There is, it is being said, a veritable blizzard of studies, articles and broadcasts on the 40th anniversary of Israel’s most successful pre-emptive war against the neighboring Arab states and the Palestinian people. Even if Israel had terminated its military occupation of the land conquered by its armed forces, the events of those fateful 132 hours would still be discussed intensely because of their worldwide impact on the way nations think of war and peace. Continued occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights in disregard of UN Security Council resolutions and relentless colonization of Arab lands give this brief war a contemporaneous relevance reflected in much of the comment, including in Israel. It is at work from everything from terrorism to nuclear proliferation.
Historically, major powers have always been reluctant to delve deep into the underlying causes of conflicts that they are engaged in; there is almost always a tendency to select their origin arbitrarily. We are witnessing the same compulsion in their rhetoric on the ongoing war against terrorism. But we also find a developing consensus that the inability of the global community to persuade Israel to live by the norms and spirit of international law is by far the most important single cause of a protracted crisis in world affairs. In the large stretch of Muslim nations from Morocco to Mindanao, there are several issues that impinge on peace and stability but there is no difference of opinion that what radicalizes the masses most is Israel’s policy of land grab, racist discrimination and religious exclusivity in this time and day. In the last four decades, international law has not been static; it has, indeed, extended the frontiers of human rights as seldom before in history. With every forward step that mankind has taken, Israel’s atavistic urges have been thrown into bolder relief.
Israel is too educated a society not to know it. A large number of its citizens are aware of the harm done by occupation and colonization to its own value systems. There is, admittedly, even now a section of its population for which the Six Day War was a sign of God returning to the chosen people after turning His face away for a millennium or two. For them colonization of Arab lands by force is God’s work that should make them rightly disdainful of the views of the rest of the world. Then there is a formidable coalition of militarists and capitalists that believes, not without reason, that the 1967 war created an economy that took per capita income from $1500 to $24000 in just 40 years. But there is an increasing number of Israelis who understand that occupation has made their country more insecure and paranoid. It has locked them in an endless conflict, subverted pristine Judaism, distorted the economy and created an almost unbridgeable gulf between the rich and the poor, and made the world look at Israel as a nation of illegal occupiers condemned to a life of violence. Israel’s academic community is at present greatly exercised over the description of their state by the British University and College Union as an “apartheid state engaging in crimes against humanity in occupied territories”. It is tragic for Israel and the world at large that its power structure shows contempt for such opinion and remains insensitive to saner counsels.
Worse still, there is the death of hope. In theory, a two-state solution can almost overnight transform the situation. In practice, Israel continues to build more settlements making the restoration of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Arab sovereignty more and more difficult. Two astute analysts observed in an American journal recently that “the dream of Greater Israel has expired, but so has Oslo’s vision of peaceful reconciliation with the Palestinians”. The dream of a two-state solution seems to be receding into oblivion. It is this loss of hope that is jeopardizing the great promise of the Makkah accord that led to the formation of a national unity Palestinian government empowered to engage in meaningful negotiations with Israel.
Israel’s traditional claim that it launched a pre-emptive war on June 5, 1967 because of an imminent threat of invasion by Egypt has been challenged by many disclosures made during the last four decades. There are also questions about the role of the major powers of the day before, during and after the hostilities. Israel’s subsequent wars endorse the impression that it resorts to the use of force whenever the defense or economic potential of Arab states reaches a point where it could obstruct Israel’s unilateralist and hegemonic policies in the region. In the interest of a viable and sustainable world order, international diplomacy must redouble efforts to free Israel from the tyranny of the deceptive paradigm constructed upon that military success. Many voices in the West — not from the conventional left but from within the authentic center-right citadels of political power — have now described, in retrospect, the Six Day War as a pyrrhic victory.
Israel is, however, still successful in preventing such insights to shape policy on both sides of the Atlantic. The 40-year mark in the history of the most brazen occupation of modern times should be a reminder to the nations of the world, particularly the Arab-Muslim states, that they need to intensify their efforts to persuade the principal supporters of Israel that global peace and cooperation depend in no small a measure on eliminating this principal cause of the malaise of our times.
— Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and ambassador of Pakistan.
