PATHWAYS WORLD SCHOOL
MODEL UNITED NATIONS 2014
BACKGROUND GUIDE
HISTORIC SECURITY COUNCIL
The 6 Day War/1967 Arab-Israeli War
Letter from the Executive Board
Dear Delegates,
It brings the Executive Board great pleasure in welcoming you to the Historic Security
Council of the 4th annual Pathways World School Model United Nations conference.
For Pathways, a simulation of such a committee has never occurred before, and as a
team, the Executive Board is willing to pull out all stops to make it one of the most, if
not the most, heated, competitive and intellectual committee(s).
Over the course of three days, you the delegates will be empowered with the
opportunity to take a step back into a woeful and arguably cataclysmic past, riddled
with events worthy of political critique and conflict. Both agendas set for this session
of the United Nations Security Council, have taken place in the heart of the Cold War,
and have had a continued and lasting impact on the geo-political conduction of
politics and diplomacy in and around the world. We hope that you, as delegates, will
recognize, with the hindsight that we are gifted with today, the severity and potential
disastrous nature of the crises that took place in the world, and how if handled
differently, may have resulted in the most adverse of effects for the global community
and its billions of members.
If we are to consider the animosity that currently prevails between a variety of different
religious/political groups in arguably the ‘Holiest’ land on Earth, or are to further
recognize the importance and dependency of the Earth on the concept of Nuclear
Deterrence and Mutually Assured Destruction, then only will be giving due importance
to these extremely significant events from the past; the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and
the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, that effectively sculpted, or for that matter, have
allowed for the existence of modern day society as we know it. From this moment on,
the Executive Board requests you to bear in mind the fact that you are representatives
of states in the past and that this document will treat 1962 or 1967 as the present year
of the Security Council.
Having said that, the agendas set in front of you undoubtedly put a great deal of
pressure on your shoulders, as diplomats of the world, representing nations that have
already acted in events that have long since passed. Considering this is a simulation,
the Executive Board highly encourages you to muster all your histrionics and coax
yourselves and those around you into believing that you stand at the heart of Havana
or Gaza, and the fate of the world rests upon your shoulders.
An important factor to consider, especially seeing as this happens to be a simulation
of a past Security Council session, is to bear in mind the importance of geopolitical
and socioeconomic context of issues and conflicts being fought at the same time.
PWSMUN 2014
1
Considering that both agendas take place in the midst of the Cold War, it is considered
vital that delegates recognize their foreign policies and stances at the time period and
are able to reckon with simultaneously occurring conflicts in other regions of the world.
The world we live in and the legacy we leave behind, has often been criticized to have
made decisions in the past have not always merited results that are commendable or
worthy of praise. Rather, it often seems that the history of humanity has been plagued
by the mistakes of selfish individuals in positions of authority, and in doing so, they
have corrupted our abilities to react and manage crises, effectively and cogently. With
that, this Executive Board seeks to reiterate the fact that you delegates are being
empowered with the ability to change the course of history and perhaps change things
for the better, or for the worse.
We look forward to a constructive, well-structured, well-researched and
solution-oriented debate.
Considering that we still have the benefit of hindsight before the guide formally
begins, above is a depiction of the change in borders over time, in the region.
PWSMUN 2014
2
The United Nations Security Council
Under the United Nations Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for
the maintenance of international peace and security. It has 15 Members, and each
Member has one vote. Under the Charter, all Member States are obligated to comply
with Council decisions.
The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the
peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful
means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. In some cases,
the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of
force to maintain or restore international peace and security.
The Security Council also recommends to the General Assembly the appointment of
the Secretary-General and the admission of new Members to the United Nations. And,
together with the General Assembly, it elects the judges of the International Court of
Justice.
Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an
affirmative vote of nine members.
PWSMUN 2014
3
The History behind the War
The creation of Israel
Following the events of the 2nd World War, and after the formation of the United
Nations in 1945, and bearing in mind the significance of the Balfour Declaration of
1917, the state of Israel was formed in 1948, the (in)famous Zionist state. With the
recognition of the horrific war-crimes and genocide at the hands of notorious German
dictator, Adolf Hitler, against European Jews, there seemed to be a growing inclination
to follow a path predestined by the father of modern-day Zionism, Theodor Herzl; the
demand for a Jewish state.
