nasser did his very best to convince King Hussein that the Israeli air force,
28:09while they had actually dealt a severe blow to Egypt, had in fact themselves been shot
28:14out of the sky in very large numbers. Nasser says to Hussein that 70% of the Israeli air
28:22force, a very strong asset that the enemy have, had been destroyed. And so the pressure
28:30was on for King Hussein to get involved. In fact, if you look at the geopolitics of the
28:35situation, it is almost impossible to imagine a situation in which Jordan would not have
28:42become involved. The Israeli air force, its missions in Egypt and Syria completed, turned
28:49their attention to Jordan and destroyed the Royal Jordanian air force. King Hussein, who
29:00was a young man, ordered his 60th armored brigade to move up from the Judean hills to
29:03oppose Ben Ari's mechanized force. As they moved out, they were destroyed from the air
29:08by Israeli close support missions. The Israeli paras unpacked their drop bags, put desert
29:17operations out of their minds, and drove to the Jerusalem area. They wrapped around Jerusalem
29:23from the north and east, surrounding the old city. For 19 years, the Jordanians had
29:31been building defences around the old city of Jerusalem, to stop the Israelis from attacking
29:37between Ramallah and the old city. And it was very much like an old First World War
29:42system of defences. It was made up of pre-surveyed killing zones, of trenches, of mutually supporting
29:50buildings, some several storeys high, with cellars that were connected by trenches, barbed
29:57wires, mine, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in between. And so it was a very, very
30:02difficult system to overcome. But of course, in the battle for Ammunition Hill, that's
30:07exactly what the Israelis do. Some people suggest the Israelis should have bypassed
30:12it. And certainly in the Sinai, where you've got miles and miles of territory to work with,
30:18they might well have. But in order to maintain the momentum of the advance, the Israeli 55
30:25Parabrigade has got to put in an attack on Ammunition Hill. They have got to be prepared
30:30to take a lot of casualties from close-in fighting, in order to get around the northern
30:38perimeter of Jerusalem. The fighting started at about two o'clock in the morning on the
30:466th of June, and it went on without intermission for four hours. It wasn't until dawn was breaking
30:52on the 6th of June that Ammunition Hill was under Israeli control. It is an epic in the
30:59history of the IDF, the Israeli Defence Force. It's also an epic in the history of the Jordanian
31:05army. Both sides came out with military honours just about equal.
31:13While the fight for Jerusalem raged, a divisional task group under Major General Elad Peled
31:19was detached from the forces facing Syria and sent into the hills of Samaria. Slowly
31:25a brigade fought their way against well-prepared Jordanian defences through Jenin, through
31:30fierce fighting at Qabatiyah, towards Nablus. Another brigade came around the east towards
31:38Nablus, where they were welcomed by the citizens who took them for Jordanians. Jordanian army
31:45elements trying to reinforce in Samaria and Jerusalem were pounded by Israeli Air Force
31:49battlefield air interdiction missions. On the night of the 6th and 7th of June, the
31:57Jordanian governor of Jerusalem saw that reinforcements would not arrive, and he began to withdraw
32:02his troops from the city. At 0830 local time on the 7th of June, the reserve paras of Israeli
32:0955 Brigade began their attack. Two battalions climbed the ridge of the Mount of Olives near
32:20Augusta Victoria Hospital, and moved along the ridge to the Kidron Valley, while a third
32:26battalion moved along the walls of the old city. The third battalion, led by Brigade
32:32Commander Colonel Mota Gur, moved through the city walls at St Stephen's Gate, and spread
32:36through the narrow alleys of the old city. By 10 o'clock in the morning of the 7th of
32:42June, the old city was secure. Forces of the Jerusalem Brigade moved southwards through
32:52Bethlehem and Hebron to the Judean hills. Ben Ari's 10th Brigade moved northwards through
32:59the Jordan Valley. The Israelis had lost 550 killed, and 2,500 wounded. Jordan had lost
33:136,000 soldiers, killed or missing. Half the populated part of the Hashemite Kingdom had
33:19been lost. King Hussein, betrayed by false Egyptian intelligence and empty promises of
33:27Syrian support, accepted a ceasefire at 8 o'clock in the evening of the 3rd day of the
33:32Six Day War. Syria had started this war. Egypt had attacked to show they were fiercer than
33:44Syria. Egypt and Syria had bullied King Hussein into attacking too. The Israelis had defeated
33:52the Egyptian army in four days, and the Royal Jordanian army in three days. As things were
34:01going badly for Jordan and Egypt, 8 Syrian Brigades sat out the war on the Golan Heights.
