At 7:45 a.m. on June 5, 1967, Israel launched Operation Focus, a surprise air strike destroying most of Egypt's air force on the ground within hours. The ensuing Six-Day War saw Israel also defeat Jordanian and Syrian forces, capturing the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights. The territorial and political consequences of those six days continue to shape Middle Eastern conflict today.
Israeli pilots timed their attack for mid-morning, calculating that Egyptian commanders would have finished their dawn patrols and be at breakfast, while morning fog over the Nile Delta would have cleared. The gambit worked: Israeli jets caught roughly 300 Egyptian aircraft parked wingtip to wingtip on runways, destroying most of them before they could take off.
Within three hours, Egypt's air force was effectively annihilated, and Israel quickly achieved air superiority it exploited on every front. Jordan and Syria entered the war in support of Egypt, but their forces met a similar fate. By the ceasefire, Israel had tripled the territory under its control.
The war's aftermath produced UN Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for peace—terms never fully realized. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that began that week remains one of the world's most intractable and consequential political disputes, now well into its sixth decade.