Israel takes Jerusalem
The old city falls , bulldozers move in and the Palestinian population is put under Israeli military control
On 7 June, Israel captured the old city of Jerusalem and the Western Wall – soldiers rushing to pray at the site – smashing into the walled city via the Lions’ Gate and Zion Gate. By 10am, the old city was in Israeli hands.
An Israeli field officer told his subordinates how the “ancient city of Jerusalem which for generations we have dreamt of and striven for – we will be the first to enter it. The Jewish nation is awaiting our victory. Israel awaits this historic hour. Be proud. Good luck.”
An Israeli intelligence officer described entering the Muslim Haram al-Sharif thus: “There you are on a half-track after two days of fighting, with shots still filling the air, and suddenly you enter this wide open space that everyone has seen before in pictures, and though I’m not religious, I don’t think there was a man who wasn’t overcome with emotion.”
An Israeli commander then radioed “Har ha-Bayit be-Yadenu” – “the Temple Mount is in our hands”. Israeli soldiers could not find their way to the-Western-Wall and so a local Palestinian directed them there. Israel’s chief military chaplain, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, arrived with a shofar – a ram’s horn – to blow at the-Western Wall, where he proclaimed that he had “come to this place never to leave it again”. Goren also proposed that the army blow up the Muslim mosque complex atop the Western Wall. The Israeli army refused, but military bulldozers moved in, destroyed 200 houses by the Western Wall and cleared a huge open space for visitors.
Israel’s minister of defence, Moshe Dayan, arrived at 2.30pm, announcing with characteristic ambiguity: “We have reunited the city, the capital of Israel, never to part it again. To our Arab neighbours we offer even now… our hand in peace.”
Israeli troops also conquered the West Bank and, with it, some 1.25 million Palestinians who would now live under Israeli military occupation.
Meanwhile, Egyptian radio bizarrely broadcast that Egyptian troops were at the gates of Tel Aviv, just as Israeli troops opened the Straits of Tiran between the Sinai and Arabian peninsula. Still, some Egyptian units fought on, tanks at the Egyptian air base at Bir Gafgafa in central Sinai delaying Israeli attackers. The few remaining Egyptian planes continued to fly sorties – more like suicide missions – and Israeli troops were so surprised that they initially thought the Egyptian MiGs were their own Mirages.