so- 61
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Polls conducted among Israeli high
school students and army conscripts
indicate that they are far more
hawkish than their parents. They
tend to regard the occupied territories
as their natural birthright, reject the
ideas of territorial compromise and,
very often, express hatred and con-
tempt for Arabs.
The only solid achievement of the
past 20 years has been the return of
the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in ex-
change for peace, a treaty that will be
dusted off and filled with content on-
ly when Israel and its neighbors are
able to extend the process and end
Cairo's uncomfortable isolation in the
Arab world.
But two other developments — less
tangible but no less far-reaching —
have flowed directly from the Six Day
War, changing the international com-
munity's perception of the Arab-
Israeli conflict and radically altering
the terms of the debate.
Firstly, Israel is no longer regard-
ed as the underdog, an isolated,
vulnerable speck in a psychotically
hostile environment. Rather, it has
emerged as the regional superpower.
Secondly — the single greatest
irony of Israel's massive military vic-
tory — the Six Day War gave birth
to Zionism's twin: Palestinian
nationalism.
Before the war, the Palestinians
were universally regarded — when
they were regarded at all — as a pure-
ly marginal factor in the conflict, a
"refugee problem" in need of a
humanitarian solution.
After the war, they demanded —
and received — recognition as a full-
blown nation with the inalienable
right to express their national iden-
tity in an independent, homeland.
In short order, the Palestine Libera-
tion Organization (PLO) was ap-
pointed as their "sole legitimate
representative" and Yasser Arafat
was crowned their leader.
Israel emerged victorious from the
battlefield, but it decisively lost the
political war: more nations today
have diplomatic relations with the
PLO than with the Jewish state
itself.
No longer does the international
community perceive the conflict in a
simple good-guy, bad-guy terms; no
longer is it seen in terms of blood-
thirsty Arabs seeking to drive heroic
Jews into the Sea. The conflict now
centers on a clash of mutually ex-
clusive national aspirations — Jewish
and Palestinian — both of which are
based on uncompromising claims to
an identical piece of territory.
Immeasurably more complex and
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intractable than it was 20 years ago,
the Arab-Israeli conflict now bears all
the hallmarks of developing into a
tragedy of major proportions. It is
highly unlikely that either the
Israelis or the Palestinians will, in the
forseeable future, modify their claims
and acquiesce in a Solomonic formula
that involves cutting the territory in
half.
The fruits of that stunning military
victory 20 years ago appear to have
turned sour; indeed, some Israelis
believe that those fruits carry within
them the seeds of Israel's potential
destruction.
"Israel will commit suicide if it does
not reach a settlement over the ter-
ritories," warns Professor Yehoshafat
Harkabi, a former director of military
intelligence for the Israel Defense
Forces.
Harkabi, now a senior historian at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
reserves his most scathing criticism
for Israel's intellectuals whom, he
asserts, have failed in their duty to
alert their countrymen to "the horror
that is in store if no solution is
found."
,
One part of that "horror" was
quantified last week by Professor Ar-
non Sofer, of Haifa University, who
warned that unless Israel withdraws
from most of the territories it oc-
cupied in 1967, it would face disaster.
Based on the demographic ex-
perience of the past 20 years, he says,
the Jewish and Arab populations of
Israel (including the occupied ter-
ritories) will be almost equal by the
turn of the century, just 13 years
away, with 4.3 million Jews and 3.7
million Arabs.
"The meaning of the demographic
forecast for the year 2000," he adds,
"is that Eretz Yisrael wil be a bi-
national state with a Jewish Arab -
ratio of 55:45."
The other widely accepted projec-
tion is that the Palestinians under
Israeli occupation, far from becoming
more moderate and conciliatory, are
heading towards the twin extremes of
Islamic fundamentalism and Palesti-
nian rejectionism. "In ten years time,"
warns Professor Matti Steinberg, one
of Israel's most respected Orien-
talists, "Israel will be faced with a
fateful demographic and security
threat in the occupied territories."
Many Israelis will come to the con-
elusion that the Arabs must be
driven out to save the state.
This week, as Israelis — and Jews
throughout the world — celebrate the
20th anniversary of their "war of
salvation," many will pause to reflect
on the apocalyptic implications of
that stunning victory.
They may reflect, too, that the real
victims are not the politicians, who
have become prisoners of their own
pronouncements and constraints and
who inflated the expectations of their
people to unreasonable and
unrealistic heights. The real victims
are the ordinary Israelis, who have
been transformed into military oc-
cupiers, and the ordinary Palestinians
who must endure the humiliation and
frustration of that occupation.
The Six Day War has provided
Israel with a sobering lesson in the
limits of power and in the very great
distance that must be traversed bet-
ween military victory — no matter
how decisive — and political
settlement.
If there is to be any hope of peace
breaking out in this corner of the
Middle East, both sides will have to
make serious and major
reassessments of their expectations
and demands.
Ultimately, it will be very much
harder to win the peace than it was
to win the war. El
Three Voices
A nationalist, a dove and a Palestinian reflect
the insurmountable aspects of the conflict
HELEN DAVIS
Special to The Jewish News
'We Must
Never Return
The Territories'
I
SRAEL MEDAD, a 19-year-old
student from New York, spent
half of the Six Day War in a kib-
butz foxhole.
Twenty years ago, Medad was in
Israel on a leadership training pro-
gram; today, he is an Israeli citizen
and a hard-driving member of what
is known as the "nationalist camp."
Medad, an activist in the Gush
Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) settler
movement, lives with his wife and five
children in the West Bank settlement
of Shilo. He is editor of "Counter-
point," a monthly newspaper that
promotes the nationalist view and is
also an advisor to the five-man
Knesset faction of the ultra-
nationalist Thhiya Party.
Medad recalls the "unbounded joy"
of Israel after the war: "There was a
sense that this war had finished the
job begun by the War of Inde-
pendence 19 years earlier," he says.
"Then, we were not ready for war. We
had to take what we could, and we
ended up with inadequate territory
and security. The 1967 war merged
the Land of Israel with the State of
Israel. It took Zionism out of quota-
tion marks."
The victory, he says, unleashed
Jewish energy and "re-legitimized"
27