Fifty years ago yesterday, at midnight, a battle-blackened Israeli soldier stood on Mount Hermon looking out across an unrecognisably altered Middle East. Around him, the Golan Heights, once a Syrian redoubt, was entirely in Israeli hands, as was the formerly Jordanian West Bank further south. From Egypt, the entire Sinai Peninsula had been seized along with the Gaza Strip. Other Israeli soldiers were swimming in the Suez Canal and, for the first time in millennia, raising the Star of David over a united Jerusalem. Most astonishingly, these transformations took place over a mere six days.
But few wars in history have proved as contentious. University students and faculty members still lock horns on the question of Israel’s right to Judea and Samaria — the West Bank’s biblical names — and the Palestinians’ demand for statehood in those areas.
The US policymakers, meanwhile, devote countless hours to resolving the war’s consequences diplomatically. Obsessively, it seems, the media focuses on the realities created by those few days.
And never have the disputes surrounding the Six-Day War been more bitter. There are those who insist that the Arabs never seriously threatened Israel, which initiated the fighting to expand territorially. The war resulted in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the building of Israeli settlements. Rather than a victory, the war transformed Israel into colonial, apartheid state.
The other interpretation maintains that Israel had no choice but to fight and that this defensive war provided the state with secure borders, vital alliances, peace treaties, and a renewed sense of purpose.
Read the full article by Michael Oren at The Australian (subscription only).