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The Six-Day War: Costs vs. Benefits for Israel

(Middle East Quarterly) Efraim Inbar - Israel's astounding military victory in June 1967 was a key factor in driving parts of the Arab world to confront the reality of Jewish statehood. Israel's victory transformed the international discourse about the country's future borders, with the June 1967 line becoming the starting point for any such discussion. This represented a sea change for Israel, whose neighbors had previously refused to accept its very existence. Control of the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley gave Israel far better military lines of defense than it had before 1967. The IDF's presence on Mount Hermon enables the gathering of intelligence on goings-on in Syria. Without Israel's defense line on the Golan, the Syrians would have managed to invade its territory in the October 1973 war, with tragic consequences. Instead, the security margins provided by the Golan allowed the IDF to contain the Syrian offensive, regroup, and move onto the counterattack. Expectations that a newly-established Palestinian state in the West Bank will meet its contractual peace obligations and refrain from siding with Israel's enemies in future military confrontations, let alone refrain from wholesale anti-Israel terrorism, run counter to the Palestinian modus operandi during the past 24 years, as well as the relentless Palestinian commitment to Israel's destruction in flagrant violation of their contractual obligations in the Oslo accords. The Palestinians' unhappy situation is primarily self-inflicted. Rather than promote a real quest for independence and nation-building, Palestinian leaders, from the 1920s to the present day, have gone from one disaster to another while lining their pockets from the proceeds of this misery. While Israel can agree that the West Bank's densely populated areas (designated as areas A and B by the Oslo Accords), where most of the Palestinian population lives, could become an independent political entity or be annexed to Jordan as part of a bilateral peace agreement, maintaining military control over the area west of the Jordan River is essential for Israel's national security (and for Jordanian security for that matter). The writer is professor emeritus of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and founding director of its Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
2017-06-14 00:00:00
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