Beginning June 5, forty years ago, what ensued for the next six days would put the most imaginative in Hollywood to shame. In those six days of June 1967, Israel had demolished the military might of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 20th century’s most famous pre-emptive strikes. At the end of the war, Israel had seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria.

The genesis of half-a-century’s Middle Eastern mess lies in this brief but immensely significant conflict. The war immediately produced about 250,000 Palestinian refugees — a humanitarian disaster with adverse consequences for peace. The war also emasculated the secular Arab nationalism symbolized by Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s Egypt, paving the way for Islamic fundamentalism to fill the ideological vacuum in the Arab world.

For Israel, the irony remains that the war that secured its boundaries (by extending them beyond the borders determined by the 1948 UN resolution), and established its undisputed military superiority in the region, also made it more insecure than ever. Israel will not, and cannot, undo 1967. Yet, nothing less will allow it to exist in peace. Because nothing less will restore dignity and a sense of justice to Palestinians.

Soon after the war, Dean Rusk, Lyndon B. Johnson’s secretary of state, warned that if Israel did not vacate the West Bank, Palestinians would never cease their efforts to regain it. Forty years on, there are about 450,000 Jews in the occupied territories, and Israel is still unwilling to return the whole of the occupied West Bank to Palestinians for a state of their own. While Israel justifies the occupation on grounds of security against Palestinian fidayeen attacks, in reality, it protects Jewish settlements with state resources and makes the Palestinians feel that terrorist strikes are the only weapon against subjugation. The chances of the adversaries breaking out of this circular logic are still slim.

The dead road

While the Arab-Israeli conflict has always been about land and living space, Israel’s intransigence also reveals the significance of the River of Jordan and the Sea of Galilee that supplement its water resources. In 1965, the Arabs had embarked on the Headwater Diversion Plan that would have deprived Israel (and the Sea of Galilee) of the Jordan’s water. The Israeli Defense Forces had attacked the project site in August, 1965. But Israel realized that its water security depended on its ability to control this supply line and, for that, it needed the West Bank. In 2006, Israel’s cumulative deficit in renewable water resources was about two billion cubic meters — a volume matching its annual consumption. In the near future, the region’s fate might be increasingly determined by water wars.

Against the backdrop of the failure of the Camp David and the Oslo Accords, the Fatah’s disappointing record and the deadlock between Israel and Hamas, the geopolitics of the region has acquired new dimensions, while the old ones remain intact. The road to peace is clear— Israel should withdraw to its pre-1967 boundaries by vacating the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The Palestinians, especially Hamas, should recognize Israel’s legitimacy and stop terrorist attacks against civilians. But four decades after Israel acquired the status of occupier, this simple formula is as useless as always.

In 1967, the Jews made their aliyah to the ancient homelands of Judaea and Samaria and the Old City. In the Israeli subconscious, June 1967 remains a messianic moment. Israel will continue to believe that its claim to the occupied territories is legitimate since the land once belonged to the Jews. The Arabs will continue to despair at the Jews in what was their home for centuries till the other day.