1967 war is it a defeat or a victory to the Arabs - Essay Example

After the second war between the Arab and Israel in 1956, the Egyptian forces agreed to maintain peace with the positioning of the UN peacemakers in the borders of Egypt and Israel. This positioning of the peacemakers were due to the efforts of the US and Soviet Union in the war of 1956 between Egypt and Israel, UK and France. In the next decades, there were several minor conflicts between Israel and the Arabs, particularly with the Syrians (Hammel, 2001). In 1966, Soviet Union reminded Syria for not violating the agreement of peace between the Arab states and the Israel.

Soon after that amidst environment of tension, the Palestine Liberation Organization launched a mine attack in Syria that killed three Syrian soldiers. This created a series of retaliatory activities between Israel and the Arabs, mainly Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Egypt. The King of Jordan noticed that Egypt did not come forward to the aid of Jordan against Israel which forced him to sign a defence treaty with Egyptian president in order to stop the military invasions of Israel. The cause of the war of 1967 was also due to dispute of sharing of water from the Jordan River.

Israel diversified the flow of water from the Jordan River into its west banks for agriculture and irrigation (Sadeh, 1997). Syria tapped the flow of stream and diverted it into the regions of Syria, Jordan and Egypt due to which Israel faced shortage of water. The tensions over the conflict with water sharing also led to the war of 1967. Role of Arab states in the war of 1967 Prior to the war of 1967, the Israeli borders faced ample terrorist attacks from the Arabs. These terrorist attacks were Palestinian attacks on Israel.

Israel figured out that Syria has been sponsoring these terrorist attacks on their land. The Israeli forces warned Syria to stop sponsoring the terrorist attacks for honouring their peace treaty. When the terrorist attacks of the Arabs on the Israeli borders continued, Israel carried out planned military operations on the villages of the West Bank of Jordan and Syria. Israel also started to deploy armies in a pre-planned manner in the demilitarized zones in the borders of Israel and the Arab states (Louis and Shlaim, 2012).

When the Arabs states found that Israel has been aggressive and has been launching military attacks to destroy their nations and villages, they started to unite and sign defence pacts. The Egyptian president started to gather his troops in the Straits of Tiran in order to block the access of Israel to this waterway. The Syrian army started to collect troops in the Golan height. The Egyptian president ordered his army to block the Israelis in the Gaza strip and the Sinai Peninsula (Dunstan, 2012).

The Jordanian troops also joined hands with Egypt and Syria in the war against Israel. The Straits of Tiran was regarded as the international waterway by Israel and other international communities. According to the previous treaty signed between the Israel and the Arab states, blocking the Straits of Tiran would mean declaration of war. In order to overhaul the resistance and opposition of the Arab states in the Straits of Tiran, the Israeli government decided to go for war and break the barriers created by the Arab army forces.

This led to the six-day war of 1967 that saw Israel launching a series of carefully planned air strikes on a continuous basis over the Arab military forces that resulted into severe damage and killing of the Arab troops and soldiers (Quandt, 2001). Thus the Arab states played the role of creating irrevocable conditions by blocking the access of Israel to the Straits of Tiran, raising military deployments in the Gaza strips and Golan height that stimulated the outbreak of underlying tensions to the