Background

By the spring of 1967, Middle Eastern tensions had reached a flash point, and the third war between Israel and its Arab neighbors in less than twenty years was imminent. The first theater of the war would be the Sinai Peninsula: the barren, rugged landmass separating Israel and the Red Sea from more than one hundred thousand troops and a thousand tanks along Israel s relatively expansive southern border. Egypt had also built air bases on the Sinai, positioning its bombers within minutes of the Israeli capital.

Israel feared that its very existence as a nation was in jeopardy. Even after a nationwide activation of all available reservists, it could muster only 200,000 ground troops, 800 tanks, and 262 airplanes. The combined Arab coalition force, which comprised Egypt, Syria, and Jordan with support from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, and Sudan and threatened Israeli borders on three fronts, totaled approximately 465,000 soldiers, 2,880 tanks, and 810 aircraft. ^[3] The linchpin of the Arabs air power, Egypt, alone possessed more than 400 planes.

Rather than wait to be attacked , Israel devised a plan to launch an all-out preemptive strike against the Egyptians in an attempt to secure the safety of its homeland and dictate the course of events of the engagement. Israeli leaders surmised that if Egypt, the leader of the Arab coalition, were defeated, the other members would follow suit.

General Yeshayahu Gavish led the Israeli ground forces in the Sinai. Gavish split his army into three divisions, which were led by Generals Yisrael Tal, Ariel Sharon (who would later become prime minister of Israel), and Avraham Yoffe. All four men were veterans of the Arab-Israeli War of 1956 and knew the Sinai well. Tal s division would attack through the North. Sharon s division would attack and eliminate the multilayered Egyptian defensive positions in the central Sinai. And Yoffe would secure the axis between Sharon and Tal, thereby protecting their flanks from the vast enemy reinforcements that were staged in defensive rings throughout the Sinai.

^[3] The Six Day War, www.geocities.com/acid_talking_2u/Wars/six_day_war_idf.html.