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Six Day War left mixed legacies
STEVEN GRUZD
One of the 20th century’s shortest, yet most decisive military triumphs, that tumultuous week changed the Middle East forever. Looking back, what have been the consequences of this conflict for Jerusalem and beyond?
Sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, Jerusalem lies at the heart of the political stalemate between Israel, the Palestinians and the Islamic world.
In 1947, the UN approved partition of the areas under the former British Mandate into a Jewish and an Arab state, with Jerusalem as an international city ruled by neither. The Jews reluctantly accepted partition, the Arabs flatly rejected it.
Five Arab armies invaded hours after the State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948. By the March 1949 armistice, Israel had control of West Jerusalem; East Jerusalem, including the Old City, fell to Jordan, which also controlled the kidney bean-shaped territories on the Jordan River’s West Bank; Egypt took Gaza.
Israel’s chance to reunite Jerusalem came 18 years later. With Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser blocking Israeli shipping access to the Red Sea and his forces mobilising aggressively in the Sinai Peninsula, Israel launched an audacious pre-emptive strike on June 5,1967.
It obliterated the formidable Egyptian air force in a day and then confronted the forces of Egypt’s allies, Syria and Jordan, plus several Iraqi battalions. In six days, Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan (which had ignored Israeli calls for it to remain neutral).
This tripled the land area under Israeli control, provided it with “strategic depth” – a buffer from attack, compared to its vulnerable 1949 frontiers and, perhaps, bargaining chips to negotiate peace deals (the Sinai was indeed eventually traded for peace with Egypt in 1979).
The nation and the Jewish world rejoiced in this miraculous victory. Many saw G-d’s hand directing the battle. Biblical lands were reclaimed. Jews stood tall and proud. They could now pray at their holiest site, HaKotel Ha’Maaravi (the Western Wall), a right flouted by the Jordanians.
Israel vowed that Jerusalem, its eternal capital, would never be divided again. Within months, it formally annexed East Jerusalem. This euphoric sense of invincibility was short-lived, however. Egypt and Syria attacked in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, although Israel reversed the initial military setbacks.
But, for the Palestinians, June 5 is “the Naksa”, “the setback”, compounding “the Nakba”, “the catastrophe” of 1948.
Every conflict displaces civilians, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in both wars. Today, they form the millions of refugees in camps dotted around the Middle East. Yet any Jew can claim citizenship on arrival in Israel.
Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to a combination of rule by the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority set up by the 1993 Oslo Accords. Jews living there – termed “settlers” – however, are full citizens of Israel. This differentiation undermines Israel’s democratic credentials.
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital, a demand the Israeli public and its leaders won’t entertain. Foreign embassies sit in Tel Aviv, rejecting Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem.
Despite President Donald Trump’s promises to move the US embassy to Jerusalem – echoing many previous American administrations – he has been persuaded that this could ignite a powder keg.
Besides Jerusalem’s status, other issues hamper stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. They include Israel’s future as a Jewish state, security, refugees, and the fate of approximately 400 000 Jewish settlers living in over 100 West Bank settlements.
Complicating matters, deep divisions persist between the PLO in the West Bank (which is generally more accommodational towards Israel), and Hamas in Gaza (which denies Israel’s very right to exist). Might there be some movement with the relatively more pragmatic Ismail Haniyeh now leading Hamas, having succeeded hardliner Khaled Meshaal?
This half-century stalemate has had consequences. Palestinians reject Israeli rule and want their independence. Israel has faced repeated campaigns by its enemies to destroy and delegitimise it, in wars, intifadas and in the media.
It confronts a barrage of vicious propaganda. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement constantly seeks to demonise and defame it, so far with limited success. Diaspora Jewish communities suffered spikes in anti-Semitic incidents after the conflicts with Hamas in Gaza, and so-called “anti-Zionism” ultimately targets Jews.
Fifty years after the Six Day War, these tough issues must be tackled, somehow, if Israel is ever to find lasting peace.
Steven Gruzd is an analyst at the South African Institute of International Affairs.
