The Six Day War — Forty Years Long (and Counting)

Some background reading: General Six-Day-War commemoration (BBC NEWS) and Story about Arabs Blaming their problems on the War (AP)

A lot has been said about the Six Day War. It was also the most critical event in my life, perhaps, because I was conceived in the wake of Israel’s victory. But the Six Day war has more importantly been the defining event, the picture frame, for our collage of problems in the middle east. This war didn’t create those problems, but it has focused them into a nice, neat, intractable problem.

When Israel’s neighbors readied to "turn her to dust," Israel did something they never imagined was possible — her air force decimated the enemy while their planes sat on the ground. And over the next six days, the Israeli army proceeded to rout the entire Arab force and expand Israel’s territory by a factor of three, including full control of Jerusalem for the first time in a millennium.

That’s the official story. But the part that’s not often recounted, for various reasons, is how the Arab leadership, especially Egypt’s Nasser, failed their own people so miserably. It’s not only that allied Arab radio easily put the old Iraqi Minister of Information to shame with their fictional victories masking real defeats. It’s that these leaders were so obsessed with their own power, their hatred, and their lust for glory, that they got themselves into this miserable war in the first place — something the US and the USSR had concluded they couldn’t possibly win. They did it because the leaders were blind to reality, too convinced of their own infallibility and the need for revenge. [does this sound like anyone we know?]

And when push came to shove, and they lost the war they provoked, what did they do? Arabs had been so lied to that they simply couldn’t deal with reality. So Nasser blamed the US and Britain for the defeat. He stubbornly refused to negotiate for peace, to gain the immediate return of all occupied lands and peoples, and to recognize Israel and end the conflict. He resigned instead — a gesture which made most Arabs in the region rally behind him even more.

What strange actions are those by a force that started a war, lost it so completely, and then pretended it either wasn’t their fault, that Israel was the aggressor, or that in some ways, it hadn’t even happened. What kind of warped psychology puts your own people through that emotional wringer and leaves the Palestinians under occupation simply because you can’t deal with reality? Well, it’s not that hard to believe, given our own warped psychology and our penchant for miserable leaders — just look at Iraq for a clear, if disproportioned, analog.

But what would have happened had Nasser simply accepted the loss, negotiated an honorable peace, and regained that land, a mere week or two after he’d lost it?

We can only guess. If he’d been so mature, he probably would not have let his country go to war. But either way, it’s wrong to call this a "six day" war. It’s lasted forty years so far, despite Israel finding peace with Egypt and Jordan in the interim. It’s a lingering war, a war of attrition on the streets of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip, and in the refugee camps for all displaced Palestinians. And like all wars, there are no real winners — only countless victims and a stream of pointless victory marches.