This is an updated version of a piece that appeared previously and has been reposted as it remains as relevant as when it was first published here.
Mention the word "history" and it can trigger a roll of the eyes.
Add "Middle East" to the equation and folks might start running for the hills, unwilling to get caught up in the seemingly bottomless pit of details and disputes.
But without an understanding of what happened, it's impossible to grasp where we are -- and where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world.
Forty-five years ago this week, the Six-Day War broke out.
While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved and in the news.
Politicians, diplomats, and journalists continue to grapple with the consequences of that war, but rarely provide 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 alongside.
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 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.
Third, the Arab world could have created a Palestinian state in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip any day of the week. They didn't. There wasn't even discussion about it. And Arab leaders, who today profess such attachment to eastern Jerusalem, rarely, if ever, visited. It was viewed as an Arab backwater.
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. That's after five Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948 with the aim of destroying the embryonic Jewish state. They failed. Armistice lines were drawn, but they weren't formal borders. They couldn't be. The Arab world, even in defeat, refused to recognize Israel's very right to exist.
Fifth, the PLO, which supported the war effort, was established in 1964, three years before the conflict erupted. That's important because it 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 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 well-documented that Israel, in the days leading up to the war, passed word to Jordan, via the UN 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. His forces were defeated by Israel, and he lost control of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
Seventh, Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded that UN peacekeeping forces in the area, in place for the previous decade to prevent conflict, be removed. Shamefully, the UN complied. That left no buffer between Arab armies being mobilized and deployed and Israeli forces in a country one-fiftieth the size of Egypt -- and just nine miles wide at its narrowest point.
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 regarded as an act of war by Jerusalem. The United States spoke about joining with other countries to break the blockade, but did not act.
Ninth, France, which had been Israel's principal arms supplier, announced a ban on the sale of weapons 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. It was not until the next year that the U.S. stepped into the breach and sold vital weapons systems to Israel.
And finally, after winning the war of self-defense, Israel hoped that its newly-acquired territories, seized from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, would be the basis of a land-for-peace accord. Feelers were sent out. The formal response came on September 1, 1967, when the Arab Summit Conference famously declared in Khartoum "No peace, no recognition, no negotiations" with Israel.
Today, there are those who wish to rewrite history.
They want the world to believe there was once a Palestinian state. There was not.
They want the world to believe there were fixed borders between that state and Israel. There was only an armistice line between Israel and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
They want the world to believe the 1967 war was a bellicose act by Israel. 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. All wars have consequences; this one was no exception. But the Arab aggressors have failed to take responsibility for the actions they instigated.
They want the world to believe post-1967 Israeli settlement-building is the key to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Six-Day War is proof positive that the core issue is, and always has been, whether the Arab world accepts the Jewish people's right to a state of their own. If so, all other contentious issues, however difficult, have possible solutions.
And they want the world to believe the Arab world had nothing against Jews per se, only Israel, yet trampled with abandon on sites of sacred meaning to the Jewish people.
In other words, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, dismissing the past as if it were a minor irritant at best, irrelevant at worst, won't work.
Can history move forward? Absolutely. Israel's peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 prove the point. At the same time, though, the lessons of the Six-Day War illustrate just how tough and tortuous the path can be.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/margolis12.html
Why didn't the Palestinians establish their state (even if it didn't meet their full ambition for a state in all of Palestine) in the WB and Gaza between 1948-67. Who stopped them and what did they do to fight for that state against those that stopped them. A short list of acts of resistance against the occupiers of the WB and Gaza during this time period would be interesting to read and lend credibilty that the Palestinians claims that their goals was the establishment of their own state rather than the destruction of Israel.
They were under annexation. They were given temporary citizenship by Jordan and allowed the vote, so they were probably in no hurry.
>> Palestinians claims that their goals was the establishment of their own state rather than the destruction of Israel.
If their goal was the destruction of Israel, then why haven't they dine it by now
LOL
2) The Arabs tried to destroy Israel several times and they failed each and every time.
