<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div id="reader-header" class="header" style="display: block;"> <font
size="-2"><a id="reader-domain" class="domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/a-50-year-occupation-israels-six-day-war-started-with-a-lie/">https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/a-50-year-occupation-israels-six-day-war-started-with-a-lie/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">A 50-Year Occupation: Israel’s Six-Day War
Started With a Lie</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Mehdi Hasan - June 5,
2017<br>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div id="moz-reader-content" class="line-height4"
style="display: block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div data-reactid=".ti.1.0.1.2.0.0.1.0.4.1:$p-0">
<p><u>Fifty years ago,</u> between June 5 and June 10,
1967, Israel invaded and occupied East Jerusalem, the
West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. The
Six-Day War, as it would later be dubbed, saw the Jewish
David inflict a humiliating defeat on the Arab Goliath,
personified perhaps by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt.</p>
<p>“The existence of the Israeli state hung by a thread,”
the country’s prime minister, Levi Eshkol, <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pmVJcexlio8C&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=existence+hung+on+a+thread+levi+eshkol&source=bl&ots=QVH7U3Umvx&sig=eeySbEJiSvgC4jQin8lunmTos2o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi02fGQ157UAhVF4CYKHaP8DXsQ6AEIMDAC#v=onepage&q=existence%20hung%20on%20a%20thread%20levi%20eshkol&f=false">claimed</a>
two days after the war was over, “but the hopes of the
Arab leaders to annihilate Israel were dashed.”
Genocide, went the argument, had been prevented; another
Holocaust of the Jews averted.</p>
<p>There is, however, a problem with this argument: It is
complete fiction, a self-serving fantasy constructed
after the event to justify a war of aggression and
conquest. Don’t take my word for it: “The thesis
according to which the danger of genocide hung over us
in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting
for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff
which was born and bred after the war,” <a
href="https://worldview.carnegiecouncil.org/archive/worldview/1973/09/2214.html/_res/id=File1/">declared</a> Gen.
Matituahu Peled, chief of logistical command during the
war and one of 12 members of Israel’s General Staff, in
March 1972.</p>
<p>A year earlier, Mordechai Bentov, a member of the
wartime government and one of 37 people to sign Israel’s
Declaration of Independence, had made a similar
admission. “This whole story about the threat of
extermination was totally contrived, and then elaborated
upon, a posteriori, to justify the annexation of new
Arab territories,” he <a
href="https://worldview.carnegiecouncil.org/archive/worldview/1973/09/2214.html/_res/id=File1/">said</a>
in April 1971.</p>
<p>Even Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, <a
href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/09/24/jewish-terrorists/">former
terrorist</a> and darling of the Israeli far right, <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/21/world/excerpts-from-begin-speech-at-national-defense-college.html">conceded</a>
in a speech in August 1982 that “in June 1967 we had a
choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai
approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to
attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided
to attack him.”</p>
<p>The reverberations of that attack are still being felt
in the Middle East today. Few modern conflicts have had
as deep and long-lasting an impact as the Six-Day War.
As U.S. academic and activist Thomas Reifer has <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2013.42.4.95?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">observed</a>,
it sounded the “death knell of pan-Arab nationalism, the
rise of political Islam … a more independent Palestinian
nationalism” and “Israel’s emergence as a U.S. strategic
asset, with the United States sending billions of
dollars … in a strategic partnership unequalled in world
history.”</p>
<p>Above all else, the war, <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mSWPSDQgRvIC&pg=PT63&lpg=PT63&dq=telegraph+1967+%E2%80%9Cthe+triumph+of+the+civilized%22+israel&source=bl&ots=etzh3TerZL&sig=p7sKTTV8b7R_7CzpNreRteOr8IQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiglo3v157UAhVBNSYKHerwBdwQ6AEIOjAD#v=onepage&q=telegraph%201967%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20triumph%20of%20the%20civilized%22%20israel&f=false">welcomed</a>
by the London Daily Telegraph in 1967 as “the triumph of
the civilized,” forced another 300,000 Palestinians from
their homes and ushered in a brutal military occupation
for the million-odd Palestinians left behind.</p>
<p>The conflict itself may have lasted only six days, but
the occupation that followed is now entering its sixth
decade — the longest military occupation in the world.
