May 9, 2017
Fifty years ago, Israel’s Six-Day War turned the Middle East upside down. Hardly any other war has changed the political landscape of a region so fast and so fundamentally. The stunning victory of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) over three Arab armies in just six days established the Jewish state as a regional great power, and the territorial conquests provided Israel with strategic depth for the first time. However, the annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights burdened Israel’s international relations. Thus, the legacy of the Six-Day War has influenced Israeli politics until today.
Escalation to War
Although Israel had celebrated an impressive victory against Egypt in the Sinai Campaign (1956), the political gains of the operation proved to be limited. The Suez Canal remained closed to Israeli ships; and although the Sinai Peninsula had been demilitarized, the protection of the free movement in the Gulf of Aqaba and the safeguarding of the Israeli-Egyptian border were in the hands of a United Nations Emergency Force whose withdrawal Cairo could demand unilaterally.
Nevertheless, the Israeli-Egyptian front remained relatively quiet in the 1960s. Instead, the Syrian frontline became a constant source of unrest. The regime in Damascus supported the Palestinian terrorists who used Syria as a base for their operations against Israel. In addition, skirmishes between Israeli and regular Syrian forces occurred on a regular basis. Finally, the control of the water resources in the Syrian-Israeli border area—like the Kinneret, the river Jordan and its headwaters—was a constant reason for conflict.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-the-six-day-war-changed-the-middle-east-20585
