In June 1967 We Again Had a Choice

This week marks the 50th Anniversary of the Arab-Israeli Vi 24-hour interval War, fought from 5-10 June 1967. Israel's decisive victory included the capture of east Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories – the West Banking company and Gaza – besides as the Golan Heights and Sinai. The end of the war marked the kickoff of what has become a 50-year war machine occupation of the West Depository financial institution. In Ten Myths Near Israel, Ilan Pappe describes 'The June 1967 War Was a War of "No Pick"' as a core myth of Israel.

Israeli armoured troop unit entering Gaza during the Six-Day War, June 6, 1967.

Nonetheless, the most important cistron in the blitz to war was the absence of any authoritative challenge to the warmongering within the Israeli leadership at the time. This might accept offered some form of internal friction delaying the hawks' pursuit of conflict, assuasive the international community to look for a peaceful resolution. A diplomatic effort led by the United States was withal in its early stages when Israel launched its attack on all its Arab neighbors on June five, 1967. There was no intention in the Israeli chiffonier of providing the necessary time to the peace brokers. This was a golden opportunity non to be missed.

In crucial Israeli cabinet meetings earlier the war, Abba Eban naively asked the chiefs of staff and his colleagues what the difference was between the 1960 crisis and the 1967 state of affairs, every bit he thought the latter could have been resolved in the same mode. Information technology "is a matter of honor and deterrence" was the reply. Eban replied that losing immature soldiers just for the sake of honor and deterrence was as well loftier a human toll to be paid. I suspect that other things were said to him that have not been recorded in the minutes, probably nigh his need to understand that this was a historical opportunity to correct the "fatal historical mistake" of not occupying the Due west Depository financial institution in 1948.

The war began early in the morning of June 5 with an Israeli attack on the Egyptian air force, which nearly destroyed it. This was followed the aforementioned mean solar day with similar assaults on the air forces of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Israeli forces besides invaded the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula and in the next few days reached the Suez Canal, occupying the whole of the peninsula. The attack on the Jordanian air force triggered the Jordanian capture of a pocket-sized UN zone betwixt the two parts of Jerusalem. Within three days, subsequently fierce fighting, the Israeli regular army had captured East Jerusalem (on June 7), and ii days later they drove the Jordanian army out of the West Bank.

On June 7, the Israeli authorities was still uncertain about opening a new front against the Syrians on the Golan Heights, just the remarkable successes on the other front convinced the politicians to allow the ground forces to occupy the Golan Heights. Past June 11, Israel had become a mini-empire, controlling the Golan Heights, the West Banking concern, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. In this chapter I will focus on the Israeli decision to occupy the West Bank.

On the eve of the war, Jordan had entered into a military alliance with Egypt and Syria according to which, the moment Israel attacked Arab republic of egypt, Jordan was obliged to enter the state of war. Notwithstanding this commitment, King Hussein sent clear messages to Israel that if war began he would accept to do something, but that it would exist short and would not entail a real state of war (this was very similar to his grandfather'due south position in 1948). In do, the Jordanian involvement was more symbolic. It included a heavy bombardment of West Jerusalem and the eastern suburbs of Tel Aviv. However, it is important to annotation what Hashemite kingdom of jordan was reacting to: its air force had been totally destroyed by Israel a couple of hours earlier, at noon on June 5. Male monarch Hussein thus felt obliged to react more than forcefully than he probably intended.

The trouble was that the army was not under his control, merely was commanded by an Egyptian general. The mutual narrative of these events is based on Hussein'south ain memoirs and those of Dean Rusk, the American Secretary of State at the time. According to this narrative, State of israel sent a conciliatory message to Hussein urging him to stay out of the state of war (even though it had destroyed the Jordanian air forcefulness). On the beginning day Israel was still willing not to become besides far in its attack on Hashemite kingdom of jordan, just the latter's reaction to the destruction of its air strength led State of israel into a much wider operation on the 2nd day. Hussein actually wrote in his memoirs that he hoped all the time someone would stop the madness equally he could not disobey the Egyptians nor run a risk a war. On the second mean solar day he urged the Israelis to calm down and only then, co-ordinate to this narrative, did Israel proceed to a larger performance.

