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1967

An Israeli soldier prays at the Western Wall after Israel's capture of the Old City

of Jerusalem

An Arab woman outside the wreckage of her home, June 1967

The Six-Day War Much of the Arab-Israeli conflict is linked to a brief but critical war that took place 45 years ago this June BY SAM ROBERTS

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The war lasted less than a week. But the six days of fighting that began on June 5, 1967, between Israel and the Arab nations of Egypt, Syria, Jordan,

and Iraq had dramatic consequences for the Middle East and the rest of the world. Israel more than tripled the terri-tories under its control, igniting a bloody dispute over some of that land that con-tinues today.

"This war changed everything," says Anthony Wanis-St. John of American University in Washington, D.C. "Every peace effort since that time had as its cen-tral purpose the reversal of [Israel's] main gains" of that war.

Prelude to the War Israeli-Palestinian tensions can 'be

traced back to the end of World War II (1939-'45) and the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed in Europe. After the war, many nations embraced the idea of creating a Jewish state in British-ruled Palestine, the historical homeland of the Jewish people.

In 1947, a year before British rule over Palestine was set to end, the United Nations voted to divide the area into an Arab state and a Jewish state (see timeline,

p. 18). The Jews accepted the partition plan; but the Arabs, who outnumbered Jews in much of Palestine, rejected it. When the British left and Israel declared independence in 1948, the Arab states attacked. Israel survived, but the fight-ing displaced 700,000 Palestinians, whose fate is still an issue today.

In the spring of 1967, hostilities reached a new boiling point, with Israel periodical-ly under attack by Palestinian guerrillas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—ruled by Egypt and Jordan, respectively—and Syrian troops lobbing artillery fire down from the Golan Heights.

In April, Israel downed six of Syria's Soviet-made fighter planes. After the Soviet Union spread rumors that Israel was planning to attack Syria, the Egyptian army mobilized 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks in the Sinai Peninsula. The following month, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel

Nasser, whose stated goal was the destruc-tion of Israel, ordered U.N. observers to leave the area and blockaded the Strait of Than, cutting off Israel's access to the Red Sea, a vital shipping route.

With war appearing inevitable, Israel struck first. On the morning of June 5—while most Egyptian pilots were eating breakfast and their commanders were stuck in Cairo's rush-hour traffic—the Israeli Air Force destroyed more than 300 of Egypt's 340 combat planes, most before they had a chance to leave the ground. Israeli troops then swept into Gaza and Sinai.

Jordan and Iraq soon began shelling the Israeli sector of Jerusalem, and Syria attacked from the Golan Heights.

By June 7, Israel had captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the Old City, home to many sites sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. By the fourth day, June 8, with the Egyptians in retreat, Israeli forces had reached the Suez Canal. Two days later, after Israel cap-tured the Golan Heights, Israel and Syria declared a cease-fire.

In six days—actually, a little less—Israel had redrawn the map of the Middle East, demonstrating its military supe-riority but settling little: In the face of a humiliating defeat, Arab leaders remained committed to Israel's destruction. And Israel's occupation of Arab areas led to new disputes, most of which remain unre-solved 45 years later.

Indeed, even before the war ended, as the Israeli government debated trying to capture the West Bank town of Hebron, another city with a rich biblical history, Israel's prime minister asked his colleagues: "Have you already thought about how we can live with so many Arabs?"

Arafat & the P.L.O. The answer would soon become dear.

A few months after the war ended, a West Bank revolt led by Palestinian guer-rilla leader Yasir Arafat failed but would nonetheless have a lasting impact. The revolt "catapulted the general Palestinian public into the arms of the guerrillas," according to Yezid Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, "because they'd seen that the people they'd hinged their hopes on—the Arab leaders and the armies they'd believed in—had been swept aside in a matter of days."

Two years later, Arafat's Fatah move-ment took control of the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.), a group founded by Arab leaders to represent Palestinian interests. With Arafat as chair-man, the P.L.O. began a decades-long guerrilla war against Israel.

Since then, attempts to forge peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors have in some cases succeeded, but hope has often given way to more violence.

In November 1967, the U.N. endorsed Resolution 242, a "land for peace" formu-la that has so far been only partly fulfilled:

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Anwar Sadat, Jimm Carter, Menachem Begin

After the U.N. votes to partition British-controlled Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, Arab leaders reject the partition. Israel declares independence in 1948, and its Arab neighbors attack. Israel survives and enlarges its territory.

On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria attack Israeli forces in Sinai and the Golan Heights. Israel repels both armies and a cease-fire is declared. Israel later withdraws from parts of Sinai and the Golan Heights.

1979 Israel/Egypt Peace

After U.S. President Jimmy Carter brokers peace between Egypt and Israel, Egypt becomes the first Arab nation to recognize Israel, and Israel withdraws from the rest of Sinai.

