The Cause’s of Egypt Battered In The Six Day War (Air War) By Riyan Permana Putra – Sebelas Maret University …So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself… - Sun Tzu - Background On November 29, 1947 United Nations’ Resolution 181 called for the partition of British Mandate Palestine into two states, with one occupied by Arabs and the other by Jewish settlers. Israel’s independence was duly announced following the expiry of the British Mandate on May 14, 1948. The next day, the invasion of the Jewish state by the Arab League transformed what had been a conflict restricted to Palestine into a regional war. Fighting continued until early 1949, when the Israeli War for Independence ended in a series of four bilateral ceasefire agreements between Israel and the four Arab League nations sharing a border with the new Jewish State – Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Hostilities between Arabs and Israelis continued to flare up over the next three decades, however, with Arab nations (especially Egypt under the leadership of President Gamal Abdel El Nasser) adopting an aggressive policy aimed at provoking another full scale war that would eliminate the disgrace of the 1948 49 defeat at the hands of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Such a conflict was certainly not an Israeli objective, but Arab rhetoric was treated seriously nevertheless. Should military action be required, Israel’s first Prime Minister, and Minister of Defence, David Ben-Gurion favoured three basic principles when it came to war. Conflicts had to be brief, fought on enemy soil and result in a decisive victory. Such strategies were shaped by the fact that Israel’s fledgling economy and small population could not sustain a lengthy war, its territory had no “strategic depth”