Six Days Forty Years Ago

8^th June 2007

The Malta Independent - Friday Wisdom

 

Forty years ago this week I was a young lad of fifteen sitting for my O levels. Why should I remember this event so specifically, you may ask? It is not exactly earth shattering.

I remember it because it coincided with an actual earth-shattering event. Forty years ago this week the six day war erupted and turned into an event that changed the course of the Middle East and by implication of the world.

In the short space of six days between 5 and 10 June of 1967. Israel crushed an alliance of Arab armies which were preparing to obliterate Israel out of existence. Egypt, Syria and Jordan were preparing to invade Israel from all sides believing that America, with its hands already full in Vietnam, would not come to Israel’s rescue.

Spearheaded by President Nasser of Egypt, who was considered the moral leader of a secular Arab world following his victories against Britain and France in the Suez crisis of 1956, and armed and supported by USSR equipment and military backing, the odds were clearly staked against the vulnerable state of Israel. Following its 1962 humiliation in the Cuba stand-off with the US, the USSR was keen to return the compliment in the Middle East knowing that America was too pre-occupied with the Vietnam nightmare in the making.Israel made a pre-emptive strike and in six days managed to destroy most of the opponents’ military equipment on the ground and extended its territory by invading the Sinai desert on the Egyptian front, the Golan Heights on the north Syrian border and the West Bank on the Jordanian border apart from annexing Gaza. All this in six days which left the world stunned with admiration at the military capability of Moshe Dayan and co.

Forty years later it is possible to judge that whilst the military strike of 1967 was justified and almost inevitable in the interest of self-defense, too much time has been wasted in preserving the post war status quo without addressing the real underlying root of the problem in the Middle East.

Forty years of missed opportunities to exchange land-for-peace have left calamitous consequences for both sides.

From being admired and even romanticized nation of pioneers and kibbutzniks, Israel is now branded as a pariah state for the way it treats Palestinians under occupation and for continuing to build settlements in the occupied West Bank against UN resolutions. It also covered itself in contradictions by becoming a nuclear power while expecting all countries around it to avoid developing any tastes and ambitions for nuclear capability.

For Arab states the 1967 humiliation blew away the ambition of a pan-Arab secular association of modern states leaving a vacuum which is filled either fundamental Islamists or by fragile kingdoms or regimes trying to keep a difficult balancing act in meeting the Islamic demands of its population whilst maintaining co-operative relationship with the West on whom they depend to grow their resource based economies.

The high price of oil, the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, even the adoption of terror and terrorist measures as a policy instrument to change the status quo in the Middle East can all be traced back to the events of these six days in 1967.

There is no mystery about the solution to this conflict. Full Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for the land seized in 1967 is the only solution which brings back all parties within the confines of UN resolutions and consequently of legality. The formula has not really been tried as even in the high watermark of the Oslo peace process the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank continued to increase and East Jerusalem has been enclosed by blocs of settlements.

Whilst Israel was eager to make a land-for-peace settlement with Egypt by relinquishing the conquered Sinai desert, and in theory is quite willing to do the same with Syria over the Golan heights if it ever finds an honest negotiating partner on the Syrian side, Israel shows little or no flexibility on a land-for-peace deal involving the West Bank to promote the formation of a peaceful Palestinian State and is totally inflexible about relinquishing east Jerusalem.

Time moves on and forty years is a long time for all sides to be forced to realize that peaceful co-existence is in everybody’ long term interest even if short term painful concession have to be made. The parties will never come to such arrangement on their own. They need a strong US as an honest broker to push them in a compromising mode. However this is impossible from a Bush administration that misguidedly believed that the road to peace in the Middle East passes through the conquest of Baghdad.

It needs a new administration in the White House and strong support from the EU foreign policy, but it has to be done. This is not some regional dispute that can be left to fester. Further neglect will alienate Arabs and Muslims and compromise the security of the West, foremost amongst them the Israelis. Iran’s quest for nuclear capability can only be properly judged in this forty year context.