Waiting period (Six-Day War)

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.The waiting period (Hebrew: תקופת ההמתנה,Tkufat HaHamtana) was a 3-week interval in the history of Israel, May 15 – June 5, 1967, between the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula and the outbreak of the Six-Day War.

On 13 May 1967, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser received a Soviet intelligence report which claimed that Israel was massing troops on Syria's border.

[1] According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, Nasser verified that the report was false,[2] but still told his people that Israel troops were placed on Syria's border.

[8] However, when Nasser declared that his forces were withdrawing from Yemen and making their way to Sinai, Israel drafted every fit man, which led to an economic paralyzation.

Tourists kept crossing the Mandelbaum Gate, although there were reports of Jordanian Legion forces moving from Amman towards the West Bank.

Nasser's move was supported by Moscow, while the United States warned both Israel and Egypt not to take military action.

"[16] At the end of May 1967, Nasser claimed in a public speech to have been aware of the Straits of Tiran closure implications: "Taking over Sharm El Sheikh meant confrontation with Israel.

[citation needed] In May 1967, Hafez al-Assad, then Syria's Defense Minister declared: "Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland.

"[19] Speaking before the Knesset, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol tried to calm the situation by assuring the Arab states that Israel was not seeking war.

Ben-Gurion, however, accused him of putting the country in mortal jeopardy by mobilizing the reserves and openly preparing for war against a coalition of Arab states, saying that at the very least, Rabin should have obtained the support of a foreign power as he himself had done during the Sinai Campaign 11 years earlier.

Eshkol spoke in the Knesset and tried to calm the public that "it is reasonable to expect that the states that support in the principle of the freedom of sailing, will do and will coordinate an efficient action in order to ensure that the straits and the bay will be open to the passage of the ships of all the nations without discrimination".