40 years after the Six-Day War
By Robert Horenstein
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This month marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War, during which Israel, fighting for its very survival, defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
Of course, the Palestinians, too, will be marking this month as an anniversary—40 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which much of the world mistakenly considers to be the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As if the conflict began only after Israel's conquest of Arab-controlled territories in 1967. As if the Arabs weren't feverishly preparing to annihilate the Jewish state in the months leading up to the war at a time when not a single Jewish settlement existed in the West Bank or Gaza.
Still, according to the conventional wisdom, if Israel would only return to the June 1967 armistice lines, peace would reign. The underlying assumption, widespread among European policymakers, American mainline church leaders and left-wing Jewish organizations, is that the risk of terrorism will decrease as the fundamental grievances of the Palestinians and other Arab parties are satisfied.
Sadly, recent history suggests otherwise. In fact, since 2000, Israeli withdrawals from Arab land have led not to peace, but, to an explosion of violence and terrorism.
In other words, something besides Arab political grievances over land (often used as a pretext for violence) is fueling today's conflict.
True, the "land for peace" formula, which is embedded in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (adopted five months after the Six-Day War), worked in the case of Israel and Egypt. Why? Because then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat offered the Israeli people what they had longed for since Israel's establishment: acceptance by a neighboring Arab state and a sense of normalcy.
For acceptance and normalcy, Israel handed over the entire Sinai to Egypt. For acceptance and normalcy, Israel gave up the Alma oil field, valued at over $100 billion. For acceptance and normalcy, Israel uprooted 7,000 of its citizens (some forcibly) from their Sinai homes.
By contrast, unilateral Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza haven't bolstered the Arab moderates—they've emboldened the terrorists.
Six years ago, the Israelis withdrew their forces from a 9-mile-wide swath of Lebanese territory used as a buffer to protect towns and kibbutzim in northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas. Over a fifteen-year period, Israel had sustained hundreds of casualties in Lebanon, gradually diminishing public support for a continued military presence there.
The Israeli occupation (ostensibly, Hezbollah's main grievance) having ended, that should have been the end of the story. After all, Hezbollah called itself a "resistance" movement, and with Israeli forces no longer in Lebanon, what was there left to resist? Wouldn't it have been reasonable to expect that Hezbollah would disarm?
But that's hardly what happened. Emboldened by what it saw as its "victory," Hezbollah immediately began preparing for another round of war. In defiance of U.N. Resolution 1559, it undertook a massive military buildup, arming itself with thousands of short-range missiles and creating a terrorist mini-state in which the civilian population of southern Lebanon served as human shields. All this while the world watched and did virtually nothing.
In the end, what was Israel's reward for having withdrawn from Lebanon? More than 4,000 Katyushas fired into its territory, 163 fatalities, and two kidnapped soldiers who are still being held hostage, all the result of last summer's war that began with Hezbollah's unprovoked cross-border attack.
Not surprisingly, the August 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza following the second intifada, during which over 700 Israeli civilians were killed in terrorist attacks, generated a similar outcome. Israel had hoped that pulling its troops out of Gaza and evacuating 21 Jewish settlements there would serve as a springboard for positive change, i.e., the establishment of a peaceful Palestinian state.
For the Palestinians, however, the Israeli withdrawal was a victory for their "armed struggle." Consequently, an end to the Israeli occupation in Gaza has led to an upsurge in terrorism and radicalism among Palestinians as the forces for moderation have been swept aside.
The Palestinians, in addition to handing their government to a terrorist organization—Hamas, which, said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, "will never sign a peace agreement with Israel"—turned Gaza into a terrorist fortress.
Since the Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian militants have fired hundreds of Qassam rockets into southern Israel. They've also smuggled more than 20 tons of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, across the Egypt-Gaza border. Another tragic war, it seems, is inevitable.
Thus, 40 years after the watershed events of June, 1967, Israel faces an unsettling paradox. If Israel is to retain both its Jewish and democratic character, it cannot annex the West Bank with its 2.2 million Palestinians.
Yet, as long as the main grievance on the Arab side goes beyond territory lost in a war with Israel to Israel's very existence, land for peace will remain not only an unrealistic scenario, but a dangerous illusion.
Robert Horenstein is the staff director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Community Relations Committee.