Six Wars
in Sixty Years
From 1948 to 2006: wars in which armies lost land, and wars that broke the myth of the “invincible army.” What changed from one war to the next? And why did the Arab goal shift from “liberating Palestine” to “removing the effects of aggression”?
Timeline · tap any war
Earliest on the left.
The 1948 War
Its outcome only makes sense if you look at all four parties. Tap each one.
The parties on the eve of war
Who fought?Regular forces at the start, per Aref al-Aref · all bars on one scale (70,000)
“You are traitors, you are criminals; history will record that you lost Palestine.”
Course of the warChoose a stage
The Tripartite Aggression, 1956
A plot written in a suburb near Paris.
The chain of causesDrag the slider
The Sèvres plan (23 October 1956)
The 1967 War: the “Naksa” (Setback)
The public had waited 19 years for it… and it was over in six days.
Words vs. reality
What the media said
- Exaggerated military capabilities and promised to throw the Jews into the sea
- “If Israel wants war, then welcome”
- Syrian media saying MiG jets “defy fate”
What was on the ground
- A defensive, not offensive, Egyptian strategy since 1956
- Most of the defence budget going to the war in Yemen
- Two divisions in Sinai, barely enough to defend the border
- A unified Arab command paralysed by disputes since 1966
- Nasser announcing: “We leave the initiative and the first strike to Israel”
The United States knew the details of the coming attack, gave it a green light and helped mislead Egypt, while the Soviet Union pressed Egypt not to start the war.
Six daysChoose a front
Area under Israeli control
The October War, 1973
Its declared aim from the start: “removing the effects of the 1967 aggression,” not liberating Palestine.
The road to war
After the Naksa, the Khartoum summit (August–September 1967) announced the “Three No’s”: no peace, no negotiations, no recognition. Fida’i operations grew (1967–1970), and Egypt and Syria fought a War of Attrition (1968–1970) that restored their armies’ confidence. The Egyptian and Syrian presidents decided on war at Borg el-Arab (February 1973), and “Operation Badr” was drawn up.
The two frontsChoose
The oil weapon
Key results
Lebanon: 1982 and 2006
Once the armies left the battlefield, the resistance became the target.
The 1982 invasion
The author argues that the war exposed weaknesses and flabbiness in the body of the Palestinian revolution, prompted a review of the ideology on which the conflict is based, and that the PLO’s “realist” current grew stronger afterwards in favour of peaceful solutions. Then the Lebanese resistance emerged and forced the occupation to withdraw step by step until the south was freed on 24 May 2000.
The 2006 war12 July – 14 August · 33 days
After a Hezbollah operation captured two Israeli soldiers to exchange them for Lebanese prisoners, Israel launched an all-out war on Lebanon. The author cites Western sources reporting prior US–Israeli coordination to destroy the group’s military infrastructure. The war went through three stages: intensive air strikes, the destruction of Beirut’s southern suburb, then a ground offensive. It did not achieve its main aim; Hezbollah kept firing hundreds of rockets a day until the very end.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 gave Israel greater political gains than the battlefield balance warranted, because of the American weight behind it.
For group discussion
- In both 1948 and 1967 the rhetoric was far bigger than the actual preparation. Why does that happen? How do we tell rhetoric from reality today?
- How did the Arab goal shift from “liberating Palestine” (1948) to “removing the effects of aggression” (1973)? What did that mean for the cause?
- In 1948 Palestinians held out alone, in 1982 Beirut held out for 65 days, and in 2006 the war’s aims were not met. What do these experiences have in common?
Test Yourself
12 questions on the Arab–Israeli wars.