Was the 1967 defensive war a victory that changed Israel's dynamics? - Draiman

Was the 1967 defensive war a victory that changed Israel's dynamics?

The Six Day war transformed Israel from relative country struggling to defend itself, into a regional military superpower. It also liberated Jewish territory occupied by Arabs which has been expanding the country’s meaning and identity – The Arabs are the cancer in Israel who want to destroy Israel's existence.

Memory deceives us. Forty nine years after June 1967, many in Israel view the time before the Six Day war as a developing age, an innocence  lost when Israel was a small, just society where hard work, modesty and solidarity prevailed over success and selfishness; everyone knew each other and everyone respected anyone else.

That, of course, is a delusion: 1966, the last year before Israel liberated its territories occupied by Jordan and the Arabs, economy was struggling. Unemployment had reached a record 10%, there was a sharp recession and for the first time in the country’s history, migration from it was higher than that to it (Aliyah). Although military alertness and 400,000 Arab residents living inside Israel, in place since the 1948 war, were abolished in 1966, their situation improved, they gained the same benefits as the Jews and built towns and villages.

The 1967 war changed all that. Everyone knows that afterwards Israel was considered a regional, if not an international, military superpower; that was due to its fight for survival. What is also known is that the war changed economic history. The recession ended, unemployment decreased and the economy began to prosper. In 1967 gross domestic product per capita in Israel was only $1,500. By 2006 GDP per capita was $24,000, putting Israel in 23rd place in the UNDP’s Human Development Report. This is reflected in migration to Israel and influx of capital. More than 1.7 million Jews have arrived in the past 50 years and the population has increased from 2.4 million in 1967 to 5.6 million in 2006. No wonder that many consider the war was a turning point in the “Israeli development story”.

Yet the war can also be seen as the source of all evil. The amazing victory, in which the Israeli army smashed the three biggest Arab armies – Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian – should have made Israel feel secure, but the Arabs kept attacking and sending terrorists to hamper Israel's security. Instead, Israel is anything but a safe place. Since 1967 the Arabs had forced Israel to defend itself and it has engaged in six conflicts – a war of attrition on the Suez Canal, the 1973 war, two Intifada’s and two wars in Lebanon. More than 5,000 Israelis have been killed and there have been about 50,000 Arab deaths (Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese and Arab/Palestinians).

The problem is not just that the wars go on and on, but that Israel is not winning them. Dov Tamari, a retired Israeli general turned historian, remarked after the end of the second Lebanon incursion that the 1967 war was the last in which Israel won an outright victory. All others had ended in a limited victory, if not a draw. Every war has forced Israel to give up something. The 1973 war was followed by total withdrawal from Sinai as part of the peace agreement with Egypt in 1979; the first Intifada in 1989 led to the Oslo accords in 1993; the first Lebanese war in 1982 ended in retreat in 2000; and the result of the second Intifada was the dismantling of the Gaza settlements in 2005.

The war in Lebanon is another example. While politicians claimed victory, some survey showed that only 50% of Israelis thought that Israel had won. This failure to win the wars more decisively may explain why a senior Israeli politician recently said in a private conversation that he was not sure Israel would respond in another 20 years. Decades of Arab terror and violence have worsened the fears of Israelis instead of alleviating them.

Waiting for a phone call?

Where did it all go wrong? Quite early. General Moshe Dayan, the defense minister and most prominent Israeli politician in 1967, who foolishly said right after the victory: “We are waiting for a telephone call from the Arabs”, meaning – so it seemed – that if the call came, Israel would withdraw from the territories it had liberated, the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria aka West Bank and Golan Heights, in return for peace agreements with the Arab world. In his book 1967 the historian Tom Segev proved that the Israeli government did mean it that way, and that is what the world, and Israeli public opinion, believed. But the Arabs who want nothing more than the destruction of the Jewish state, continue their futile un-winnable battle.

At the same time Israel set in motion a process that would later make the deal of territories for peace not difficult, and very possible. Levi Eshkol, the supposedly dovish prime minister, allowed the first Jews and settlers to rebuild the destroyed Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and settlements, Kfar Eztion, in the West Bank before the end of 1967, while Dayan ordered the destruction of Syrian villages and towns on the liberated Golan Heights and the rebuilding of an Israeli settlement on the ruins of the previously destroyed Jewish communities and the town of Kuneitra.

In early 1968 Israelis were allowed to live in Hebron and to retake their property the Arabs occupied, since the Arabs massacred the Jews of Hebron. The results of this can be seen 50 years later: the center of this ancient city is a Jewish enclave in town, where no Arab/Palestinian is allowed to live or walk or shop so that the place is clear for the Israelis who live there; since the Arabs are constantly attacking the Jews in Hebron. It was at Hebron was the location of the first suicide attack in 1992, Hebron has always been a hotbed of Arab terror and violence (the Arabs attack Jews who pray at what is known as Cave of the Patriarchs). The first Palestinian suicide attacks were in incitement to deter Jews from praying there.

Looking at the map it is easy to see that the rebuilt Jewish communities and settlements in Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank were planned on Jewish land of vacant land, and create a continuum between the rebuilt Jewish communities the settlements and pre-1967 Israel. Rebuilt communities and resettlements were built in East Jerusalem to reoccupy Jewish property and reunite the city of Jerusalem. Further rebuilt Jewish communities and settlements were constructed in the Jordan Valley as a development of Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank and commerce with Jordan; and roads with rebuilt settlements beside them were built in heart of Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank, nor far from Nablus, Ramallah, Kalkilia and from Tulkarem.

