Israel launched what it said was a preemptive strike [0] against Egypt, destroying virtually the entire Egyptian air force on the ground. Lacking air cover, Egyptian ground forces in the Sinai peninsula retreated, but were destroyed by the Israeli air force on the roads.
Not having a clear picture of what was going on [1], the Jordanians and Syrians entered the war on Egypt's side, only to suffer a similar fate as Egypt.
Israel ended up conquering the Sinai peninsula, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.
It's hotly debated whether the war really was a preemptive strike to head off an impending Arab invasion, or whether it was a war of aggression by Israel.
In any case, as a consequence of the war, millions of Palestinians came under Israeli rule. The Israelis were faced with a conundrum: they wanted to keep the land (especially the West Bank and East Jerusalem), but they didn't want millions more Arab citizens, who would shift the demographic balance, ending Israel as a Jewish state. That's why Israel has kept the Palestinians in limbo for more than half a century. They live under Israeli control, but they aren't Israeli citizens.
0. Israel initially claimed that it had been attacked first, but it soon admitted that it had attacked first.
1. Egyptian propaganda in the first hours claimed that Egypt had scored major victories.
I don't think it's very hotly debated at all. There seems to be a consensus that whether they were right to be so concerned or not, Israel's motives in preempting Egypt were about security, not territorial expansion. Before the war, Egypt administered Gaza but did not claim it (Palestinians needed something like passports to transit between Gaza and Egypt proper). Jordan was almost kicked out of the Arab League for annexing the West Bank, which it claimed as territory until 1988(!).
There's no question that since the war, Israel has abused its position with respect to the West Bank in particular (it dispossessed Gazan settlers during the disengagement, but has tacitly allowed continued settlement in the West Bank). But the history here is complicated and it's important to get it right.
> I don't think it's very hotly debated at all. There seems to be a consensus that whether they were right to be so concerned or not, Israel's motives in preempting Egypt were about security, not territorial expansion.
The issue is actually hotly debated. To this day, former Egyptian generals say that they only placed a force in the Sinai in order to discourage the Israelis from attacking Syria, which the Egyptians thought the Israelis were doing. Additionally, the Israeli government itself does not seem to have viewed Egyptian forces in the Sinai as a serious threat. The Israelis planned and trained for their air operation against Egypt long in advance, which means they were considering a first strike for a long time.
At the very least, the simple story the Israelis like to tell ("We were attacked and defended ourselves") does not hold water.
> But the history here is complicated and it's important to get it right.
The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is not really that complicated. Fundamentally, Israel wants to keep East Jerusalem, the West Bank and, to a lesser extent, Gaza. As long as Israelis think they can hold onto those territories at an acceptable price, they will. The US, by giving Israel unconditional backing, has abetted the occupation.
In response to false Soviet intelligence reports that claimed Israel had mobilized on the Syrian border, Egypt and Syria mobilized on the Israeli border. Egypt blockaded the Strait of Tiran. They overflew the Israeli nuclear weapons facilities at Dimona. They expelled the UNEF from Sinai --- troops whose presence had been established by the UN in large part to assure Israel that Egypt wasn't going to attack. And, of course, as we now know, Egypt had an actual plan to invade, with the intent of eradicating Israel; it's disputed whether Nasser knew about it or how serious that planning was, but it's not disputed that it existed --- it created a diplomatic incident between the US and the Soviet Union.
It's very difficult to make an argument that Israel wasn't threatened, existentially, or that its actions were motivated by anything other than self-defense. The whole crisis was a shitshow of poor intelligence and bad faith (Israel's hands weren't clean either; some of the escalation, and Jordan's involvement in the conflict, probably stemmed from the Samu raid). But Israel hit Egypt because Egypt made war inevitable.
I don't think West Bank and Gaza occupation is all that complicated. We probably agree about it. Palestinians should have sovereignty and self-determination in those territories. Israeli West Bank settlements should be dismantled. But that's obviously not all people are talking about when they talk about the "occupation". We're on a thread about the "from the river to the sea". The motte is the West Bank. The bailey is Tel Aviv.
