Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed

The Six-Day War and the occupied territories

How can six days of fighting still be the subject of every negotiation fifty years later?

Option B7 · The Middle East: conflict, crisis and change, 1917–2012 › Key topic 3 · Tension and conflict, 1956–73 — one of 3 lessons in this key topic. Paper 2 Section B — breadth study in change: The Middle East: conflict, crisis and change, 1917–2012, key topic 3 (30 marks: 6 · 8 · 16).

Learn the Six-Day War and the occupied territories, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this lesson carries all three.

What the specification asks for

“Nasser and Arab aims versus Israel. Israeli attack on Arab neighbours in 1967. Events of Six-Day War. Israeli gains. Reasons for Israeli success. Impact of war on Israel and on Arab states.” — examined through causation and consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The road to June

Tension had been building along Israel's borders through the mid-1960s: cross-border raids and reprisals, disputes over water diversion from the Jordan, and clashes with Syria. In April 1967 an air engagement over Syria ended with Israeli aircraft downing several Syrian planes.

The immediate sequence began in May. Reports, which proved inaccurate, reached Egypt of Israeli forces massing against Syria. Nasser moved troops into Sinai, requested the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force that had been there since Suez — and it was withdrawn — and on 22 May closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Israel had stated for a decade that closure would be treated as an act of war.

Egypt and Jordan signed a defence pact at the end of the month. Israeli leaders judged that the country could not sustain full mobilisation for long and that a first strike offered decisive advantage. On 5 June Israel attacked, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground in a matter of hours.

Six days

Air supremacy on the first morning decided the campaign. Israeli forces then advanced through Sinai to the Suez Canal; Jordan, having entered the fighting, lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem; and in the final phase Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria. A ceasefire was in place by 10 June.

The territorial result was very large: Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel now held territory several times its own size and administered over a million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The reasons for the outcome are examinable and should be given precisely: the destruction of opposing air forces in the opening hours, superior training and command flexibility, better intelligence, and Arab forces committed piecemeal rather than in coordination. What should not be given is the impression of a miracle; the Israeli plan was prepared, rehearsed and executed against opponents whose dispositions were known.

What six days created

The occupied territories are the subject of every subsequent negotiation on this specification. Resolution 242, passed by the United Nations Security Council in November 1967, established the formula of land for peace — withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict, in exchange for recognition and secure boundaries — and the deliberate imprecision of its English wording about which territories has been argued over ever since.

For the Arab states the defeat discredited the politics that had preceded it. Nasser's standing as the leader of Arab nationalism, built at Suez, did not survive June 1967 intact, and the Khartoum conference that summer produced a declaration of no peace, no recognition and no negotiation with Israel.

For the Palestinians the consequence was a change of strategy rather than of aim. If three Arab armies could be defeated in six days, waiting for those armies to act was not a policy, and the growth of independent Palestinian organisations described in the next lesson follows directly. Inside Israel, settlement in the occupied territories began within months, which converted a military occupation into a demographic fact that later negotiations have had to address.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

May 1967
Egypt moves forces into Sinai, the United Nations force is withdrawn at its request, and the Straits of Tiran are closed. Why this date: Israel had stated for a decade that closure would be treated as an act of war, so the sequence supplies the causation.
5 June 1967
Israel attacks, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground. Why this date: Air supremacy in the first hours decided the campaign, which is the technical reason for the speed.
10 June 1967
A ceasefire leaves Israel holding Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan. Why this date: These are the occupied territories, and every negotiation afterwards is about them.
November 1967
Security Council Resolution 242 sets out the land-for-peace formula. Why this date: Its wording about which territories is deliberately imprecise, and that imprecision is itself examinable.

The figures, and how far to trust them

  • Six days — The duration of the war, from 5 to 10 June 1967.
  • Over a million — Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who came under Israeli administration. (Population figures for 1967 vary between sources and were affected by displacement during the war itself.)
  • Several times its own size — The territory Israel held after the war compared with before it. (The comparison depends on whether Sinai, later returned, is included.)

The people to place

  • Gamal Abdel Nasser — Egyptian leader; closed the Straits of Tiran and requested the withdrawal of the UN force.
  • Moshe Dayan — Israeli Defence Minister during the war.
  • Levi Eshkol — Israeli Prime Minister in June 1967.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

  • The 'pre-emption' reading: Israel struck first because the closure of the Straits, the removal of the United Nations force and the Egyptian–Jordanian pact together amounted to a threat it could not sustain against, so the first strike was pre-emptive rather than aggressive. Contested by The reading that Israeli commanders were confident of victory, that Egyptian dispositions were defensive, and that a state which strikes first has begun a war whatever the pressures — an argument about the meaning of aggression rather than about the facts..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The Arab states attacked Israel in 1967.

This: Israel attacked first on 5 June, after a sequence of Egyptian moves it regarded as intolerable. Whether that makes the war defensive is a genuine argument; the order of events is not.

Not this: The territories were captured in fighting that lasted for months.

This: Everything Israel took, from Sinai to the Golan, was taken in six days, and the disproportion between that and fifty years of consequences is the point of the strand.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Occupied territories and annexed territory.

The distinction: East Jerusalem and later the Golan were annexed under Israeli law; the West Bank and Gaza were administered as occupied territory. The legal difference matters for every negotiation afterwards.

Blurred: Striking first and starting a war.

The distinction: Israel fired first; the Egyptian actions that preceded it were regarded as acts of war by Israel and were not so regarded by Egypt. Stating the sequence and then the argument is what a Level 4 answer does.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer measures the war by its consequences rather than its length. Six days produced the occupied territories, the settlement question, the Palestinian turn to independent action and the formula every negotiation since has quoted — so the disproportion between how long the fighting lasted and how long its results have lasted is not a curiosity but the thing that has to be explained.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: Resolution 242's imprecision, named as deliberate. It explains why a formula agreed in 1967 could be cited by both sides for fifty years.

The cap that bites here: The 8-mark cause question is held at 4 marks if only one cause is explained.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

  1. Explain TWO ways in which the war of 1967 was different from the war of 1948–49. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
  2. Explain TWO causes of the Six-Day War. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
  3. Explain TWO causes of the Israeli victory in 1967. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
  4. How significant was the Six-Day War in the Arab–Israeli conflict, in the years 1917–2012? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
  5. How far were the consequences of the 1967 war more important than its causes? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: What has done most to prevent a settlement in the Middle East since 1917: the promises, the wars, or the peace processes themselves?.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Prove it — five questions on the Six-Day War and the occupied territories, marked on the spot, that tell you what was missing rather than just what was wrong.
  2. Teach it — Explain the Six-Day War and the occupied territories — what happened, why, and what it made possible — to Ember, an AI pupil who asks the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  3. Defend it — Argue the Six-Day War and the occupied territories against the historical mind with the strongest claim on it — three rounds, marked against descriptors you can read before you begin.
  4. Then the exam — 15 authored exam-style questions on this option, marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named.

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The debate is against The Case of Security — the case itself, argued at its strongest, because on this strand there is no single person whose position the learner has to defeat.

The same people, elsewhere in the option

Carry on through the option