Today marks 40 years since the beginning of what has become known as the Six Day War. Yes, Israel scooped all before it - and had a resounding victory! Yet, 40 years later the Israelis have by their now stupid and arrogant policies - aided and abetted by the US - created an absolutely unholy mess both in Israel and Palestine as well as the wider Middle East.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, who now serves as vice president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace, can hardly be described as some firebrand or someone whose sympathies would not lie with Israel.
Writing on SFGate.com [the San Francisco Chronicle on line] Ben-Ami writes:
"Forty years ago, Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights after a lightning six-day war that repelled the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Today, ending the occupation of Palestinian territories that began that June seems as distant a dream as ever.
The Somalia-like chaos and civil war that is now unfolding in Gaza can be blamed partly on ill-conceived Israeli policies, and partly on an American administration that, for six long years, all but ignored the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace. But the Palestinian crisis is first and foremost one of leadership. Yasser Arafat was not a model democrat, but his charisma and political acumen were crucial for holding all the Palestinian factions together. Now, not even Fatah, Arafat's own party, can claim to be a coherent organization. Hamas' electoral victory in January 2006 helped fuel Fatah's fragmentation under Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas.
With no effective central authority to inspire fear or respect, and the PLO devoid of legitimacy precisely because of its refusal to give Hamas its rightful share in the organization, a grotesquely ineffective brand of cohabitation between a Fatah president and a Hamas prime minister has emerged. As a result, Palestinian politics has degenerated into a naked struggle for the spoils of power."
Over at The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Elizabeth Sullivan writes:
"Yet the war also “laid the predicate for a diplomatic process,” says Aaron David Miller, formerly of Cleveland, who advised six secretaries of state on Arab- Israeli negotiations. In 1973, the Yom Kippur War gave Arab nations what they considered a victory, so they did begin to sit down to talk about peace, says Miller, now a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
The Six Day War also created a new predicate for hostilities.
“Palestinians became heroes,” says Miller, “. . . and emerged as bona fide sources of hope for hundreds of millions of humiliated Arabs.”
The result has transformed the threat into a conflict between Israel and radical Islam, “and that’s very different, and very difficult to fight, because you can’t fight with conventional armies,” says Bard.
And today, what with Iranian nuclear ambitions, a destabilized Lebanon and an Iraq tipping into civil war, the Middle East has become vastly more complicated and resistant to easy solutions, the experts agree.
Yet the key in the door remains the Palestinians’ plight and what Israel proposes to do about occupied lands that no longer reside in a peace bank, but instead have become part of its political and strategic landscape.
“That is the key to unlocking doors on these other fronts” — Iraq and Lebanon — says retired diplomat Henry Precht, who served on the State Department’s Iran desk during the Iranian revolution.
Re-engaging evenhandedly in an Israeli-Palestinian peace process “empowers our friends, helps us to marginalize our enemies and more importantly, takes away an issue that is used to stir up tremendous anger at the United States,” says Miller.
“In my view, it is very irresponsible for anyone who pretends to be a steward of American security not to do everything they can in managing it.”
“Never before has the security of the continental United States been more vulnerable to what happens in the Arab or Muslim East,” Miller adds. “Anybody who argues the contrary does not understand the generational character of the threat we face.”
Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, who now serves as vice president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace, can hardly be described as some firebrand or someone whose sympathies would not lie with Israel.
Writing on SFGate.com [the San Francisco Chronicle on line] Ben-Ami writes:
"Forty years ago, Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights after a lightning six-day war that repelled the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Today, ending the occupation of Palestinian territories that began that June seems as distant a dream as ever.
The Somalia-like chaos and civil war that is now unfolding in Gaza can be blamed partly on ill-conceived Israeli policies, and partly on an American administration that, for six long years, all but ignored the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace. But the Palestinian crisis is first and foremost one of leadership. Yasser Arafat was not a model democrat, but his charisma and political acumen were crucial for holding all the Palestinian factions together. Now, not even Fatah, Arafat's own party, can claim to be a coherent organization. Hamas' electoral victory in January 2006 helped fuel Fatah's fragmentation under Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas.
With no effective central authority to inspire fear or respect, and the PLO devoid of legitimacy precisely because of its refusal to give Hamas its rightful share in the organization, a grotesquely ineffective brand of cohabitation between a Fatah president and a Hamas prime minister has emerged. As a result, Palestinian politics has degenerated into a naked struggle for the spoils of power."
Over at The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Elizabeth Sullivan writes:
"Yet the war also “laid the predicate for a diplomatic process,” says Aaron David Miller, formerly of Cleveland, who advised six secretaries of state on Arab- Israeli negotiations. In 1973, the Yom Kippur War gave Arab nations what they considered a victory, so they did begin to sit down to talk about peace, says Miller, now a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
The Six Day War also created a new predicate for hostilities.
“Palestinians became heroes,” says Miller, “. . . and emerged as bona fide sources of hope for hundreds of millions of humiliated Arabs.”
The result has transformed the threat into a conflict between Israel and radical Islam, “and that’s very different, and very difficult to fight, because you can’t fight with conventional armies,” says Bard.
And today, what with Iranian nuclear ambitions, a destabilized Lebanon and an Iraq tipping into civil war, the Middle East has become vastly more complicated and resistant to easy solutions, the experts agree.
Yet the key in the door remains the Palestinians’ plight and what Israel proposes to do about occupied lands that no longer reside in a peace bank, but instead have become part of its political and strategic landscape.
“That is the key to unlocking doors on these other fronts” — Iraq and Lebanon — says retired diplomat Henry Precht, who served on the State Department’s Iran desk during the Iranian revolution.
Re-engaging evenhandedly in an Israeli-Palestinian peace process “empowers our friends, helps us to marginalize our enemies and more importantly, takes away an issue that is used to stir up tremendous anger at the United States,” says Miller.
“In my view, it is very irresponsible for anyone who pretends to be a steward of American security not to do everything they can in managing it.”
“Never before has the security of the continental United States been more vulnerable to what happens in the Arab or Muslim East,” Miller adds. “Anybody who argues the contrary does not understand the generational character of the threat we face.”
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