Forty Years after the War of June 1967 “Peace comes with pain and strength.” Yitzhak Rabin

Abstract

On 5 June 2007, the fortieth anniversary of the Six Day War and the Israeli
occupation of Palestine, the Kay Spiritual Life Center hosted “Forty Years
after the War of June 1967: Is Israeli-Palestinian Peace Possible?” on the
campus of American University in Washington, DC. This panel featured
Yuval Rabin (son of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; governing board,
the Rabin Center), Amjad Atallah (president, Strategic Assessments Initiative),
Aaron David Miller (public policy scholar, the Woodrow Wilson
Center), and Ziad Asali (president, American Task Force on Palestine; panel
chair).
Rabin opened by describing the Six Day War as “a war of our existence.”
He discussed the importance of the Camp David, Oslo, and other negotiations
and then talked about Israel’s 1967 victory. After stating that both sides
in this continued conflict have faced hardship, he also mentioned the lack of
knowledge involving certain issues.
Atallah explained how Americans are bogged down with this conflict’s
technicalities, such as the number of checkpoints, which causes them to neglect
the bigger picture. He pointed out that on 29 November 1947, the United
Nations General Assembly passed a resolution (33 to 13) recommending that
Palestine be partitioned into two states, with over half of the land going to the
Jews and the rest going to the Palestinians. By May 1948, according to the
United Nations and the State Department, 350,000 Palestinians had been
expelled from their homes. The Arab states declared war on Israel and, outnumbered
and under-equipped, 400,000 more Palestinians were expelled. At
the time, the Israelis accepted partition and the Arabs rejected the plan. He
explained that the Israelis rushed to the Sinai Peninsula and the Jordan river
and fully understood the rules of diplomacy. This resulted in Jordan taking
over what is now the West Bank. In the course of the Six Day War, another
600,000 Palestinians were displaced, some for the second time ...