> It's very difficult to make an argument that Israel wasn't threatened, existentially, or that its actions were motivated by anything other than self-defense.
I don't think it's difficult at all. The force that Egypt moved into the Sinai peninsula was far too small to invade Israel, and in internal Israeli government discussions, they don't seem to have viewed Egypt as an imminent military threat.
> The motte is the West Bank. The bailey is Tel Aviv.
The problem is that the mainstream view in Israel is "from the river to the sea" (the Israeli version, of course), and that that's the de facto reality on the ground. Most of the people chanting "from the river to the sea" want a one-state solution with equal democratic rights for Arabs and Jews.
I'm not aware of anyone who is familiar with the situation who think that a 1 state solution is viable. If you can point to any essays or blog posts where someone lays out, how you get the Israelis to agree with it and how you keep the 1 state from devolving into a brutal civil war I'd love to read it.
The 1 state solution turns a Palestinian self determination and Israeli security issues into an existential issue for both sides. This raises the stakes considerably. I can't see it ending in anything but 100's of thousands of dead and a complete meltdown of the middle east.
Most people familiar with the situation recognize that a two-state solution is no longer viable, if it ever even was in the first place. Israeli settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem have made it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state, and there is very little political will in Israel to enact a two-state solution.
The one-state solution has already been implemented by the Israeli government. There is one state that rules everything between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. It's called Israel. Israel has ruled that territory for 56 years, which is most of Israel's existence. There is no indication that Israel will give up that territory in the foreseeable future.
The only realistic question now is whether the one state that exists will become a full democracy, or whether it will continue to disenfranchise 40% of its population. Continuing to pay empty lip service to the two-state solution 20 years after the "peace process" died is just useless.
As for how to get the Israelis to agree to finally enfranchise the Palestinians, I think that will take external pressure. Israel has been able to maintain the status quo so long because it has unconditional American backing. If that backing is removed, Israel will be in a very different and much more difficult situation.
We could spin wildly off into philosophizing here, but I responded to a narrow point made upthread, and you in turn responded to that post. To sum it up:
* The untenable position the Palestinians are in today stems at least in part to the results of the Six-Day War, wherein Egypt ultimately conceded its administration of Gaza --- in which Palestinians were not full Egyptians --- to Israel, and Jordan conceded the West Bank, which it had annexed after the Arab-Israeli war. That's what Rayiner was referring to upthread --- what happened "56 years ago" was the Six-Day War.
* The Six-Day War may have had multiple causes, and perhaps nobody's hands are clean in it, but it seems beyond dispute that the "preemptive" strike against Egypt was a response to months of military provocation by Syria and, especially, Egypt, both of whom had mobilized on Israel's border, arranged the expulsion of peacekeepers, violated Israeli airspace, and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, an act Nasser acknowledged made war inevitable.
* Had the Six-Day War (and then the Yom Kippur war, which was, like the Arab-Israeli war that preceded the Six-Day War, unquestionably a war of aggression by a coalition of Arab states against Israel) not happened, the cause of Palestine would be directed instead at/against Egypt and Jordan.
* "From the river to the sea" implies, among other things, the dispossession of Israeli Jewish people outside the West Bank and Gaza.
The Israelis were also incredibly provocative, constantly raiding neighboring Arab territory. Israel had a history of aggression against the Arab countries, such as its invasion of Egypt in 1956 and its numerous raids into Jordan and Syria.
> Had the Six-Day War (and then the Yom Kippur war, which was, like the Arab-Israeli war that preceded the Six-Day War, unquestionably a war of aggression by a coalition of Arab states against Israel) not happened, the cause of Palestine would be directed instead at/against Egypt and Jordan.
There are many false assumptions and representations here. First, the Palestinian cause was directed against Israel because Israel is the country that expelled the Palestinians from their homes, not Egypt of Jordan. Whatever complaints the Palestinians had against the Jordanians or Egyptians, those countries had not kicked them out of their villages and expropriated their homes.