The 1948 Arab-Israeli War
On the same day it gained its independence, Israel was incidentally attacked– May
14th, 1948. The military strength and prowess of the Arab nations of Egypt, Lebanon,
Syria and Iraq attacked Israel. With
such a combined force attacking
Israel, few would have given the new
country any chance of survival.
Although the attack on Israel was
more of a surprise, the Israelis were
surprisingly well equipped at a
military level.
Arab nations that attacked Israel
faced one major problem.
There was nothing to co-ordinate
their attacks. Each nation attacked as
an independent and separate
member of a task force, as opposed
to acting as a combined force.
Conversely, the Israeli Army was
under one single command structure
and this proved to be very important
in determining an Israeli victory on all
war fronts.
As a result of its military victory, the
state of Israel was granted official
PWSMUN 2014
4
permission to expand upon territory allocated to the state by the United Nations.
However, this came at the cost of ousting and ostracizing the Arab populous that lived
in these areas.
It is important to consider that within this time period and era, the emergence of
Gamal-Abdel Nasser in Egypt was slowly occurring, and although there was no singular
spearhead of the Arab campaign against Israel, individuals looked towards Egypt, not
only because of its renown in the context of politics, but because there was political
unrest and change underway.
The Suez Crisis of 1956
When in 1956, Gamal-Abdel Nasser announced to the world that he planned to
nationalize the much-sought after Suez Canal, the reaction in London and Paris was
one of outrage. In September 1956, Israel, Britain and France hatched a secret plot to
recover control of the canal. Israel planned to invade Egypt, and Britain and France
would send troops to ‘protect’ the canal on the pretext that it was an important
international waterway. The plan went ahead in October, but failed because of the loud
condemnation issued by the U.S. towards its allies. Lester Pearson, the Prime Minister
of Canada, brokered a peace and UN peacekeeping forces were sent to patrol the
border with Israel.
Despite anti-western demonstrations in Egypt, in January 1956 the United States and
Britain had pledged funding to help finance the construction of a new High Dam at
Aswan. The US, however, became convinced that the Dam project would not be a
success and wanted to reduce expenditure on foreign aid.
It was also concerned about Nasser's purchase of Soviet arms. On 19 July, US
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles informed the Egyptian ambassador in
Washington that his government had decided that it would not provide funding for
the construction of the dam.
Furthermore, according to memoirs produced by Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the
Soviet Union (USSR) at this time, told the British, French and Israeli governments: “You
have attacked Egypt, knowing that it is considerably weaker than you are, that it does
not have much of an army, and that it does not have many weapons. There are other
countries which are entirely capable of coming to Egypt’s defence...”
PWSMUN 2014
5
The 6 Day War/1967 Arab Israeli Conflict
Overview
The Six-Day War took place in the June of 1967, and can easily be described as the
climax to the long and overwhelming Arab-Israeli Conflict. The Six-Day War was fought
from the 5th to the 10th of June, whereby the Israelis defended the war as a preventative
military effort to counter what the Israelis saw as an impending attack by Arab nations
that surrounded Israel. The Six-Day War was initiated by General Moshe Dayan, the
Israeli Defence Minister.
The war was fought against Syria, Jordan and Egypt, or more commonly referred to as
the United Arab Republic or UAR. Israel believed that it was only a matter of time
before the three Arab states co-ordinated a massive attack on Israel and after the
events of the1956 Suez Crisis, the United Nations had established a presence in
the Middle East, especially with regards to sensitive border areas. The United Nations
was only there with the agreement
of the nations that acted as a host
to it. By May 1967, the Egyptians
had made it clear that the United
Nations was no longer wanted in
the Suez region.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of
Egypt, ordered a concentration of
Egyptian military forces in the
sensitive Suez zone. This was a
highly provocative act and the
Israelis only viewed it one way –
that Egypt was preparing to attack.
The Egyptians had also enforced a
naval blockade which closed off
the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli
shipping.
