page_title: Moshe Dayan
section_title: Six-Day War (1967)
hierarchical_section_title: Moshe Dayan / Six-Day War (1967)
caption_attribution_description: English: Moshe Dayan with Major J. Thomas Pearlman, Sr.
context_page_description: Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces during the 1956 Suez Crisis, but mainly as Defense Minister during the Six-Day War in 1967, he became to the world a fighting symbol of the new state of Israel. In the 1930s, he was trained by Orde Wingate to set traps for Palestinian-Arabs fighting the British and he later lost an eye in a raid on Vichy forces in Lebanon. Dayan was close to David Ben-Gurion and joined him in leaving the Mapai party and setting up the Rafi party in 1965 with Shimon Peres. Dayan became Defence Minister just before the 1967 Six-Day War. After the October War of 1973, Dayan was blamed for the lack of preparedness; after some time he resigned. In 1977, following the election of Menachem Begin as Prime Minister, Dayan was expelled from the Labor Party because he joined the Likud-led government as Foreign Minister, playing an important part in negotiating the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
context_section_description: Moshe Dayan was covering the Vietnam War to observe modern warfare up close after he left political life. In fact, he was on patrol as an observer with members of the US Marine Corps. Although Dayan did not take part in most of the planning before the Six-Day War of June 1967, he personally oversaw the capture of East Jerusalem during the 5–7 June fighting. During the years following the war, Dayan enjoyed enormous popularity in Israel and was widely viewed as a potential Prime Minister. At this time, Dayan was the leader of the hawkish camp within the Labor government, opposing a return to anything like Israel's pre-1967 borders. He once said that he preferred Sharm-al-Sheikh (an Egyptian town on the southern edge of the Sinai Peninsula overlooking Israel's shipping lane to the Red Sea via the Gulf of Aqaba) without peace, to peace without Sharm-al-Sheikh. He modified these views later in his career and played an important role in the eventual peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
  Dayan's contention was denied by Muky Tsur, a longtime leader of the United Kibbutz Movement who said "For sure there were discussions about going up the Golan Heights or not going up the Golan Heights, but the discussions were about security for the kibbutzim in Galilee," he said. "I think that Dayan himself didn't want to go to the Golan Heights. This is something we've known for many years. But no kibbutz got any land from conquering the Golan Heights. People who went there went on their own. It's cynicism to say the kibbutzim wanted land."
  About Dayan's comments, Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren has said
  There is an element of truth to Dayan's claim, but it is important to note that Israel regarded the de-militarized zones in the north as part of their sovereign territory and reserved the right to cultivate them—a right that the Syrians consistently resisted with force. Syria also worked to benefit from the Jordan river before it flowed into Israel, aiming to get use of it as a water source; Syria also actively supported Palestinian resistance movements against Israel. Israel occasionally exploited incidents in the de-militarized zones to strike at the Syrian water diversion project and to punish the Syrians for their support of the Palestinian resistance. Dayan's remarks must also be taken in context of the fact that he was a member of the opposition at the time. His attitude toward the Syrians changed dramatically once he became defense minister. Indeed, on June 8, 1967, Dayan bypassed both the Prime Minister and the Chief of staff in ordering the Israeli army to attack and capture the Golan.
caption: Moshe Dayan in Vietnam, 1967
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