There are two bug with this narrative. How can one reconcile the assault on the Jordanian air forcefulness with the sending of a reconciliatory message? More than importantly, even if Israel was still hesitant about its policy towards Hashemite kingdom of jordan on the commencement solar day, information technology is articulate even from this narrative that by the second day information technology did not wish to requite Jordan whatsoever respite. As Norman Finkelstein has rightly noted, if you wanted to destroy what was left of the Jordanian ground forces and retain your relationship with the 1 Arab country most loyal to State of israel, a curt operation in the West Bank, without occupying it, would take sufficed.17 The Israeli historian Moshe Shemesh has examined the Jordanian sources and ended that, after Israel attacked the Palestinian village of Samua in Nov 1966, in an endeavour to defeat the Palestinian guerrillas, the Jordanian high command was persuaded that Israel intended to occupy the W Banking concern by strength. They were non wrong.

This did not happen every bit feared in 1966, but a year later on. The whole of Israeli guild was galvanized effectually the messianic project of "liberating" the holy places of Judaism, with Jerusalem as the jewel in the new crown of Greater Israel. Left- and right-wing Zionists, and Israel'southward supporters in the West, were also defenseless upwards in, and mesmerized by, this euphoric hysteria. In addition, in that location was no intention of leaving the West Bank and the Gaza Strip immediately after their occupation; in fact in that location was no desire to exit them at all. This should stand up as further proof of Israeli responsibility for the final deterioration of the May 1967 crisis into a total-blown war.

How important this historical juncture was for Israel can be seen from the fashion the government withstood the strong international pressure to withdraw from all the territories occupied in 1967, as demanded in the famous Un Security Council Resolution 242 very shortly subsequently the war concluded. As readers probably know, a Security Council resolution is more binding than a resolution by the Full general Associates. And this was 1 of the few Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel that was not vetoed by the United States.

Nosotros now take access to the minutes of a meeting of the Israeli regime in the firsthand days after the occupation. This was the thirteenth government of Israel and its composition is very relevant to the argument I am making here. It was a unity regime of a kind not seen before, or after, in Israel. Every shade of the Zionist and Jewish political spectrum was represented. Apart from the Communist Party, every other party had a representative in the government, from left to right and center. Socialist parties such as Mapam, right-fly parties like Menachem Begin's Herut, the liberals, and the religious parties were all included. The sense you get from reading the minutes is that the ministers knew they represented a broad consensus in their own society. This confidence was further energized past the euphoric atmosphere that engulfed Israel after the triumphant blitzkrieg that lasted merely vi days. Against this background, we can better understand the decisions these ministers took in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Moreover, many of these politicians had been waiting since 1948 for this moment. I would get even further and say that the takeover of the W Bank in particular, with its ancient biblical sites, was a Zionist aim even before 1948 and it fitted the logic of the Zionist project as a whole. This logic can be summarized as the wish to take over every bit much of Palestine equally possible with every bit few Palestinians as possible. The consensus, the euphoria, and the historical context explain why none of the subsequent Israeli governments have ever deviated from the decisions these ministers took.

The first decision they made was that Israel could not exist without the W Bank. Direct and indirect methods of controlling the region were offered past the minister of agriculture, Yigal Alon, when he distinguished between areas where Jewish settlements could be built and areas that were densely populated by Palestinians, which should be ruled indirectly. Alon changed his mind within a few years nigh the method of indirect dominion. At first he hoped that the Jordanians would exist tempted to help Israel dominion parts of the Due west Bank (probably, although this was never spelled out, by maintaining Jordanian citizenships and laws in the "Arab areas" of the West Banking company). However, a lukewarm Jordanian response to this plan tilted him towards Palestinian self-rule in those areas as the all-time way forward.

The second decision was that the inhabitants of the Due west Bank and Gaza Strip would not be incorporated into the state of israel as citizens. This did not include the Palestinians living in what State of israel regarded at the time as the new "Greater Jerusalem" area. The definition of that surface area, and who in it was entitled to Israeli citizenship, changed whenever this space grew in size. The greater the Greater Jerusalem became, the larger the number of Palestinians in it. Today there are 200,000 Palestinians within what is defined as the Greater Jerusalem area. To ensure that not all of them are counted as Israeli citizens, quite a few of their neighborhoods were declared to be West Bank villages. Information technology was articulate to the government that denying citizenship on the one hand, and non allowing independence on the other, condemned the inhabitants of the West Banking concern and the Gaza Strip to life without bones civil and homo rights.

The next question therefore was how long the Israeli army would occupy the Palestinian areas. It seems that for most ministers the answer was, and still is: for a very long fourth dimension. For instance, Moshe Dayan, the minister of defense, on one occasion threw into the air a period of fty years. We are at present in the fiftieth year of the occupation.

