The reasons for the outbreak of the Six Day War, on June 5, 1967, are a subject of debate. Was it an inevitable step on a slippery slope none of the parties wanted, or were some within the leaderships egging it on? Available historical records, however, do indicate that in the years leading up to it, Israel engaged in meticulous preparations for organizing control over territories it thought it might take over in a future war. These records suggest that the occupation of territories was not an unintended outcome of the fighting, but part of Israel’s strategic, political concept.
Before the war, and after it ended, Israeli attention focused on the “waiting period,” a nearly month-long period of rising tensions that preceded the war, and the military deployment along the borders. Both public discourse and research largely ignored the meticulous planning for control of occupied territories, which began, as archival records show, in the early 1960s. These preparations were partly the result of lessons learned from the failed, short-lived occupation of parts of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip during the Sinai War in 1956. After just three days of heavy international pressure, Prime Minister Ben Gurion announced Israel would retreat from these territories, though attempts to hold on to at least some of them did continue. The withdrawal itself was chaotic and took months.
This context sheds light on the Organization Order prepared by the military as early as in August of 1963 (Military Government in an Emergency 10/63), which listed the main functions of the Military Government in the areas that would be occupied about four years later. The background notes for the order lists the rationale for it: “The IDF’s ambition to move the fighting to enemy territory will inevitably result in expansion and of areas outside the country’s borders” [emphasis here and in the following quotes were added]. The need to plan the military government in detail resulted from the assessment that, “these conquests may only last a short time before we would be forced to evacuate the area due to international pressure or an international agreement. However, there is a possibility of political conditions amenable to retaining occupied territories for some time”. In addition to an estimation that Israel might be headed towards long term occupation, the order also suggests the occupation may be quite broad geographically as well: “Expected expansion trajectories” in the next war included the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula to the Suez Canal, the Syrian Heights to Damascus and Lebanon to the Litani River.
On top of defining the format for future military control of the territories, the General Staff also discussed the need to train and educate the units and administrative bodies that would exercise control of the Palestinians directly, legal issues involved in the occupation of the territories and gathering intelligence about the population and infrastructure in the West Bank. The work focused on preparing the Military Government, the organizational and military system used to govern Arab citizens of Israel since 1948, to establish control over future occupied territories. By 1963, the Military Government had gathered 15 years of experience in policing, running civilian life and enforcing a strict permit regime on Palestinian citizens of Israel, making it the obvious model for organizing control of territories occupied in a future war. However, shortly after the war, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan chose not to appoint experienced Military Government officers to the administration set up in the occupied territories.
In the war that ultimately broke out in June of 1967, Israel took over the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. A military administration was installed in all the newly occupied areas with the exception of East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed immediately after the war. It remained in place in its original format until 1981, when the Civil Administration, another military agency, took over management of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights were annexed to Israel. The military administration of the Sinai Peninsula was finally terminated in 1982, following the peace accord with Egypt.