2) When all the smoke has cleared, the only relevant inconvenient truth remains that Israel keeps 5 million Palestinians under a military occupation, that it denies these people their recognized rights to a sovereign state, the International consensus being that it must roughly run alongside the 1967 "Green Line", that it must have East Jerusalem as capital, and that all the settlements and the further colonization of the West Bank is illegal.
On top of that, Israel denies the Palestinians their most basic human rights and Freedoms.
The PA, still appointed as the only recognized representative of the Palestinian people has recognized the State of Israel 20 years ago, and the Arab Peace Initiative has offered Israel full recognition and diplomatic ties in exchange for a Palestinian State according to the International Consensus.
All the rest is smoke and mirrors.
As you very well know, I never said that. What I said was:
Sooner or later occupiers usually get kicked out of the lands they occupy.
With that, it is obvious I referred to Germany and Japan, because they were the occupiers of millions of people, not the Allied, just like Israel is the Occupier of 5 million people in the West bank and Gaza.
Off course, all you can do is try to distort what people say.
Now, when are you ever going to come up with a decent argument or fact instead of a smear?
Ah yes... you never have any arguments or facts... only smears...
And what did the UN or other international bodies say or do about this?
"Armistice lines were drawn, but they weren't formal borders."
And wasn't it the then-PLO leader Ahmed Shukeiry who said on June 1, 1967: "This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to leave. We will facilitate their departure to their former homes. Any of the old Palestine Jewish population who survive may stay, but it is my impression that none of them will survive."
- U Thant, U.N. Secretary General. View from the UN, New York: Doubleday & Company, (1978)
Another senior UN official, Brian Urquhart, when referring to Israel's refusal to a two week moratorium in the straits (which Nasser agreed to), writes in his memoir –
'Israel, no doubt having decided on military action, turned down U Thant's ideas.'
- Brian Urquhart: A Life in Peace and War Harper & Row, 1987
Also the then US Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalls the cycnial surprise attack launched by Israel, instead of trying the diplomatic route, which nasser was open to –
'when the Israelis launched the surprise offensive. they attacked on a Monday, knowing that on Wednesday the Egyptian Vice President would arrive in Washington to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran. We might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the strait, but it was a real possibility'
Sadly, in spite of truth and historical facts being laid out,
the haters will still hate and the deniers will still deny…..
all as evidenced right here.
That being said….Thanks Mr. Harris….look forward to the next great article!!!
The transcripts of that meeting, which I found in the Israeli army archives, reveal that the generals made it clear to Eshkol that the Egyptians would need 18 months to two years before they would be ready for a full-scale war, and therefore this was the time for a preemptive strike. My father told Eshkol: "Nasser is advancing an ill-prepared army because he is counting on the Cabinet being hesitant. Your hesitation is working in his advantage." The prime minister parried this criticism, saying, "The Cabinet must also think of the wives and mothers who will become bereaved."
Throughout the meeting, there was no mention of a threat but rather of an "opportunity" that was there, to be seized.
Within short order, the Cabinet succumbed to the pressure of the army, and the rest, as they say, is history."
Miko Peled son of Gen. Matti Peled, the Israel Defense Forces' chief of logistics at the time, in an excellent article detailing the IDF's eagerness to start the 1967 War.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-peled-israel-palestine--six-day-war-20120606,0,3821348.story
...I made a mistake in allowing the Israel conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time [fourth day of the war].
- Moshe Dayan. (The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, pp. 236-237, W. W. Norton & Company, January 2001, ISBN 978-0-393-32112-8)
Yawn,
Hopefully someday Harris will recognize the Palestinians right to exist
"after winning the war of self-defense, Israel hoped that its newly-acquired territories, seized from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, would be the basis of a land-for-peace accord"
LOL
It seems that by not ackowledging who attacked who first and for what purpose you are simply admitting that your side is wrong
Otherwise you would be able to defend what really happened
I'm told every day here that Israel has no right to exist. But "the Palestinians", an invented conglomeration of Arabs created for the sole purpose of destroying Israel, do?
is the same as the 1960's newly found 'palestinians'.
'thinking4myself'….obviously that;s exactly it and maybe historical facts would serve ya better.