Second, the First Arab-Israeli war was not a war of aggression by the Arabs. The declaration of Israeli independence was effectively a declaration of war on the Arab world. The Arabs could not accept European colonists (which the founders of Israel were in their overwhelming majority) establishing an ethnically exclusive state on Arab land. The Arab-Israeli war was preceded by massive expulsions of Palestinian Arabs from their homes by the militias that would later become the Israeli army. From the Arab point of view, the war was a defensive war against foreign colonists intent on conquering Arab land and on expelling the Arab population.
The Yom Kippur War was indeed launched by Egypt and Syria, but its aim was to reclaim Egyptian and Syrian territory that Israel had militarily occupied since 1967. At the time, the legitimacy of Egypt and Syrian aims in that war were widely recognized by the international community, which had already called on Israel to return the territory to its rightful owners.
> "From the river to the sea" implies, among other things, the dispossession of Israeli Jewish people outside the West Bank and Gaza.
Most people who use the phrase view it as a call to turn Greater Israel, which already exists in practice, into a fully democratic state with equal rights for all its inhabitants, including the Palestinian population of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This does not imply any dispossession of Jewish Israelis, any more than the end of Apartheid in South Africa implied dispossession of white South Africans.
No, they were not comparably provocative. Further, you're doing the motte-and-bailey thing again: since you can't make the case that the Arab states hands are clean with respect to Gaza and the West Bank, you've switched premises, so that all of Israel is now occupied territory. To do this, you have to ignore the comparable number of Jewish people chased out of Arab states in the same time period. It's an untenable argument.
We're deep into the thread and nobody is reading us anymore. We're not going to get anywhere with this, and certainly we're not going to resolve the Israeli-Palestine conflict here.
I don't see any motte-and-bailey argument. You said that the First Arab-Israeli War was an Arab war of aggression. I responded.
> all of Israel is now occupied territory
This isn't the point I was trying to make. All of Israel was taken from the Arabs - unjustly so. However, I was simply responding to your claim about the First Arab-Israeli War, and when I speak about the "occupied territories," I'm referring to the territories that Israel conquered in 1967, not the 1948 territories.
> since you can't make the case that the Arab states hands are clean with respect to Gaza and the West Bank
Why am I supposed to make that case?
> To do this, you have to ignore the comparable number of Jewish people chased out of Arab states in the same time period.
Jewish people were chased out of Arab countries following the establishment of the state of Israel, and to a large extent, as a result of the establishment of Israel and the antisemitic reaction it caused in the Arab world. The expulsion of Jewish people from the Arab world in the 1950s onwards did not retroactively justify the expulsion of the Arab population from what became Israel in 1948.
> No, they were not comparably provocative.
Launching major raids into Jordan, invading Egypt in concert with France and Britain in 1956 - those are pretty provocative moves.
Egypt and Syria mobilized on Israel's borders in May of '67. You're citing something that happened 10 years earlier. And this appears to be the best argument you've got, since you keep making it. Let's disengage?
Egypt mobilized a defensive force that was incapable of launching an invasion. Meanwhile, Israel had been planning a first-strike, which it actually executed.
> You're citing something that happened 10 years earlier.
Israel's invasion of Egypt was 10 years prior, but dominated Egyptian security considerations. Israel's major incursion into Jordan was only 7 months prior. The Arabs had every reason to fear Israeli aggression.
Going back to the original comment about the 1967 war, OP implied that the Palestinians were somehow to blame for the fact that they live under military occupation. The story of Israel simply defending itself in 1967 is not true: Israel struck first, and its claims that it was acting in preemptive self-defense are highly questionable, at best.
Egyptians had no reason to fear Israeli aggression. Please cite the book that says otherwise. I don't think your takes here are at all historically grounded; this reads like stuff you'd get on TeachPalestine.
Israel invaded Egypt in 1956, and by 1967 was, in fact, planning a first strike on Egypt, which it subsequently executed. Of course Egypt had every reason to fear Israeli aggression.
In 1967, the IDF was spoiling for a fight, and was extremely confident that it would defeat the Arab armies quickly and with low losses. It had planned and trained for a first strike on Egypt, which is what it ended up executing.
The opposite thing is true: we have documentary evidence that Egypt had a plan to preemptively invade. Again: cite a book where you're getting this stuff from. In addition to WP and AskHistorians, I'm citing Benny Morris (Righteous Victims), who is unsparing of Israel's complicity in the Six Day War and, most importantly, in its aftermath. I'm interested in where you could possibly have been getting the details you're confidently providing in this thread.
Having a plan on the shelf for how to invade is different from actually intending to invade. Israel not only had a plan to preemptively attack Egypt - it was very actively training for this plan and then carried it out. In contrast, it's fairly clear now that Egypt did not plan to invade Israel in June 1967, and was not in any position to do so. Like you, I've also read Benny Morris' Righteous Victims (which only has a relatively short section on the lead-up to the 1967 war).
The two points I've been making here are:
1. The traditional narrative that Israel fought a defensive war in 1967 is highly questionable, at best. It does not seem that the Egyptians were planning to attack, the Israelis themselves had a major hand in the escalation leading up to the war, and the Israeli military was extremely confident that it would quickly defeat the Arabs (an assessment that the Americans shared) and wanted a war.
2. This narrative that Israel gained the West Bank and Gaza through a defensive war is then used to justify Israel's more than half-century military rule over the Palestinians. Even if the Israeli narrative were 100% correct, it would not justify imposing military rule over millions of people for decades, while slowly robbing those people of their land and subjecting them to regular violence and humiliation.
Righteous Victims has 2 whole chapters on the leadup to the Six Days War, which is like the centerpiece of the book. You can't be citing Righteous Victims, because it strenuously disagrees with virtually everything you've said here. What are you citing?
The only thing I wish to add is that this kind of “selectiveness” of facts by those who argue with Israel existence is by itself one of the main reasons for Israel creation in the first place.
> Israel launched what it said was a preemptive strike [0] against Egypt
So it was just a coincidence that Egypt had massed troops on the border, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and ejected UN security forces two weeks before that?
There was a build-up of tensions in the lead-up to the war, not just on the Egyptian side, but also on the Israeli side.
The Egyptians believed that the Israelis were preparing an invasion of Syria, so the Egyptians moved their own force into the Sinai peninsula, in order to deter Israel. However, the Egyptian force was nowhere near sufficient to launch an invasion of Israel.
The closing of the Straits of Tiran was politically significant, but not very economically significant. Only a tiny fraction of Israel's trade went through the straits.
The Israelis had been planning a first strike on Egypt for a long time. Whether they actually feared an imminent Egyptian invasion in June 1967 is questionable. The Israeli military was very confident of its superiority over the Arab forces, and it may have simply taken advantage of the situation to land a devastating blow against the Arabs.
The Israelis were not preparing an invasion of Syria. They were led to believe so by the Soviets; the Soviets were wrong. Egypt and Syria thus mobilized unilaterally.
Not having a clear picture of what was going on [1], the Jordanians and Syrians entered the war on Egypt's side, only to suffer a similar fate as Egypt.
Israel ended up conquering the Sinai peninsula, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.
It's hotly debated whether the war really was a preemptive strike to head off an impending Arab invasion, or whether it was a war of aggression by Israel.
In any case, as a consequence of the war, millions of Palestinians came under Israeli rule. The Israelis were faced with a conundrum: they wanted to keep the land (especially the West Bank and East Jerusalem), but they didn't want millions more Arab citizens, who would shift the demographic balance, ending Israel as a Jewish state. That's why Israel has kept the Palestinians in limbo for more than half a century. They live under Israeli control, but they aren't Israeli citizens.
0. Israel initially claimed that it had been attacked first, but it soon admitted that it had attacked first.
1. Egyptian propaganda in the first hours claimed that Egypt had scored major victories.