The Fall of Jerusalem, 1967

Monday morning, June 5, 1967. At 0850 an Aide-de-Camp called the Palace in Amman to report to King Hussein Radio Cairo's communique that Israel had attacked Egypt. By 0900 the Egyptian General Abdul-Moneim Riad - who had arrived in Amman with a small group of staff officers to take command of the Jordanian front a few days before the war began - had received a coded message in Amman from UAR Field Marshal Amer. The UAR, the message said, had put out of action 75 per cent of the Israeli planes that had attacked the Egyptian airports and the UAR Army, having met the Israeli land attack in Sinai, was going over to a counter-offensive. "Therefore Marshal Amer orders the opening of a new front by the commander of the Jordanian forces and the launching of offensive operations according to the plan drawn up last night."

S. Abdullah Schleifer was formerly Managing Editor of the Palestine News, the English language daily published in Jerusalem until the June War, of which he was an eye witness. His personal account of the war, The Fall of Jerusalem, from which this article has been drawn, will be published by Monthly Review Press, New York, in Spring 1972.