The Six-Day War of 1967 is a pivotal event in the modern history of the Middle East, and its ripple effects continue to shape events in the different countries of the region to the present day. In this short war, Israel managed to inflict a decisive defeat on three of its Arab neighbors combined, and in doing so, it was transformed from being a small, embattled country to a regional superpower. Despite the copious literature on the war, most of the English-language scholarship closely follows the Israeli narrative of it, with a near total disregard of Arab voices. This presentation will offer an Egyptian perspective of the June 1967 War.
This presentation is concerned with a number of historiographical questions pertaining to this war. Firstly, in the absence of Egyptian documents, how can an historian produce an Egyptian perspective of the war? Secondly, while this war is commonly referred to as the six-day war, did it actually last for six days, or should the careful historian put it in a much larger historical context? Thirdly, can civil-military relations provide a suitable lens through which to narrate the Egyptian version of the war? Finally, how can we situate this war within the wider Cold War?
Khaled Fahmy, is Edward Keller Professor of North Africa and the Middle East at Tufts University. He is an historian of the modern Middle East with specifical emphasis on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt. His academic publications deal with the history of the Egyptian army in the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the history of medicine, law and urban planning in Egypt. He also works on the history of Egypt’s wars with Israel: Suez 1956, June 1967, the War of Attrition, 1969-70, and the October 1973 Wars.
Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies