From The Australian Financial Review, June 7, 2007 [subscription required to view on-line], by Colin Rubenstein [my emphasis added - SL]....
Israel's stunning six-day military victory against its Arab neighbours 40 years ago is today often recalled primarily as the "root cause" of all subsequent Middle Eastern problems - Israeli "occupation" of Arab lands.
Before the war, however, Israel "occupied" no land, yet Arab rejection of its right to exist, as well any direct negotiation with Jerusalem, was almost total. Jordan had annexed the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza but there was virtually no talk of setting up a Palestinian state in either. Even the Palestine Liberation Organisation rejected this idea.
... it was Arab rejectionism, not Israeli policy, that turned Israel's military successes into a long-running "occupation". On June 19, the Israeli cabinet voted unanimously to return all of the Sinai and Golan for peace, and to open negotiations about the West Bank. The Arab League responded with a resolution on September 1, vowing "no peace, no recognition and no negotiation with Israel."
In November, UN Security Council Resolution 242, the famous "land for peace" formula, was adopted and accepted by Israel. Its drafters maintain it was intended to encourage a negotiated peace involving Israeli withdrawals to "secure and recognised boundaries" to be agreed.
Subsequently, Israel returned Sinai, 93 per cent of the land captured in 1967, to Egypt, and has made other withdrawals, on the Golan, along the border with Jordan, and from all of Gaza. It has also offered to return to the international border on the Golan, and to evacuate more than 95 per cent of the West Bank for peace.
However, some of the same social and political forces that caused the 1967 war and prevented peace afterwards are still blocking a two-state resolution. The Arab nationalism for which Israel's existence is an insufferable stain on Arab honour has diminished, but it has been replaced by a growing Islamist movement that argues Israel's existence is an intolerable affront to divine law. Groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, backed and financed by Teheran and Damascus, make peace impossible by threatening Arab leaders and openly planning to use any territory Israel evacuates for ongoing attacks.
As in 1967, it is rejectionism, a fruit of the region's many problems, that is still preventing full Arab-Israel peace.
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