34:11The villagers of northern Israel protested that the frowning massif of the Golan Heights
34:15was making it easy for Syrian artillery to target their farms. For years the Syrians
34:21had made life miserable for them, attacking them as they worked. During the Six Day War,
34:27two Israeli civilians were killed by Syrian artillery, and 16 were wounded. Guerrillas
34:34sponsored by Damascus had been operating in northern Israel, attacking Israeli infrastructure
34:39and settlements. After Egypt accepted a ceasefire on the 8th of June, the Israeli Minister of
34:47Defence approved an attack on the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights rise about 620 metres above
34:54the Sea of Galilee. It is a great, huge plateau, flat on top, covered with huge volcanic basalt
35:02boulders, cut deeply by ravines and canyons, and it looms over the lower Galilee in Israel.
35:13When you stand on the brow of the Golan Heights, overlooking the Sea of Galilee and overlooking
35:18the lower Galilee itself, you can see everything. It is also, if you like, a barrier, a bit
35:26more than a speed bump, but certainly not mountainous, between two opposing states.
35:34So the state that actually holds the heights has a very great strategic advantage. The
35:42Israelis can use it as a launch pad towards Syria and Damascus. The Syrians, if they take
35:49and hold it, can use it to bombard northern Israel, Galilee, or indeed to attack at a
35:56point where Israel has very little strategic depth. So the Golan Heights has very great
36:03strategic importance to both sides, and as a result of that, both sides very much focus
36:08on it. The massive plateau of the Golan Heights is
36:16bordered by the steep Yarmouk Canyon to the south, the bluffs overlooking the Sea of Galilee
36:27to the southwest, and the comparatively shallow valley of the Jordan River to the west.
36:35The southern part of the heights are cut by a series of deep canyons, which make it nearly
36:47impossible to operate tanks off the one good road.
36:52The Syrian army defended the heights with three groups of brigades. The 35th group of
37:00brigades had two regular infantry brigade groups forward, and an infantry brigade group
37:04and a mechanized brigade group in reserve. This divisional task group defended the rough
37:10canyon country of the southern Golan. The 12th group of brigades defended the northern
37:16sector of the heights with a regular and a reservist infantry brigade group forward,
37:21and reservist infantry and an armoured brigade group in reserve. Mixed in with these brigades
37:27were five battalions of Syria's Republican Guard.
37:37The infantry brigades were in concrete bunkers and well dug in. They were fresh, well supplied
37:42and ready for an Israeli attack. The 42nd group of brigades formed a mechanized strike
37:50force. It had one armoured brigade group, two regular mechanized brigade groups, and
37:58two reservist infantry brigade groups. This strike force was in reserve along the axis
38:09from Damascus to Quneitra city.
38:20The Israelis had to find places where the plateau slopes were too steep for the Syrians
38:24to have fortified them, but still shallow enough to operate tanks and half-tracks on.
38:37The Israelis committed two divisional task groups to the Golan Heights. One under reserve
38:45brigadier Don Lanner would approach from the north, with one armoured brigade and the elite
38:54Golani infantry brigade. The other would attack up the harsh southern slopes of the heights.
39:08This group consisted of brigades which had been fighting around Jerusalem, which would
39:12have to redeploy to the Golan while Lanner's task group fought in the north.
39:24They would be supported by the Israeli air force, who bombed and rocketed Syrian positions
39:28on the Golan Heights for two days before the attacks went in. Lanner's armoured brigade
39:36group under Colonel Albert Mandler waded into concentrated Syrian artillery fire as it advanced
39:42up the slopes of the northern Golan. On its flank were the young conscripts of the Golani
39:50brigade, who cleared Syrian defensive positions at Tel Faher.
39:57Tel Faher was a well defended position with minefields and barbed wire covering all approaches.
40:04There was no room for clever manoeuvre here. The Israelis had to charge in dismounted attacks.
40:10The first attack got to the fortifications with only three men left standing. In the
40:16second assault, Golani soldiers threw themselves over wire obstacles to create human bridges
40:21for their comrades to cross. The brigade reconnaissance force and supporting armour joined in the
40:27attack, and by six o'clock in the evening of the 9th of June, Tel Faher had been taken.
40:39By the end of the first day, the northern edge of the heights had been taken by the
40:43Israelis. During the night of the 9th and 10th of June, Albert Mandler's tanks moved
40:50towards Quneitra city. As they fought, elements of 55 Reserve Parabrigade and mechanised forces
40:57were moving northwards from the now-quiet Jordanian front to join in the fight.
41:12On that night of complex manoeuvre, the Syrian regime quietly withdrew their main forces
41:18The 42nd group of brigades, closer to Damascus.
