The Six Days Plus Forty Years War

Posted in Palestine on June 18th, 2007

How else to think of an occupation two-thirds as old as the occupying state? The demarcation between the initial six days and the subsequent forty years seems more than a bit … well silly. Don’t you think? The six days never really ended. Not yet. At least not for the Palestinians nor for the Israelis. One is tempted to quiry as to what exactly in the 6 days is really worth celebration? After all, what was accomplished? Moral degeneration? A taste for the art of oppression? Checkpoint city? Extra-judicial executions? House demolitions? Torture? Jews only roadways? And, of course, land robbing settlements carving up and down the areas occupied.

From what I can discern, the truths about those six days - the precipitating factors, the initiation of war and the war itself - are hotly contested. From what I can tell, the dominant narrative of this war as a pre-emptive war against certain annihilation, is a narrative increasingly viewed as suspect. (Of course, find the right sources and you can have it any way you want it.)

I’ve read it said that the six days secured the 1948 borders. Finally, Israel had won what it only seemed it had won 19 years previous. Funny how once you get what you want, you want more. And did they ever get more. Far more than they wanted (and less also).

It seems that those six days have their meaning elsewhere. Namely, in the subsequent 40 years. The six days plus forty years war. I’m not sure where the glory of those six days is supposed to reside given the forty years. Nothing was accomplished. Perhaps worse, everything was lost? Israel’s destruction brought about by itself? There are speculations along those lines these days. Its the forty years that inevitably fueled such speculations. Had the six days actually accomplished specifiable borders for Israelis and Palestinians, one indeed might be able to speak of the glory of the six days. Instead one can only speak of atrocities all around, of distrust and dispossession, of racism, self-righteousness and brutalities of every sort.

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