Rather than wait to be attacked,
the Israelis launched a hugely
successful
military
campaign
against its perceived enemies. The
air forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria
and Iraq were all but destroyed on
June 5th. By June 7th, many
PWSMUN 2014
6
Egyptian tanks had been destroyed in the Sinai Desert and Israeli forces reached the
Suez Canal. On the same day, the whole of the West Bank of the Jordan River had been
cleared of Jordanian forces. The Golan Heights were captured from Syria and Israeli
forces moved 30 miles into Syria itself.
The war was a disaster for the Arab world and temporarily weakened the man who was
seen as the leader of the Arabs, a man whose sole mission was to fight imperialism
and to unite the Middle East under the concept of Arab Socialism – Gamal Abdul
Nasser of Egypt. The outcome was so dismal for Nasser that he resigned on the 9th of
June, but reinstated himself after public outrage, the following day.
The war was a military disaster for the entirety of the Arab world, but perhaps a larger
blow to the morale of these Arabs, considering of course, that arguably the four
strongest Arab nations were systematically destroyed and ridiculed by one nation
acting on the back foot.
The success of the campaign must have surprised the Israelis. However, it also gave
them a major problem that was to prove a major problem for the Israeli government
for decades.
By capturing the Sinai, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River, the
Israelis had captured for themselves areas of great strategic value. However, the West
Bank also contained over 600,000 Arabs who now came under Israeli administration.
Their plight led many young Arabs into joining the Palestinian Liberation
Organisation (PLO), a group that the Israelis deemed a terrorist organisation.
Timeline
DAY 1, JUNE 5,
1967
First day of fighting. Israel destroys most of
Egyptian air force. Jordan, Syria and Iraq attack
Israel.
DAY TWO,
JUNE 6, 1967
Second day of fighting. Fighting continues on all
fronts.
DAY 3, JUNE 7,
1967
Third day of fighting. Jerusalem taken. Blockade
of Straits of Tiran broken.
PWSMUN 2014
7
DAY FOUR,
JUNE 8, 1967
Fourth day of fighting. Israel consolidates hold
on West Bank.
DAY FIVE,
JUNE 9, 1967
Fifth day of fighting. Israel and Syria in heavy
fighting on the Golan.
DAY SIX, JUNE
10, 1967
Sixth day of fighting. Israel gains control of the
Golan Heights.
The involvement of political ideology
Capitalists (The West)
In the years following the 1958 Iraqi revolution, the United States enjoyed friendly, if
sometimes tense, relationships with Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,
Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco. U.S.-Egyptian relations cooled, however, following
President Nasser’s 1962 deployment of Egyptian troops to Yemen to fight Saudisupported royalists, the U.S. in turn aided their Saudi allies, a critical oil source.
By 1965, under the leadership of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States cut
its economic assistance to Egypt, and U.S.-Egypt relations reached an all-time low,
pushing the Egyptians closer to the Soviets. The Soviets exploited the Arab-Israeli
conflict and American "imperialism" to promote pro-Soviet Arab unity, turning the
region in an arena for a proxy power struggle between the USSR and the Americans.
During the run up to the Six-Day War, the Americans repeatedly rebuffed Israeli
requests for military aid and approval for an Israeli pre-emptive attack on Egypt. The
United States, bogged down in Vietnam and facing domestic opposition to that
war, was loathe to become embroiled in a second front. Rather than get involved
militarily, the Americans aggressively pursued diplomatic solutions and sought to
cobble together an international regatta to challenge the Egyptian blockade on Israeli
shipping in the Straits of Tiran, a campaign that ultimately failed. But while the U.S.
continued to refuse to aid Israel militarily, the American opposition to unilateral Israeli
action began to soften in the beginning of June 1967.
PWSMUN 2014
8
Communists (The East)
The Soviet Union/USSR played a crucial role in arming the Arab states and instigating
the Six-Day War.
Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the USSR at the time, professed the Brezhnev Doctrine
that was heavily applicable to the situation in the Middle East. The first part of
Brezhnev's report indicates that the Soviet leader's perception of the Six-Day War was
rigidly defined by his doctrinaire outlook on international affairs. As the document
clearly demonstrates, Brezhnev perceived the Israeli attack on Egypt and Syria as an
act of aggression supported by the US and West European powers. He dismissed
Western attempts to portray the Six-Day War as a local conflict resulting from the
protracted quarrel between Arabs and Jews. He vigorously claimed that the Israeli
attack was part of a worldwide campaign designed to suppress the anti-colonial
struggle and hamper the turn to socialism in the progressive societies of Asia, Greece,
Africa and Latin America.
