The reality is this: Israel has never been in danger from any combination of Arab forces. It just suits the Israeli hawks to present the other idea as it justifies pre-emptive attacks, which in turn lead to land grabs. Which is what it's all about - "Greater Israel" and all that.
Alan Hart, an English journalist with over 30 years experience reporting on the conflict, including exclusive access to the likes of Yasser Arafat and Golda Meir, and who was the first Western journalist to reach the Suez with the advancing Israelis in this war, says:
'One of my sources, and actually my mentor in Israel, was (then retired) Major General Chaim Herzog, a former Director of Military Intelligence and one of the founding fathers of that agency. On day two of the war, he said to me: “If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a pretext to go to war, we would have invented one in a year to 18 months.” '
In the same article he also provides many other quotes from various Israeli military and intelligence officers showing that Nasser's actions were never seriously considered a threat.
Even more significant is the publication
Israel's Sacred Terrorism, a study based on Moshe Sharett's personal diary, by Livia Rokach, daughter of Israel Rokach, Minister of the Interior in the government of Moshe Sharett. Sharett was Israel's first Foreign Minister and Israel's second Prime Minister, after David Ben-Gurion resigned in the wake of the Lavon Affair scandal. His diary shows his frustration at Ben-Gurion's fondness for using brute force in achieving his goals, and the scheming and conniving of his sidekick, Moshe Dayan.
From the introduction:
"The Israeli political /military establishment never seriously believed in an Arab threat to the existence of Israel... The occupation by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 has been described, and is still widely understood today, as an Israeli defensive action in the face of Arab threats. Sharett's Diary offers unequivocable [
sic] evidence that the occupation of Gaza and also of the West Bank was part of lsrael's plans since the early fifties. American Zionist leaders were informed about these plans in 1954..."