"The United States has often walked a fine line between preemption and prevention. In fact there have only been a handful of clear-cut cases of military preemption by any states in the last 200 years. (Israeli preemption in the Six Day War of 1967 is perhaps the most cited example)" U.S. National Security Strategy: a New Era U.S. Department of State (2002).
Menachem Begin, the first Likud Prime Minister of Israel, also said: "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." "Israel's First Fifty Years", by Robert Owen Freedman, page 80; for another quote, see Cooley, Green March, Black September, p. 162.
'Armed Attack' and Article 51 of the Un Charter: Evolutions in Customary Law, by Tom Ruys, page 280 "It has been observed that several official Israeli sources admitted after the war that Egypt did not have the intention of attacking Israel"link
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban that the U.S. intelligence assessment was that "the Egyptian deployments were defensive in character and anticipatory of a possible Israeli attack". Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, May 26, 1967, 10:30 a.m.; The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael B. Oren has acknowledged that "By all reports Israel received from the Americans, and according to its own intelligence, Nasser had no interest in bloodshed..." Israel's assessment was that "Nasser would have to be deranged to take on an Israel backed by France and the U.S. Sixth Fleet. War, according to the Israelis, could only come about if Nasser felt he had complete military superiority over the IDF, if Israel were caught up in a domestic crisis, and, most crucially, was isolated internationally—a most unlikely confluence." Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Oren 2002, pp. 59–60).
ASSESSING CLAIMS OF A NEW DOCTRINE OF PRE-EMPTIVE WAR UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF SOURCES (James Thuo Gathii, OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL VOL. 43, NO. 1 & 2, 2005) p. 75. link"The closest case that might have, but is now regarded as not having met the Caroline test, was Israel's first strike against Egypt in the 1967"
