'67 War altered history

PROVO — Israel's capture of Palestinian lands in the Mideast's Six-Day War, 40 years ago this week, dramatically altered the course of world history in ways that touched the Cold War and even America's current war on terror, Utah experts say.

"It is like a knife cutting through the history of the Middle East before and after," Brigham Young University professor Donna Lee Bowen said. "1967 totally changed everything."

For about a decade, both Israelis and Palestinians believed Israel would return control of Palestinian territories, Bowen said. Then the Labor Party, which had ruled Israel since it was born in 1948, lost power to the Likud Party. Soon Israel was building Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, complicating any return — and a complication that is at the center of the debate today.

"It totally redefined the conflict and ultimately made it much tougher to resolve," Bowen said. "It has become enormously complex."

University of Utah professor Michel Mazzaoui is a Christian Palestinian from Nazareth.

"The war was a terrible thing," he said Tuesday. "We are still suffering from its aftermath, actually. Israel during the June 1967 War occupied the whole of Palestine, or what used to be geographic Palestine, and it's still occupying the region — the West Bank, the Arab part of Jerusalem and the Gaza area. The United Nations and many United States presidents like Carter and Clinton have tried to resolve some of the aftermath of the war, but the region is still suffering from it."

Prior to the June 1967 War, Egypt controlled Gaza. Jordan controlled the West Bank. Jerusalem was split, with east Jerusalem, the old city, under Jordanian control, Bowen said.

She called the war a "catastrophic defeat" for the Palestinians and the Arab nations involved.

The Israelis believed they had pre-empted a strike against Israel by Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Many Israelis were grateful to have control of Biblical lands, but many Palestinians were angered as it became clear that their lands would not be returned.

Some Palestinians turned to violent attacks on foreign targets to make the point that they had no home soil on which to fight, Bowen said.

"The war totally altered the landscape of the Middle East in terms of conflict," she added. "It would take quite a while for Egypt to build up again and threw the Egyptians into the arms of the Soviet Union. After 1967, the Middle East became defined as countries that were pro-U.S. or pro-Soviet.

"That relates to Afghanistan and Iraq and sets up 9/11 and the current war on terror."

Bowen said events of the past week illustrate continued suffering on the part of the Palestinians. Militants in Lebanon took refuge in a very poor Palestinian refugee camp. The Palestinians were caught in the middle of the militants and the Lebanese army.

"There's plenty of blame to go around," Bowen said. "There's right on every single side and there's wrong on every single side."

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