Levi Eshkol's diplomatic waiting game and Nasser's…

Levi Eshkol's diplomatic waiting game and Nasser's threatening rhetoric create a somber mood in Israel.

When Egyptian and Iraqi troops arrive in Jordan, giving every sign of an imminent pan-Arab attack, the Israeli Cabinet decides on a preemptive strike.

Eshkol has much less experience in defense issues and relies heavily on Yitzhak Rabin.

On June 1, 1967, after Rabin suffers a breakdown from exhaustion, the coalition parties force Eshkol to appoint Moshe Dayan, the hero of the 1956 Sinai Campaign, as defense minister and to create a national unity government.

This body includes for the first time includes Menachem Begin's Herut Party, the dominant element in the Gahal bloc (the other element is the staunchly Zionist Liberal party).

Begin, the main opposition leader, joins the government as a minister without portfolio.

Yitzhak Shamir, having engaging in private commerce for a time, joins Herut.

Ariel Sharon—who, after the Suez Crisis had studied military theory at Staff College in Camberley, England, and law at Tel Aviv University, graduating with a law degree in 1966—had been made a major general a few months earlier.