A generation that ignores history has no past and no future.

Before the war, Israeli pilots and ground crews had trained extensively in rapid refitting of aircraft returning from sorties, enabling a single aircraft to sortie up to four times a day (as opposed to the norm in Arab air forces of one or two sorties per day). This enabled the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to send several attack waves against Egyptian airfields on the first day of the war, overwhelming the Egyptian Air Force, and allowed it to knock out other Arab air forces on the same day. This has contributed to the Arab belief that the IAF was helped by foreign air forces (see Controversies relating to the Six-Day War). Pilots were extensively schooled about their targets, and were forced to memorize every single detail. They rehearsed the attack numerous times on dummy runways.

The Egyptians had constructed fortified defenses in the Sinai. These designs were based on the assumption that an attack would come along the few roads leading through the desert, rather than through the difficult desert terrain. The Israelis chose not to risk attacking the Egyptian defenses head-on, and instead surprised them from an unexpected direction. They had practiced driving vehicles through soft dunes in the Negev, and discovered that vehicles would get greater maneuverability in desert terrain if tires were partially deflated. As a result, they could choose their angle of attack, and advance through areas the Egyptians least expected. In order to keep the performance of Israeli soldiers high in the heat of the Sinai desert, the Israeli army ordered that soldiers be supplied with one liter of water every hour, rather than the previous one liter per day. As a result, soldiers were able to perform better than their Egyptian counterparts.

In order to strike the Golan Heights, the Mossad (Israeli secret service) had sent agent Eli Cohen to infiltrate the Syrian government, where he exploited his high-ranking position to provide crucial intelligence. Feigning sympathy for Syrian soldiers, he ordered trees planted by every Syrian emplacement to shade them. These trees were later used as targeting markers by the Israelis. Intelligence had revealed where the most difficult terrain was, so a route of attack was chosen that would avoid natural tank traps and surprise the Syrians. In order to successfully storm the Syrian bunkers, the Israelis used the Uzi submachine gun, which was more suitable for close combat than the AK-47, the standard weapon of the Syrian Army.

The Israeli army had a total strength, including reservists, of 264,000, though this number could not be sustained, as the reservists were vital to civilian life. James Reston, writing in the New York Times on May 23, 1967, noted, "In discipline, training, morale, equipment and general competence his [Nasser's] army and the other Arab forces, without the direct assistance of the Soviet Union, are no match for the Israelis.... Even with 50,000 troops and the best of his generals and air force in Yemen, he has not been able to work his way in that small and primitive country, and even his effort to help the Congo rebels was a flop."

On the evening of June 1, Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan called Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin and the General Officer Commanding (GOC), Southern Command Brigadier General Yeshayahu Gavish to present plans against Egypt. Rabin had formulated a plan in which Southern Command would fight its way to the Gaza Strip and then hold the territory and its people hostage until Egypt agreed to reopen the Straits of Tiran; while Gavish had a more comprehensive plan that called for the destruction of Egyptian forces in the Sinai. Rabin favored Gavish's plan, which was then endorsed by Dayan with the caution that a simultaneous offensive against Syria should be avoided.