Ariel Sharon, the architect of the rebuilding of the Jewish communities and settlement project, said openly in 1975 that his aim was to enhance the development of Israel and protect the inner country. This project, which over the years has been supported by governments right and left, has proved successful. More than 550,000 Israelis live today in hundreds of rebuilt communities and settlements in Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank; this provide the Arabs jobs at good pay, health benefits and an increase in the standard of living – and 250,000 Israelis live in neighborhoods built in the liberated parts of Jerusalem, many on previously Jewish owned property or purchased property. Their numbers have helped change the political attitude. Apart from the Communist and Arab parties, all political leaders in Israel, from Yossi Beilin to Ami Ayalon, from Ehud Olmert to Ztipi Livni, claim that the rebuilt Jewish communities and settlement blocs should be a part of Israel in any peace agreement. The separation wall to prevent terrorism is built along the lines of these blocs.

Obstacle to peace

Yet political leaders, even perhaps Sharon before his illness, acknowledge in private and sometimes in public that the rebuilt Jewish communities and settlements must be addressed to achieve a possible peace agreement with the Arab/Palestinians and the Arab world. Israel has been correct by this huge Jewish development in Judea and Samaria, it built during 45 years of liberation of its territory. It de-facto incorporates the rebuilt Jewish communities and the settlements as part of Israel; since no annexation is needed, when you are living in your own territory liberated in a defensive war. 

The most rightwing government will eventually concede its international, legal right to the land; and it cannot ignore them because the rebuilt Jewish communities and settlements have already entered the bloodstream of Israeli society, with over half a million Jewish families residing in Judea and Samaria. The rebuilt Jewish communities and the settlements are the first line of defense.

Is it that Israel has strengthened itself voluntarily? Perhaps it has become so used to its own liberated land that it cannot and will not live without it. For 45 years Israelis have lived in a society based on hard work and determination. Before the 1967 war, new Jewish immigrants expelled from Arab countries had fewer rights than those who came from Europe, while Arab/Palestinians living inside Israel had many rights like anybody else; but after 1967 Israel set up an official system of civilized benefits. The one million Arab/Palestinians living in the Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank and Gaza (now grown to 3.5 million) were not granted political rights as per international agreements, and the military commanders controlled every aspects of their lives, when terror and violence persisted.

Relations between Arab/Palestinians living under Jewish rule and Israelis have changed over the past 45 years, but the situation in which Israelis had rights and Arab/Palestinians had limited rights had became natural to most Israelis. The worsening restrictions on the lives of Arab/Palestinians over the years, due to increased terror and violence, and the regulatory demand – some Israelis only meet Arab/Palestinians when doing military service in Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank – intensified these distinctions. Giving up the liberated Jewish territories means giving up safety and security. That will not happen.

After the defensive war of 1967 Israel was quickly transformed into a more robust economy and society. The huge public works after the war created a much stronger entrepreneur class. The billions of dollars invested by Jews and foreign companies (plus the US has given Israel $3bn military aid every year since 1973, when Israel gave up its airfields and oil, gas wells in the Sinai) spent on military technology, which progressively advanced, have helped make Israel a small high-tech superpower, in technology, medical and high-tech. At the same time, because of the economic development and influx of a million Jewish Russian Jewry, with high skills and resulting from the expansion and growth, Israel became a much more fragmented society. 

In 1967 more than 80% of the workforce was organized in one big labor union, which controlled 33% of the economy; kibbutzim were held in high esteem. Today, only 20% of Israeli labor is organized and Israel is rated as among the most advanced societies in the West: according to the Gini Index Israel is in 42nd place among the highest advanced economies and 18 families control 65% of the Israeli economy. This is also a result of the various defensive wars Israel had to endure.

There is another important result. After 1967 the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict became more known in the world, if not the most known, due to biased Media. Israel has gained from its economic and technological growth. Its excellent relations with the US, its international importance, its strong army and academic wealth all derive from its open borders to all Jews worldwide. That the Arab League, which refused any deal with Israel after the wars, is desperate for Israel to disappear with the support of some Arab countries is another result.

There is a negative aspect. Israel’s position in the West also depends on the view that it is the frontline between the West and the East, between Judeo-Christian civilization (a peculiar hyphenation given the terrible historical confrontations between the divergent beliefs) and Muslim civilization. 

After the 9/11 attacks in the US, belief in this frontline position became widespread in Israel and not just among the religious right, who have claimed since 1967 that rebuilding Jewish communities and settlements in Israel is a fulfillment of the will of God, thereby making the Israeli-Arab conflict cultural-religious and not territorial. Avigdor Liberman, current defense minister and head of the pro-transfer party Israel Beitenu (Israel is our home), told Israeli newspaper in an interview that Israel is “the front outpost of the Jews worldwide and the whole free world”.

This may explain the apprehensive feeling in many parts of Israeli society after the war with Lebanon. Hizbullah was described as an arm of Iran, and Iran was damned as a leader of a clash of civilizations. So the restrained of the big and ultra-sophisticated Israeli army to crush a few thousand Iran-trained Hizbullah fighters (plus the thousands of rockets that were fired by Hizbullah into north Israel for over a month; since Israel was very careful at minimizing civilian casualties in its response) convinced many Israelis that they to find other avenues to combat hostilities in the region and in the long run they might have to take a more drastic action in the war against radical Islam. 

Four decades of expansion into its historical territory have relaxed Israeli society that its leaders lack the willpower to utilize its best resources to quash terror and violence and end the conflict. The expansion has made Israel stronger, economically and militarily.