by Terence Smith
I can hardly believe it, but it was 59 years ago today, on June 5, 1967, that Israel launched the Six Day War against her Arab neighbors. The tiny nation captured Jerusalem, the West Bank and more and set in motion the Middle East dynamic that continues in such violent fashion to this day.
Israel today finds itself fighting on at least four fronts: Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and, episodically, against the Houthis in Yemen. That is to say nothing of the murderous turmoil between settlers and Palestinians in the still-occupied West Bank and the internal divisions between orthodox and secular Israelis. It is a tumultuous nation. And national elections must be held by October.
The contrast with 59 years ago is extraordinary. When the guns fell silent after six days, peace seemed inevitable. The Israeli victory had been so sweeping, so total, that Israelis and Palestinians alike assumed that negotiations and a peace agreement was just around the corner. The long-elusive two-state solution seemed imminent. Palestinians and Israelis were mingling together in the Old City of Jerusalem and finding that neither was all that foreign or threatening.
This new-found harmony did not last, of course. The Arab states gathered in Khartoum in the fall of 1967 and decided against negotiating or making peace with Israel. Ultimately, harder-edged Israeli governments took over in Jerusalem. More wars and conflicts followed. Rinse and repeat.
The irony is that so little has changed as the decades have gone by. Israel has grown stronger, yes, and more fractured. The Arab states are more embittered, and divided. The great powers have weighed in — and out — of the region. The stakes have multiplied.
But a peaceful solution is still there, still possible. There is an old saying that if you locked two lawyers in a room, they could come up with a Middle East compromise in short order — if only the parties could trust each other. Two states for two peoples, that’s the solution. Everybody knows it. But nobody, so far, is big enough to bring it about. The late Yitzhak Rabin might have, had he not been assassinated by an Israeli killer who feared exactly that.
Instead, the fighting and killing goes on, the different players more intransigent, the weapons more powerful and the stakes ever greater.
On this anniversary, 59 years after the start of the Six Day War, the old axiom is true: the more things change…the more they stay the same.