Six Days—A Watershed? Cleavages in the Way Israelis View Their History

The June 1967 War changed dramatically all of Israel's existential parameters. This is a common way Israelis and Israeli historians think of the significance and meaning of the events that unfolded during the Six-Day War. It certainly was a significant watershed in the history of the state of Israel and, in addition to the 1948 War and the establishment of the state, was also a watershed in the history of Zionism. Nevertheless, the 1967 War has created an unprecedented deep cleavage in the way Israelis conceive of its place in the process of Zionism's accomplishment, and for many Israelis it also changed the significance of the 1948 War and the period between these wars. I shall address only the division over the sequence of Zionist history and the place its two major wars, 1948 and 1967, took in it.

Palestinian historians commonly count the start of their conflict with the Jews from the late nineteenth century with the beginning of political Zionism and its practical fulfillment by Zionist immigration to Palestine and the modern settlements of Jews in the land. The 1948 War and their Naqba is seen as just another phase in the Zionist evil schemes to dispossess them, and the Six-Day War is but its linear fulfillment.

Most Israelis, on the other hand, view the years 1882–1948 as a preliminary period in which, despite the Balfour Declaration, the future of their project remained undecided and therefore open for maximalist dreams. The vagueness of the Biltmore Declaration of 1942 and the declarations of all, but a handful, of the Zionist leaders at the time, clearly show that up to the November 1947 UN Partition Resolution the maximalist dreams persisted throughout the Yishuv and the rank and file of the Zionist movement around the world.

The territorial results of the 1948 War established by Ben-Gurion's refusal to conquer the West Bank in early 1949 and designated by the 1949 Armistice Agreements, changed the view of most Israelis on the limits of the Zionist project. As I pointed out in my article "Status Quo Before or After",¹ an overwhelming majority of the Israeli body politic accepted the results of the War of Independence as the maximum the Zionist project could achieve.

Throughout the 1950s the two political parties that advocated expansion of the 1949 boundaries represented only a small minority of the electorate.² In the spring of 1955 and especially during the 1956 Sinai War, official policies and military plans included expansionist intentions, but were limited to changes in the Egyptian borders: control over the Straits of Tiran and the Gaza Strip. They resulted from strategic considerations. They were not a part of the grand Zionist territorial dreams. They did not include any part of Samaria or Judea, nor even of Jerusalem.³ In a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd on 11 August 1958, Foreign Minister Golda Meir told him that Israel had no interest in conquering the West Bank: "We all pray three times as day for the security of King Hussein and his success". This expressed official Israeli policy from the end of the 1948 War up to May 1967.⁴

Much has been written on the controversy between Ben-Gurion and Sharett over security policy. However, the records clearly show that on the question of borders they did not differ. Even on the morning of 5 June 1967 Israel's national unity government, which included Menahem Begin and Moshe Dayan, hoped to keep Jordan out of the War and had no intention to change its boundaries with the Hashemite Kingdom. Moreover, in the mid-1950s the IDF changed its erstwhile defensive strategy and adopted the so called "Offensive-Defensive" strategy.⁵ However, the agonizing hesitations to launch the massive air attack during May 1967 indicates that preemption, not expansion, was the political and moral basis of this offensive.⁶ All this changed in six days in June 1967.

The Six-Day War changed not only the expanse of the territory under Israel's dominion...