Game of the Week, April 20-26

From April 20 through April 26, this week’s Game of the Week is Modern Campaigns: Middle East '67, on sale for 25% off. The title takes players into one of the most volatile military theaters of the Cold War era, where wars were fought over borders, security, deterrence, and the unfinished consequences of earlier campaigns. While the name points to 1967, the game’s scope is broader, covering several major Arab-Israeli conflicts from 1956 through 1982, as well as a hypothetical 2004 war. 

The eponymous 1967 Arab-Israeli War stands at the center of the title’s scope. Fought in just six days, it reshaped the military and political map of the region with extraordinary speed. It is also a fitting subject for the Modern Campaigns scale, since the war combined high-tempo air-ground operations, multiple fronts, rapid territorial change, and decisions whose consequences reached far beyond the battlefield.

The long shadow of a short war

In June 1967, war returned to the Middle East with a speed and intensity that surprised much of the world. The conflict lasted only from June 5 to June 10, yet its consequences were enormous. Known commonly as the Six-Day War, or more broadly as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, it was the third major Arab-Israeli war and a turning point whose effects still shape regional politics. In military terms, it was a short campaign fought across several fronts. In political terms, it changed the map, altered strategic assumptions on all sides, and opened a new phase in a conflict which had already been smoldering for years.

The road to war did not begin in June alone. Tensions had been building through border clashes, Palestinian guerrilla attacks, Israeli reprisals, and repeated crises involving Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The uneasy arrangements that followed the 1956 Suez War had reduced but not resolved the underlying conflict. In May 1967, a false Soviet report claiming that Israel had massed forces against Syria helped trigger a dangerous escalation. Egypt moved troops into the Sinai, demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force, and then closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. For Israel, this was seen as a direct strategic threat. For Arab leaders, the crisis was tied to deterrence, credibility, and the wider inter-Arab contest for leadership. By the end of May, Jordan had joined Egypt in a defense pact, and the region was moving toward open war.

Israeli soldiers from the "Shaked" reconnaissance force during the Six-Day War ( Rafi Rogel (רפי רוגל) via Wikipedia / Fair Use)

When fighting began on June 5, Israel seized the initiative. Its opening air assault struck Egyptian airfields and quickly expanded against other Arab air forces. The destruction of much of Egypt’s air power on the ground gave Israel instant operational freedom and shaped the course of the war from the first day. On the Sinai front, Israeli forces advanced rapidly against Egyptian positions, while fighting also spread to Gaza. The speed of the campaign has often defined popular memory of the war, but it is worth remembering that this was not simply a matter of one side moving unopposed. The campaign involved hard fighting, local resistance, confusion in command, and the cumulative effects of decisions made under enormous pressure. Still, the overall balance shifted very quickly once Israel secured control of the air.

A second major front opened with Jordan. Despite Israeli warnings to stay out of the war, Jordanian forces shelled West Jerusalem, and fighting spread across the divided city and the West Bank. Israeli forces responded with a counterattack that drove Jordanian troops out of East Jerusalem and most of the West Bank within days. The fighting in and around Jerusalem gave the war some of its most enduring images and ensured that its consequences would be measured not only in military terms but also in religious, national, and symbolic ones. What had begun as a rapidly escalating regional war now carried an even greater historical importance, because control over Jerusalem would become one of the conflict’s most sensitive and enduring issues.

The northern front against Syria developed more slowly, but it too ended in a major territorial shift. Syria had been heavily involved in the prewar crisis, and cross-border violence between Syria and Israel had been one of the key drivers of escalation in the months before June. After cease-fires were accepted on other fronts, Syria continued shelling settlements in northern Israel. On June 9, Israel attacked the fortified Golan Heights and captured them after heavy fighting. By June 10, the war was over. In less than a week, Israel had taken the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The scale of the territorial change was extraordinary, immediately altering the region's strategic geography.

Israeli tanks advancing on the Golan Heights (Government Press Office of Israel / Public Domain)

Yet the war solved little politically. Instead, it created a new and even more difficult reality. Israel had won a decisive military victory, but it now held territories whose future would become central to every later phase of the conflict. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli military occupation, while the status of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the wider question of land, sovereignty, and security became the subject of lasting dispute. In November 1967, UN Security Council Resolution 242 called for a just and lasting peace based on principles that included Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict, recognition of every state’s right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, freedom of navigation, and a just settlement of the refugee problem. That framework would influence diplomacy for decades, even as its interpretation remained contested.

“The Middle East conflict has been a tragedy for all involved in it.
Neighbours, instead of devoting themselves to the task of advancing the
lot of the common man in a backward area, are pitted against each other
in armed confrontation. For over thirty years, this senseless waste of lives
and wealth has been the fate of this area.”

— Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), 6th President of Israel in
The Arab-Israeli Wars: War And Peace In The Middle East 

That is one reason 1967 cannot be understood simply as a dramatic six-day campaign. It was also the beginning of a new era. The war was followed not by a stable settlement, but by continued confrontation, including the War of Attrition and, eventually, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. In that sense, Middle East '67 takes its title from more than a famous campaign. It points to a key moment when military operations, political symbolism, territorial change, and unsettled diplomacy came together with unusual force. The game also reaches beyond that moment to depict the 1956 and 1973 wars, the 1982 fighting in Lebanon, and a hypothetical later conflict, but 1967 remains the central hinge: the short war whose consequences proved anything but short.

What's in the game

• Middle East '67 includes 96 Scenarios – covering all sizes and situations, including a solo tutorial scenario plus specialized versions for both head-to-head play and vs. the computer AI. Scenarios are available for the 1956 War (Suez Crisis), 1967 War (Six-Days' War), 1973 War (Yom Kippur War), 1982 Invasion of Lebanon (Operation "Peace for the Galilee"), as well as a hypothetical 2004 conflict. 
• The master map (145,748 hexes) includes the Suez Canal in the west, Beirut in the north, and the Sinai Peninsula in the south.
  
• The order-of-battle files cover the Arab and Israeli forces that would have participated in the campaign, with additional formations added for hypothetical scenarios.
  
• Order-of-Battle, Parameter Data, and Scenario Editors, which allow players to customize the game.
• The sub-map feature allows the main map to be subdivided into smaller segments for creating custom scenarios.
  
• Design notes, which cover the production of the game, campaign notes, and a bibliography that includes the sources used by the designer team to produce this simulation game.
  
• Middle East '67 provides multiple play options, including play against the computer AI, Play by E-mail (PBEM), LAN & Internet "live" play, and two-player hot seat.

Books and Videos

Below you will find a selection of books to deepen your understanding of the historical background, as well as some videos. Clicking the book covers brings you to Amazon.

Herzog, Chaim, with Shlomo Gazit. The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East (Revised and Updated Edition). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2005.

Laron, Guy. The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017.

Oren, Michael B. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 

Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim A., ed. The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.

Herzog, Chaim. The War of Atonement: The Inside Story of the Yom Kippur War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975.

...and some videos

Screenshots

Below are screenshots from Middle East '67 to give you a feel for the 2D and 3D views and the scale of the engagements. Clicking a screenshot opens it in full resolution.

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: Modern Campagns: Middle East '67. Like all WDS titles, it provides countless hours of rich gameplay at a very attractive price.