A long build-up to a swift

he was perceived as having stood up to Western imperial aggression.

Egypt’s military losses to Israel were compensated for by the Soviet Union, which rapidly rearmed its major Arab client to military levels that matched, or bettered, its pre-war levels.

Nasser’s honeymoon proved to be short-lived. Egypt soon found itself embroiled in the civil war in Yemen in which its armed forces were widely seen as having performed badly. With no easy exit strategy from Yemen, Nasser’s popularity both in Egypt and in the wider Arab world rapidly declined. There was an increase in social unrest at home over the failure of key parts of his economic programme. By early summer 1967 his popularity was at an all-time low.

At the same time, Israel fared little better. The country was punished by President Eisenhower for its part in the 1956 War. Forced to return all the lands it had conquered in the war, Washington was still reluctant to sell weapons to Israel. As a result, it was largely reliant upon France for conventional weapons and, along with Britain, for developing its nuclear programme.

Diplomatically the inter-war years were characterised by increasing Israeli isolation at the UN and by a feeling in Jerusalem that the support of even Israel’s closest allies could not be guaranteed.

At the start of the sixties, the public trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution, compounded the feeling among Israelis that their country stood alone, surrounded by enemies. Radio Cairo provided regular reminders that the aim of the Arabs was to drive the Jews into the sea.

Politically, the period saw the transfer of power from the members of the Second Aliyah such as David Ben-Gurion to the leaders of the Third Aliyah. Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, Levi Eshkol, was attacked as lacking strategic military skills and for being overreliant on the advice of the young chief of staff of the IDF, Yitzhak Rabin. Splits within the Labour Zionist movement (primarily over the Lavon Affair of 1954) meant that other key political figures with greater military experience such as Moshe Dayan were not in the government. The performance of Eshkol and Rabin in the first part of 1967 had been far from perfect with Israel dangerously escalating military exchanges with Syria.

Internationally, in 1967 the Cold War was at its height. The US was slowly losing a war in Vietnam and the Soviet Union sought to push home an advantage over its enemy.

The extent to which Moscow was willing to cause trouble for Washington in the Middle East remains a hotly debated topic among historians. At the very least the Soviets wanted to provoke a crisis to further pressurise the Americans.

The long-term reasons for the SixDay War lay in the relative weakness of Nasser, the Israelis and the US. Understanding the timing of the outbreak of the war remains controversial. Much of the debate centres upon three key questions:

1 Did the Soviet leadership want to start a major Arab-Israeli war or simply to cause a crisis?

2 What were the intentions of President Nasser; specifically did he want to go to war with Israel?

3 Did Israel receive an amber light (proceed, but with caution) from the US to

The Soviets wanted to provoke a crisis to pressurise the Americans’