41:21The Israeli high command knew that it would have to recycle assets from one front to another,
41:28especially if there was an Arab alliance which would mean perhaps taking the first, foremost
41:33military power, Egypt, and then actually going to, say, Jordan, and then the Golan Heights
41:39and the Syrians.
41:40Uri Ben-Ari, the commander of the brigade, was the commander of the Syrian brigade.
41:46The commander of the brigade calls all of the drivers in the brigade into one room.
41:53A few hundred men sitting there in the room.
41:56And he says, gentlemen, we need to go up to the Golan Heights.
42:00And we need to be there by 4 o'clock tomorrow morning.
42:04And he gave them all a grid reference.
42:06And he said, this is the end point of our movement.
42:11Between here and there, there are going to be military police trying to exercise traffic control.
42:16There are going to be logisticians who want signatures and paperwork in return for fuel.
42:21I don't care how you get from here to there.
42:25Just be there by 4 o'clock tomorrow morning.
42:28And all the drivers go out, get into their vehicles.
42:31And because the Israelis are prepared to operate in the chaos of the battlefield,
42:40the entire brigade was able to pick up and move to this grid reference without getting lost,
42:47without getting crossed up with other forces, without running out of diesel and petrol on the way.
42:53And the entire brigade is able to be where it has to be the following morning
42:59because of the Israelis' willingness to cope with the chaos of the battlefield
43:04rather than try to impose order on the chaos of the battlefield.
43:10Elements of two brigade groups crossed into the central Golan early in the morning of the 10th of June.
43:19After lunch, a quickly assembled Israeli divisional task group began an attack from the south
43:25at the steep bluffs and leapfrogging across the difficult country beyond.
43:30Syria
43:35Syrian opposition was faltering as Damascus withdrew brigade group after brigade group from the fight.
43:44Syria could afford to lose the Golan Heights, but it could not afford to lose its army.
43:51Israel
43:55On the night of the 10th of June, Syria and Israel agreed to a ceasefire.
44:012,500 Syrian soldiers had been killed, 5,000 had been wounded and 591 taken prisoner.
44:10The Israelis had lost 127 killed and 600 wounded during the fighting.
44:17After the Six Day War, Israel at last had defence in depth.
44:21Israel had territory, territory with which it could trade.
44:25It could trade for peace, it could trade for recognition.
44:29They had, for the first time in their history, created buffer zones around their own initial state.
44:37The fact that the Sinai was occupied by the Israelis was seen as something that was extraordinary.
44:44Now, perhaps they didn't have enough forces to actually occupy it in the way that it needed to be occupied.
44:49Perhaps it led to complacency.
44:51But between 1967 and 1973, the Sinai was an absolutely crucial buffer zone.
44:57They also had taken the Golan Heights from the Syrians, an absolutely central strategic point
45:03that allowed the Israelis all sorts of advantages in northern Israel.
45:08And, of course, they'd also taken the West Bank, an area of great religious, strategic and operational sensitivity.
45:17But Israel also had huge problems.
45:20Israel had occupied the West Bank and the West Bank had a substantial Palestinian population.
45:28Now, this was going to create all sorts of difficulties
45:32because not only would the international community not recognize Israeli annexation of the West Bank,
45:38but within Israeli society itself, there were elements who were arguing that this territory,
45:45this West Bank territory, was in fact part of historic Israel and therefore should be settled by Israelis.
45:53The Israelis, with their long tradition of settling Israel by building Israeli settlements,
46:01begin building settlements in the Golan Heights, in the West Bank and in the Sinai.
46:08And certainly for political and religious reasons, one can understand why they're building settlements on the West Bank,
46:15because that is part of the biblical land of Israel, as I suppose the Golan was as well.
46:23They build settlements in the Sinai, which means that they need to defend the Sinai.
46:27It is no longer really part of their strategic depth.
46:31Likewise, they build settlements on the Golan Heights, which then have to be defended
46:36and which reduce their strategic depth yet again to nearly nil.
46:41The Israelis gain depth on a map, but they ruin the depth by building settlements in it.
46:49Before the war, Israel had been subjected to an Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tehran.
46:56She had also suffered Syrian artillery attacks and threats to her water supply.
47:04Jordanian barbed wire had divided Jerusalem, denying Israelis access to the Old City.
47:10In six days, the Israelis had conducted a strategic defence, by attacking Egypt, Jordan and Syria in turn.
47:20The United Nations resolutions which ended the war,
47:23called on the Israelis to give up some of its territory and return for peace.
47:28More than ten years later, and after a disastrous war,
47:32Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty.
47:38More than twenty years later, Israel and Jordan also agreed an open peace treaty.
47:43Even so, more than thirty years later,
47:46Israelis do not feel any more secure than they did before the war of June 1967.