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The Palestinians and Israel
- Abstract
THREE YEARS have now passed since the Six-Day War, and there seems to be no end in sight to the impasse into which it has led Israeli-Arab relations. In the summer of 1967 hope was in the air: most Israelis shared the belief, nurtured by a mixture of naivete and arrogance, that the war had finally opened the door to peace. If before June 1967 most Arabs had believed that Israel could be easily defeated, the Six-Day War-so the reasoning went-proved that Israel was here to stay. Hence, the argument continued, the Arabs would now realize that they had no choice but to cut their losses and pursue an alternative, and to them less costly, policy. In return for peace, i.e., recognition on the part of the Arabs of the legitimacy of Israel, Israel had quite a formidable package to exchange: the territories she had captured from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
We all know better now. The net gain of the 1967 war was not a diminishing of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but rather an intensification of it.
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