18^th June 2014
 
by Peter Wertheim and Alex Ryvchin
It is one of those ironies of history that the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the federal government’s refusal to label any part of Jerusalem as “occupied” by Israel broke in the media on June 5^th, the anniversary of the start of the Six Day War in 1967.
That war is remembered prin­cip­ally for the Israel Defence Force’s aston­ish­ingly rapid trouncing of the combined military might of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Less well remembered is the crisis in the preceding weeks that led to the war.
The crisis began when the Soviet Union, for reasons which are still unclear, spread false rumours among its Arab client States that Israeli troops were massing at the border for an attack on Syria. Egyptian and Syrian intel­li­gence services, and observers of the United Nations Truce Super­vi­sion Organ­isa­tion located on the spot, all confirmed that the rumours were ground­less.
Regard­less, Egypt’s President, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, seized the oppor­tun­ity to escalate tensions with Israel. Many have now forgotten the massing of 100,000 Egyptian troops, armour and artillery in the Sinai peninsula up to the border with Israel; Nasser’s expulsion of the UN peace-keeping force in Sinai; the impos­i­tion of a naval blockade by Egypt upon Israel’s southern port of Eilat; the closing of ranks of the Arab States behind Egypt; and, most ominously, the wave of popular frenzy whipped up by Nasser as vast crowds in Arab capitals exulted in the anti­cip­ated destruc­tion of Israel.
Israel’s imminent demise was widely predicted. There was talk of a “Second Holocaust”. Israel’s Foreign Minister at the time, Abba Eban, recalled that dip­lo­mat­ic messages of support which Israel received from friendly nations had “a dis­turb­ingly vale­dict­ory tone”.
Out­numbered by more than one hundred to one, outgunned, and unable to compete with the wealth and dip­lo­mat­ic influence of the Arab States, Israel faced its hour of maximum danger – alone.
It is worth recalling that history to under­stand why, in the absence of a com­pre­hens­ive peace agreement with those who have repeatedly sought its destruc­tion, Israel stead­fastly maintains its control over the West Bank and the parts of Jerusalem it captured in 1967.
Revi­sion­ist writers have since tried to deny or play down Egypt’s egregious series of aggress­ive acts, going so far as to claim that Israel needed and wanted a war at that time. But, in truth, the Israelis were caught utterly unpre­pared by the crisis that pre­cip­it­ated the war, and went to extraordin­ary dip­lo­mat­ic lengths to avoid it.
It was Nasser who was intent on war and he said so openly, making his ultimate goal crystal clear. In a speech to the Arab Trade Union Congress on May 26^th, Nasser declared “Egypt will, thanks to this war, at long last wipe Israel off the face of the Earth”.
The Palestini­ans too made their inten­tions plain. The chief of the Palestine Lib­er­a­tion Organ­isa­tion, Ahmed Shukeiry, declared that after the Arab victory, Israeli Jews born abroad would be “repat­ri­ated”, while the native-born could stay. However, Shukeiry added, “I estimate none of them will survive.”
Egypt’s air-force, and Nasser’s dreams of conquest, were left in a smoul­der­ing ruin on the ground in the first hours of the war. In the following days its troops were driven out of the Sinai to the western side of the Suez Canal.
The Jord­ani­ans opened hos­til­it­ies on Israel’s eastern front with artillery and small arms fire into Israeli cities. The Israelis responded by driving them out of eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, ter­rit­or­ies which Jordan had conquered and annexed in 1948, but which were never at that time named “the Occupied Palestini­an Territory” by the UN, as they are now.
The Syrians were driven off the Golan Heights from which they had shelled Israeli kibbutzes and towns.
Israel’s victory was widely hailed in the demo­crat­ic world. The Arab states were seen as bullies who had picked a fight with a small but gallant foe and received their comeup­pance.
These days, Israel’s critics claim that the sole or principal obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestini­ans is Israel’s “occu­pa­tion” of the West Bank and its “illegal set­tle­ments”. Yet, at the break of dawn on 5^th June 1967, as the Arab States and the Palestine Lib­er­a­tion Organ­isa­tion heralded the destruc­tion of Israel and its Jewish pop­u­la­tion, there was no Israeli “occu­pa­tion”, and there were no set­tle­ments.
For Israel’s critics, there is no getting around this brute fact: that the core of the Israel-Palestini­an conflict was, and remains, the refusal of Palestini­an leaders to reconcile them­selves to Israel’s existence as the national home of the Jewish people.
Peter Wertheim and Alex Ryvchin are Executive Director and Public Affairs Director respect­ively for the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.