Remembering the Six-Day War

June 5 (Tuesday) will be the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria. It was that war that left Israel occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with consequences that are far from being at an end. As David Remnick writes in The Seventh Day: Why the Six-Day War is still being fought New Yorker 05/28/07:

The Israeli victory changed the country in nearly every aspect. The response, both within the country and among Jews abroad, ranged from the joyful to the distinctly messianic — a messianism that helped lead to the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Sinai, and the Golan Heights, and the establishment of one settlement after another. It was a war that Israelis regarded as existential in importance––defeat could well have meant the end of the state after less than twenty years––and yet winning had Pyrrhic consequences. Out of it came forty years of occupation, widespread illegal settlements, the intensification of Palestinian nationalism, terrorism, counterattacks, checkpoints, failed negotiations, uprisings, and ever-deepening distrust. What greater paradox of history: a war that must be won, a victory that results in consuming misery and instability.

A number of retrospectives are coming out. Here are some others that I've come across:

First A victor - then 40 years of stalemate by Matthew Kalman San Francisco Chronicle 06/03/07. This article mentions something that is not well understood in the current politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Israel's policies have produced some disastrous errors, among them the decision to nurture a religious Islamic group called Hamas in the mid-1980s asa counterweight to Fatah and the PLO.

Remaking the world in six days by Michael Oren, author of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East Los Angeles Times 06/03/07

Mideast Timeline compiled by Chronicle Librarian Lois JermynSan Francisco Chronicle 06/03/07

Peace package may require piece-by-piece assembly by Anna Badkhen San Francisco Chronicle 06/03/07

Israel's wasted victory: Six days of war followed by 40 years of misery. How can it ever end? The Economist 05/24/07

Forty years on The Economist 05/24/07

Looking at the Middle East, Four Decades after the Six-Day War: Israel's Pyrrhic Victory by Christoph Schult Spiegel International Online 06/01/07

The six-day war, forty years on by Hazem Saghieh OpenDemocracy.net 05/18/07

Seis Días y 40 años sin salida de Juan Miguel Muñoz El País 02.06.07

The war's seventh day by Michael Ben-Yair, Israeli Attorney General 1993-96 Ha'aretz 03/03/2002

The 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War by Daphna Berman Ha'aretz 06/01/2007

It's not the war, stupid - it's the occupation by Shmuel Rosner Ha'aretz 06/01/2007

The 'gold mine' on the border by Amir Oren Ha'aretz 06/01/2007

The battle for Jerusalem is in our hands by Anshel Pfeffer Ha'aretz 05/31/2007

Surprising conversations by Ze'ev Schiff Ha'aretz 06/01/2007

War put Israel on communal map for a proud American Jewry by Ben Harris, Jewish Telegraph Agency 06/01/07

Tags: israel, six day war