IT WAS a decisive campaign, in which the better prepared side struck hard and fast, and delivered its exultant people a smashing victory which promised salvation from their enemies.

As the titles of both these books suggest, the 1967 conflict was not only finished in less than a week, it dramatically reshaped the Middle East.

But by bitter irony, far from bringing lasting peace and security to the Israeli victors, it set the scene for the seemingly endless conflict which even now looks set to take an even more bloody turn.

Both books relate how the Egyptian army marched into Sinai, prompting Israel to launch a well-prepared pre-emptive strike against Egypt's airfields, before its army (one of whose generals was the present prime minister, Ariel Sharon) utterly destroyed its Egyptian counterpart.

In addition, its forces drove the Jordanians from the West Bank and out of Jerusalem, and seized the Golan Heights from Syria.

Oren, a former adviser to the government of the late Yitzhak Rabin (chief of Israeli defence staff during the war, later would-be peacemaker and victim of an assassin's bullet), concentrates far more on the political and diplomatic activity than Bowen.

The latter, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, spends more time on accounts from ordinary people - soldiers and civilians - caught up in the fighting, including unfortunate Palestinians, who were conquered by the Israelis after Egyptian president Nasser's gamble went horribly wrong.

With mind-boggling recklessness, after declaring the war was going their way, the Egyptians then claimed their defeat was due to the US and Britain joining in the Israeli attack - a claim fortunately not heeded by the Soviet Union.

Both Oren and Bowen conclude with a bleak overview of the present Middle East situation. Perhaps the last word should lie with the then US president Lyndon B Johnson, who warned that in time the Israelis would "wish the war had not happened".

Updated: 12:02 Wednesday, April 21, 2004