1987-90 First Intifada 1=.111111 . Angered by Israel's ongoin occupation of the West Ba and Gaza, Palestinians bec an uprising. It progresses from Palestinian youths throwing stones at Israeli soldiers to suicide bomber targeting Israeli civilians.

1947-49 sixVI7War 1973 -1 Partition & War Yom Kippur War

Israel would withdraw from territories it captured in return for peace with its Arab neighbors and secure borders.

Six years later, in 1973, Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks on Israel on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, pushing into Sinai and the Golan Heights. Israel largely repelled the attacks, though the Arabs considered the war a success.

Overall, it restored some of the Arab pride that had been so wounded in 1967, arguably enabling some of the peace efforts in the decades that followed.

Egypt & Jordan

In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat shocked the world by traveling to Jerusalem to meet with Israeli leaders. A year later, U.S. President Jimmy Carter brought Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, where the three men broke a 30-year stalemate in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Camp David Accords led to a peace treaty in 1979 between Israel and Egypt: Israel returned the rest of Sinai, and Egypt

became the first Arab state to recognize Israel. (Others denounced the treaty, and Sadat was assassinated in 1981.)

Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, but Israel and the Palestinians have remained locked in conflict. Thousands on both sides have died in two intifadas, or uprisings; in Israeli military campaigns in the occu-pied territories; and in suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israel wants the Palestinians to renounce terrorism and genuinely accept its existence, and the Palestinians seek statehood, a capital in Jerusalem, and the right of Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 war to return to Israel.

In 2000 at Camp David, President Bill Clinton brought the two sides to the brink of an agreement: Israel would return near-ly all the land it still controlled from the 1967 war and the Palestinians would get an independent state with a capital in East Jerusalem in return for dismantling all terrorist groups. But Arafat, to the conster-nation of Clinton and even Arafat's Arab allies, walked away from the negotiations.

According to Leslie Gelb, a former State Department official, the Camp David failure demonstrates the difficulty of bringing the two sides together.

"Israelis said if the Palestinians won't buy this great deal, they don't want peace," Gelb says. "The Palestinians said this was an Israeli trick. The result is what we've seen all these years."

Within months of the failed talks, the second, more violent intifada began. Militants carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, and Israel responded with a harsh military crackdown.

In the past few years, Israel has been trying to unilaterally "disengage" from the Palestinians. It constructed a contro-versial security barrier to keep suicide bombers from entering Israel and, in 2005, shiittered its settlements in Gaza and withdrew its forces, leaving all of Gaza under Palestinian control. In the West Bank, different areas remain under Israeli, Palestinian, or joint control.

In 2006, Hamas, a radical funda-mentalist group that calls for Israel's destruction, won a majority in the

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cabin, Bill Clinton, Yasir Arafat

1993-94 Oslo Accords

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, brokered in Norway, Israel turns over parts of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians as a step toward statehood. Israel and Jordan sign a peace treaty in 1994.

After negotiations on a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal fail, a second uprising begins. Dozens of suicide bombings in Israel and an Israeli crackdown in the West Bank and Gaza kill more than 1,000 Israelis and 4,000 Palestinians.

Israel evacuates its settlements in Gaza and withdraws troops from there. Today, President Mahmoud Abbas heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank while Hamas controls Gaza.

I 2011-12 -1 Arab Spring/Iran 0 Whether post-Arab Spring governments will have friendly relations with Israel remains to be seen; Israel is threatening to attack Iran over its nuclear weapons program.

2000-05 -1 2005-06 Second Intifada Israel Leaves Gaza

Jerusalem is holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Palestinian parliament, leading the U.S. and other nations to temporarily cut off most aid to the Palestinians and to refuse to deal with Hamas members of the gov-ernment. Divisions within the Palestinian leadership led Hamas to splinter off and take control of Gaza, with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party rul-ing the West Bank.

Arab Spring

Talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders have gone nowhere in recent years, and new challenges have aris-en. For one, the Arab Spring uprisings, which toppled autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, may complicate already-tense relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Though Israel and Egypt have been at peace for three decades, it isn't yet clear whether the government that eventually replaces that of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will be as friendly to Israel. Israel is also keeping a close eye on Syria's revolution (seep. 14), which could further upend Middle East politics.

For Israel at the moment, the nucle-ar threat from Iran—whose leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has called for Israel's destruction—is seen as the big-gest threat. The U.S. and the U.N. have responded to Iran's suspected nucle-ar weapons program with sanctions; Israel considers the nuclear program an "existential threat" and has been talking about attacking Iran, a move that could further destabilize the region.

Most Middle East experts believe that

Israel and the Palestinians will eventually reach an agreement, but only with effec-tive leadership on both sides.

"I'm hopeful that people with vision and creativity can devise a grand strategy that gets as many of the parties involved in conflict there as possible satisfied with a just and lasting peace," says Wanis-St. John of American University. "It could happen today, it could happen tomor-row, it could happen anytime there's political will to do it." •

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