The 3rd decision was associated with the peace process. Every bit mentioned earlier, the international community expected Israel to return the territories it had occupied in exchange for peace. The Israeli government was willing to negotiate with Arab republic of egypt over the future of the Sinai Peninsula and with Syria over the Golan Heights, just not over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1 brief press conference in 1967, the prime minister at the time, Levy Eshkol, said as much.  Just soon his colleagues understood that public declarations of this kind were unhelpful, to put it mildly. Therefore, this strategic position was never explicitly best-selling again in the public domain. What we practise accept is clear statements from a few individuals, most prominent among them Dan Bavli, who were role of the senior squad of officials charged with strategizing the policy towards the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In retrospect, Bavli reports that the unwillingness to negotiate, especially over the Westward Bank, underlined the Israeli policy at the fourth dimension (and I would add together: and ever since). Bavli described this policy equally an "addition to belligerence and short sightedness" that replaced any search for a solution: "The diverse Israeli governments talked a lot nearly peace merely did very petty to achieve it." What the Israelis invented there and then is what Noam Chomsky has called a "consummate farce." They understood that talking about peace does not hateful they cannot constitute on the footing irreversible facts that volition defeat the very idea of peace.

Readers may ask, and rightly so, whether there was no peace camp or liberal Zionist position at the time that genuinely sought peace. Indeed there was, and perhaps there still is ane today. However, from the very commencement it was marginal and had the support of only a small section of the electorate. Decisions are fabricated in Israel past a core grouping of politicians, generals, and strategists who lay down policy, regardless of public debates. Moreover, the simply way to judge, in retrospect at least, what the Israeli strategy might be is not through the discourse of the state's policy makers but through their actions on the ground. For example, the policy declarations of the 1967 unity government might take differed from those of the Labor governments that ruled Israel until 1977, and from those voiced by the Likud governments that have ruled Israel intermittently up until today (with the exception of a few years in which the at present extinct Kadima party led the Sharon and Olmert governments in the start decade of the twenty-get-go century). The actions of each regime, nonetheless, have been the aforementioned, remaining loyal to the three strategic decisions that became the catechism of Zionist dogma in post-1967 Israel.

The most crucial action on the ground was the construction of Jewish settlements in the W Bank and the Gaza Strip, along with the delivery to their expansion. The government located these settlements at beginning in less densely populated Palestinian areas in the Due west Banking company (since 1968) and Gaza (since 1969). Nevertheless, as is and so chillingly described in the bright book by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, The Lords of the Land, the ministers and planners succumbed to pressure from the messianic settler movement, Gush Emunim, and also settled Jews at the eye of the Palestinian neighborhoods.

Another way of judging what the real Israeli intentions have been since 1967 is to wait at these policies from the betoken of view of the Palestinian victims. Afterward the occupation, the new ruler bars the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in an incommunicable limbo: they were neither refugees nor citizens—they were, and still are, citizen-less inhabitants. They were inmates, and in many respects still are, of a huge prison house in which they take no civil and human rights and no touch on their future. The globe tolerates this situation because Israel claims— and the merits was never challenged until recently—that the situation is temporary and will continue simply until in that location is a proper Palestinian partner for peace. Not surprisingly, such a partner has not been found. At the time of writing, Israel is still incarcerating a 3rd generation of Palestinians past various means and methods, and depicting these mega-prisons equally temporary realities that will modify in one case peace comes to Israel and Palestine.

What can the Palestinians do? The Israeli bulletin is very clear: If they comply with the expropriations of land, the severe restrictions on move, the harsh bureaucracy of occupation, then they may reap a few benefits. These may be the correct to work in Israel, to claim some autonomy, and, since 1993, even the right to call some of these autonomous regions a state. However, if they cull the path of resistance, every bit they have done occasionally, they will feel the full might of the Israeli army. The Palestinian activist Mazin Qumsiyeh has counted 14 such uprisings that take attempted to escape this mega-prison—all were met with a fell, and in the instance of Gaza, even genocidal, response.

Thus nosotros tin see that the takeover of the Due west Bank and the Gaza Strip represents a completion of the chore that began in 1948. Back and so, the Zionist movement took over 80 pct of the Palestine—in 1967 they completed the takeover. The demographic fear that haunted Ben-Gurion—a greater State of israel with no Jewish bulk—was cynically resolved by incarcerating the population of the occupied territories in a non-citizenship prison. This is not just a historical description; in many ways information technology is still the reality in 2017.

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and socialist activist, and the author of 10 Myths Nearly State of israeland The Idea of Israel. He is a professor with the Higher of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies.

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Source: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3251-the-june-1967-war-was-a-war-of-no-choice

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