The Lessons And Consequences Of The Six-Day War
By David Harris/Algemeiner.com June 07, 2017Politicians, diplomats and journalists continue to grapple with the consequences of that war, but rarely consider, or perhaps are even unaware of, the context. Yet without context, some critically important things may not make sense.
First, in June 1967, there was no state of Palestine. It didn't exist and never had. Its creation, proposed by the UN in 1947, was rejected by the Arab world because it also meant the establishment of a Jewish state next to it.
Second, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were in Jordanian hands. Violating solemn agreements, Jordan denied Jews access to their holiest places in eastern Jerusalem. To make matters still worse, they desecrated and destroyed many of those sites.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control, with harsh military rule imposed on local residents. And the Golan Heights, which were regularly used to shell Israeli communities far below, belonged to Syria.
Fourth, the 1967 boundary at the time of the war, so much in the news these days, was nothing more than an armistice line dating back to 1949 -- familiarly known as the Green Line.
Fifth, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which supported the war effort, was established in 1964 -- three years before the conflict erupted. That's important because the PLO was created with the goal of obliterating Israel. Remember that in 1964, the only "settlements" were Israel itself.
Sixth, in the weeks leading up to the Six-Day War, Egyptian and Syrian leaders repeatedly declared that war was coming, and that their objective was to wipe Israel off the map. There was no ambiguity. Twenty-two years after the Holocaust, another enemy spoke about the extermination of Jews. The record is well-documented.
The record is equally clear that Israel, in the days leading up to the war, passed messages to Jordan, via the United Nations and United States, urging Amman to stay out of any pending conflict. Jordan's King Hussein ignored the Israeli plea and tied his fate to Egypt and Syria.
Seventh, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded that UN peacekeeping forces in the area, who had been put in place to prevent conflict, be removed. Shamefully, without even the courtesy of consulting Israel, the UN complied.
Eighth, Egypt blocked Israeli shipping lanes in the Red Sea, Israel's only maritime access to trading routes with Asia and Africa. This step was understandably regarded as an act of war by Jerusalem.
Ninth, France, which had been Israel's principal arms supplier, announced a ban on the sale of weapons to Jerusalem on the eve of the June war. That left Israel in potentially grave danger if a war were to drag on and require the resupply of arms.
And finally, after winning its war of self-defense, Israel hoped that its newly-acquired territories, seized from Egypt, Jordan and Syria, would be the basis for a land-for-peace accord. Feelers were sent out.
More "no's" were to follow. Underscoring the point, in 2003, the Saudi ambassador to the US was quoted in the New Yorker as saying: "It broke my heart that [PLO Chair Yasser] Arafat did not take the offer (of a two-state deal presented by Israel, with American support, in 2001).
Today, there are those who wish to rewrite history.
They want the world to believe that there was once a Palestinian state. There was not.
They want the world to believe that there were fixed borders between that state and Israel. In fact, there was only an armistice line between Israel and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
They want the world to believe that the 1967 war was a bellicose act by Israel. But it was an act of self-defense in the face of blood-curdling threats to vanquish the Jewish state, not to mention the maritime blockade of the Straits of Tiran, the abrupt withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces and the redeployment of Egyptian and Syrian troops.
Instead, they want the world to believe that post-1967 Israeli settlement-building is the key obstacle to peacemaking. The Six-Day War is proof positive that the core issue is, and always has been, whether the Palestinians and larger Arab world accept the Jewish people's right to a state of their own.
Finally, Israel's enemies want the world to believe that the Arab world have nothing against Jews per se, only Israel -- yet they trampled, with abandon, on the Jewish people's sacred sites when they had control of them.
In other words, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, dismissing the past as if it were a minor irritant at best, and irrelevant at worst, won't work.
Can history move forward? Absolutely. Israel's peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 powerfully prove the point.