Apologists for Israel often deny that it is an
occupation and say the Occupied Territories are merely
“disputed,” a disingenuous claim belied by Israel’s own
Supreme Court, which <a
href="http://elyon1.court.gov.il/Files_ENG/04/570/079/a14/04079570.a14.htm">ruled</a>
in 2005 that the West Bank is “held by the State of
Israel in belligerent occupation.”</p>
<p>Fifty long years of occupation; of dispossession and
ethnic cleansing; of <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2012/08/2012830754014332.html">house
demolitions</a> and <a
href="http://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/curfew">night
curfews</a>; of <a
href="http://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/old/copy%20of%20checkpoints">checkpoints</a>,
<a
href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48236#.WTEbABPyv-Y">walls</a>,
and <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-shooting-un-idUSKCN0YW0Y5">permits</a>.</p>
<p>Fifty years of <a
href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/15/israel/palestine-unlawful-israeli-airstrikes-kill-civilians">bombings</a>
and <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-gaza-rights-idUSTRE78C59R20110913">blockades</a>;
of <a
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7800985.stm">air
raids</a> and <a
href="https://www.equaltimes.org/fear-of-the-dark-the-crushing?lang=en#.WTEcAxPyv-Y">night
raids</a>; of <a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2001/feb/22/news/mn-28553">“targeted
killings”</a> and <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.530993">“human
shields”</a>; of <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.773115">tortured
Palestinian kids</a>.</p>
<p>Fifty years of <a
href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/12/19/separate-and-unequal/israels-discriminatory-treatment-palestinians-occupied">racial
discrimination</a> and <a
href="http://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article1947883.html">ethnic
prejudice</a>; of a <a
href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/12/19/israel/west-bank-separate-and-unequal">“separate
but unequal”</a> two-tier justice system for
Palestinians and Israelis; of <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.779748">military
courts</a> and <a
href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=50546#.WTEdlxPyv-Y">“administrative
detention.”</a></p>
<p>Fifty years of humiliation and subjugation; of pregnant
Palestinian women <a
href="http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/abstracts/palestine/palestine2011-4.pdf">giving
birth</a> at checkpoints; of Palestinian cancer
patients <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/occupied/palestinian-cancer-patients-best-hope-as-the-israeli-occupation-turns-50/?utm_term=.d2ef8c314a08">denied
access</a> to radiation therapy; of Palestinian
footballers <a
href="http://www.newsweek.com/palestinians-cancel-cup-final-after-israel-bars-gaza-players-west-bank-entry-485417">prevented</a>
from reaching their matches.</p>
<p>Fifty years of pointless negotiations and failed peace
plans: <a
href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/03/israel-allon-plan-palestinian-land-grab.html">Allon</a>,
<a
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/25/newsid_2561000/2561151.stm">Rogers</a>,
<a
href="https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/5FB09709F4050B8985256CED007390D8">Fahd</a>,
<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/11/world/fez-plan-called-victory-for-the-arab-moderates.html">Fez</a>,
<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/03/world/israel-rejects-reagan-plan-for-palestinians-self-rule-terms-it-serious-danger.html?pagewanted=all">Reagan</a>,
<a
href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/madrid-conference">Madrid</a>,
<a
href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo">Oslo</a>,
<a
href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1644149_1644147_1644132,00.html">Wye
River</a>, <a
href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1644149_1644147_1644135,00.html">Camp
David</a>, <a
href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1644149_1644147_1644141,00.html">Taba</a>,
<a
href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1644149_1644147_1644142,00.html">Red
Sea</a>, <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/27/israel.usa1">Annapolis</a>.
What did they deliver for the occupied Palestinians?
Aside from settlements, settlements, and <a
href="https://www.ft.com/content/13786bba-ed46-11e6-930f-061b01e23655">more
settlements</a>? Consider: In 1992, a year before the
Oslo peace process began, <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/report-illegal-israeli-settlers-to-reach-800000-in-occupied-territories-in-2017/">West
Bank settlements</a> covered 77 kilometers and housed
248,000 Israeli settlers. By 2016, those settlements
covered 197 kilometers and the number of settlers living
in them had more than tripled to 763,000.</p>
<p>These settlements have rendered the much-discussed
“two-state solution” almost impossible. The occupied
West Bank has been carved up into a series of <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/apr/26/comment">bantustans</a>,
cut off from each other and the wider world. The
settlers are not going anywhere, anytime soon. They are
Israel’s “facts on the ground.” To ignore them is to
ignore perhaps the biggest obstacle to ending the
occupation. “It’s like you and I are negotiating over a
piece of pizza,” the Palestinian-American lawyer and
former adviser to the PLO, Michael Tarazi, explained in
2004. “How much of the pizza do I get? And how much do
you get? And while we are negotiating it, you are eating
it.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t just the 1967 war that was launched on a lie;
so too was the occupation that began after it. It was
never supposed to be temporary, nor were the
Palestinians ever supposed to get their land back. If
Israel had planned to withdraw from the Occupied
Territories, as some of its supporters suggest, then why
was the first settlement in the West Bank, <a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/28/opinion/oe-gorenberg28">Kfar
Etzion</a>, established less than four months after
the Six-Day War, in defiance of <a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelis-were-warned-on-illegality-of-settlements-in-1967-memo-6106920.html">“top-secret”
advice</a> from the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s legal
adviser that “civilian settlement” in the territories
would contravene “the explicit provisions of the Fourth
Geneva Convention”? Why has it revoked the residency
rights of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from
Gaza and the West Bank over the past 50 years? Why has
the Jewish state spent the past five decades <a
href="https://www.welt.de/debatte/the-world-in-words/article8915402/The-Phantom-Middle-East-Peace-Process.html">exploiting
the charade of a “peace process”</a> to gobble up more
Palestinian land and build more illegal settlements? The
truth is that the Jewish state, from the very beginning,
“used negotiations as a smokescreen to advance its
colonial project,” to borrow a line from imprisoned
Palestinian militant and activist <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/11/israel-occupation-palestinian-territory-peace-diplomacy">Marwan
Barghouti</a>. Fifty years on, it is time for both the
Palestinian leadership and the international community
to stop pretending otherwise.</p>
<p>The legendary Israeli general and Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan, who was one of the architects of Israel’s
victory in 1967 and was adamant that the country should
hold onto the territories it had seized, best summed up
the cynical attitude of Israeli governments of both
right and left over the past five decades. “The only
peace negotiations,” <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=KZ6gkiJLR4wC&pg=PT104&lpg=PT104&dq=dayan+shlomo+%E2%80%9Care+those+where+we+settle+the+land+and+we+build,+and+we+settle,+and+from+time+to+time+we+go+to+war.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=4thcV8do3C&sig=rg4dGA4vtcgUxEEWcWNJXkgKC8c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHiqa-357UAhWFTSYKHTC4CuoQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=dayan%20shlomo%20%E2%80%9Care%20those%20where%20we%20settle%20the%20land%20and%20we%20build%2C%20and%20we%20settle%2C%20and%20from%20time%20to%20time%20we%20go%20to%20war.%E2%80%9D&f=false">pronounced
Dayan</a>, when asked about the possibility of a peace
deal with the Palestinians in November 1970, “are those
where we settle the land and we build, and we settle,
and from time to time we go to war.”</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>