Initially supportive of Israel at the time of its founding, by the early 1950s the Soviets
no longer regarded the Zionist state as useful for extending their influence into the
Middle East. Transferring their support to Arab side, the Soviets took on the role of
armorer for both Syria and Egypt, supplying them with modern tanks, aircraft and later
missiles. The Egyptian and Syrian armed forces primarily used Soviet weapons during
the 1967 war and employed tactics developed by the Soviets.
After the war the Soviets rapidly made up the equipment losses suffered by the Syrians
and Egyptians and increased their involvement in Egypt’s anti-aircraft defences.
Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War had an enormous impact on the Jewish population
in the Soviet Union and helped set in motion the Jewish exodus from the Communist
regime.
PWSMUN 2014
9
The United Nations Charter and Documents
CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall
act in accordance with the following Principles.
1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its
Members.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of
force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in
any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to
intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any
state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the
present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of
enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.
CHAPTER VII: ACTION WITH RESPECT TO THREATS TO THE PEACE, BREACHES
OF THE PEACE, AND ACTS OF AGGRESSION
Article 51
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective
self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until
the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and
security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall
be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the
authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take
at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore
international peace and security.
Above lie perhaps some of the most controversial articles in the entire United Nations
Charter, specifically those that are open to interpretation and/or have had a special
effect on the crisis in 1967. It should be kept in mind that some nations involved in the
crisis openly disregarded the Charter and took matters into their own hands. Their
interpretation and subsequently defence of their actions greatly differs from the
general consensus. It is in this way that it is important to consider official United
Nations publications, especially one as important as the UN Charter, in basing
arguments and stances within the committee. A delegate who is able to effectively
utilize these direct or indirect violations of the charter, or for that matter any other
PWSMUN 2014
10
United Nations document (The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, for
example, was violated severely in the 6 Day War), will be on the right track to getting
to the centre of the issue at hand, and recognizing the complexities that lie within the
law and its open-endedness.
Questions to be addressed
 To what extent was the UAR’s aggression justified?
 Did the relationship that the US shared with the state of Israel, make a difference?
 In what ways is the UN Charter overly ambiguous and equivocal?
 How can pre-emptive attacks be regulated in the Middle East?
 What are the problems associated with the redistribution of land in the region?
 To what extent do historical occurrences guarantee a replication of the same crisis
in the future?
 What are the steps that can be taken between the two parties, to prevent the
outbreak of an attack or animosity in the future?
 Should blocs cease their intervention policies in regions overseas from their home?
 By what ways does this crisis incentivize the world to move to a détente?
 Do secret treaties or agreements have a tendency to have severe adverse effects?
 What is the guarantee that the situation may not grow to a nuclear-scale?
Bibliography/Citation of Sources/List of Useful Websites
http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/F0E5CF015592D4D10525672700590136
http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/9F5F09A80BB6878B0525672300565063
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter5.shtml
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter7.shtml
http://www.sixdaywar.org/index.asp
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/6daywar-egypt-front.gif
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/maps/pages/events%20leading%20to%20t
he%20six%20day%20war-%201967.aspx
 http://www.historytoday.com/james-barker/1948-first-arab-israeli-war








PWSMUN 2014
11
 https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-israeli-war
 http://www.sixdaywar.co.uk/6_day_war_aftermath_prof_un_resolution_242_pt6.ht
m
 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/67_War.html
 http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/six_day_war_1967.htm
 http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/196740yearsofoccupation/2007/06/2008526113146572296.html
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X4JCPckWgY
 http://jewishmag.com/145mag/herzl_hechler/herzl_hechler.htm
 "The Making of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, David A. Korn,
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy
And perhaps THE MOST important of products of the entire situation in the Middle
East that lend insight into the geopolitics of today’s day and why Israel and Palestine
are still at war. (Note that these resolutions cannot be used within committee as
virtually, the committee has not reached the point where such resolutions have been
passed or even have been deliberated upon):
 http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR024094.pdf?OpenElement
 http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/288/65/IMG/NR028865.pdf?OpenElement
PWSMUN 2014
12