By Eitan Dangot
The 54 years that have passed since the 1967 Six Day War have demonstrated beyond all doubt that this conflict was a turning point in the history of Israel, and that the war’s achievements and results continue to influence Israel’s existence, character, and security to this very day.
There are several key comparisons between 1967 and 2021 that help drive home how this 54-year-old process is continuing to shape national and regional realities.
Israel is currently transitioning from the second to the third generation since the Six Day War, and the new generation is dealing with many matters from that time that half a century later are still burning issues.
Jerusalem
The Six Day War saw the reunification of Jerusalem, and the unity of Israel’s capital must be preserved.
The city’s explosive potential and its use as a trigger for incitement and violence is a constant factor. The issue of Jerusalem remains highly sensitive, and alongside its role as the eternal capital of Israel, the city also requires a sensitive strategy, something that in many cases requires prioritizing being smart over being right, and thinking before acting.
In the years following 1967, and principally during the period of the Trump administration, Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital received a tailwind from the United States.
At the same time, careful thought and strategic daring on the part of future Israeli leaderships will be necessary to deal with Palestinian demands to express an affiliation with the city. Israel should generate a formula that separates the religious context of the city, by leaving Islamic religious responsibility for the Temple Mount in the hands of Jordan (and no one else). Jerusalem’s enlarged municipal size today includes Arab villages that are not a part of the city, and it is those outlying village areas that can be used as the basis for negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in the future over the establishment of a Palestinian capital.
Within Jerusalem itself, internal Israeli security forces must be responsible for security across the entire city, with as little involvement of the military as possible. During sensitive incidents, security forces should be injected and deployed to Jerusalem in large numbers in order to back-up police there. The city should be managed without tactical mistakes that create an inflammatory atmosphere of the kind that extremist elements constantly seek out to leverage for their strategic and religious agendas.
Ultimately, the Six Day War’s achievement of uniting Jerusalem must be preserved.
The Six Day War’s strategic legacy
Since the Six Day War, the Jewish state’s existence has been consolidated beyond all question in the perception of many Arab-Muslim countries. They perceive Israel as a permanent fixture in the region, and besides terrorist organizations and a single Shi’ite Iranian state no one any longer questions Israel’s right to exist.
The dramatic 1979 Israeli – Egyptian peace treaty created a gate for Israel to the region, one that opened very slowly, but in recent years, especially during the Trump administration, much of the Arab world has opened up to Israel to one degree or another. This trend matured into the Abraham accords and much of the Sunni Middle East is perfectly able to discern its central enemy – the Shi’ite Iranian threat – from a potential ally – Israel. This is a completely different reality from the one faced by Israel in 1967.
Today, Israel is also an independent energy supplier, a situation that stands in stark contrast to the embargos and boycotts that Israel faced from 1967 until recent years. The discovery of large natural gas reserves off Israel’s Mediterranean coastline has placed it in the club of Middle Eastern energy producers. The fact that Israel supplies its Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, with natural gas, is creating joint interests that could shape regional events for many years to come.
Had Hezbollah not hijacked Lebanon, Israel today could be helping solve Lebanon’s severe and deteriorating energy crisis, acting as a rapid, cheap source of energy supplies for years.
Relations between Israel and pragmatic Arab states can reach ever-growing heights in the coming years, in the areas of economy, technology, and the creation of a counter-bloc against the radical Iranian-Shi’ite bloc.
A major obstacle to this development is the Palestinian issue. While the leaders of Arab states have matured in their view of the Palestinian cause, the Arab street has not. The costs that Israel and Arab states will have to pay will be very significant if a solution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict is not found, and if there is no way to calm Arab public opinion in every regional state.
In the fallout of the Six Day War, a Palestinian leadership headed by PLO chief Yasser Arafat took over the reins of the conflict with Israel from the Arab states. Since then, the conflict has morphed into a standoff between Israel and radical extremist organizations, who are building up their force, do not recognize Israel’s existence, and are using state arenas (Lebanon Iraq, and Syria) and Gazan territory to build terrorist armies.
These forces are funded by an extremist Shi’ite Iranian state and by a number of terror supporting, radical Sunni (Muslim Brotherhood) actors, primarily Qatar.
This has seen cooperation in terrorism between Shi’ite and Sunni extremists, united in their fight against Israel despite their sectorial animosities.
Hezbollah and Hamas have transformed the face of combat, pioneering asymmetric threats against Israel and joining up with the symmetric strategic threats posed to Israel from Iran and Syria.
This picture means Israel must continue being the strongest state in the 1,500-kilometer radius from Jerusalem, and needs to be able to cope with varying levels of threat, requiring huge investment and sophisticated technological military developments. These investments have enabled Israel to shield itself from harm and continue to operate as a sovereign independent state.
The transition between the reality of 1967 – from Israel facing Arab state armies to facing modern radical non-state terror organizations – included key turning points, such as the rise of Hezbollah in place of Fatah beginning in 1984 in Lebanon, until its present status as the largest terrorist non-state entity in the world. It has teamed up with Hamas, a smaller terror organization, influenced by the Sunni Islamist part of the regional map, and funded by Qatar, which, as stated previously, supports Muslim Brotherhood extremist causes.
In recent years, the Shi’ite axis has created an international threat that stretches from Tehran through to Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut. This axis is pointing growing numbers of offensive strike capabilities at Israel’s civilian population. Such a threat to Israel’s soft underbelly did not exist in 1967.
Ballistic missiles and rockets stationed at many points around the region have become an intolerable challenge to Israel’s security, and these arsenals are improving their accuracy and payloads. They serve as a key stage in Iran’s overall goal of entering the nuclear stage.
Israel has in response developed world leading air defense and attack capabilities, spending huge sums to cope with arsenals that are relatively cheap to produce.
Unlike 1967, in 2021, the Israeli home front and its battle front are one and the same.
Military legacy – the preemptive attack
In 1967, Israel’s success in thwarting a threat to its existence from Arab states came from an opening maneuver that was surprising, deep and unexpected. This has seared the value of preemptive attacks into the national consciousness. Yet since 1967, Israel has not used this tool significantly in any of the three central wars that followed 1967: The 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1982 First Lebanon War, and the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
The change in essence of the enemy and in the fact that the new enemy’s force build-up is becoming intolerable means that Israel must go back and review the value of 1967-style opening maneuvers as a new strategic decision-making junction that the next government will need to examine.
The tools of preemption must make a comeback, not necessarily to declare open war, but also in the campaign between wars in order to remove advanced enemy capabilities.
The question of whether it is right to launch a preemptive attack, with good timing and deep risk assessment against Hezbollah or Hamas, and especially against Iran’s nuclear program, is a highly relevant one.
Israel employed this doctrine against the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981, and the Syrian nuclear program in 2007.
Safeguarding Israeli air power as the regional air superiority asset is a key aspect of this doctrine.
In 1967, the IAF took advantage of its qualitative edge to conduct depth missions. Its human and technological advantage has only consolidated further since 1967, resulting in the evolution of a supreme military branch that safeguards Israeli skies, and the skies of the entire region.
It is this air force that has helped convince many Arab states of Israel’s power and permanence.
The Israeli ground maneuvers that accompanied the Six Day War’s opening waves of air strikes created facts on the ground. In recent years, in light of the many changes to enemy structure and doctrine, including the use of terrorism from civilian populations (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and others, such as ISIS in Syria), Israel has found itself needing to create new ways of thinking about future ground maneuvers.
The tool of a ground maneuver is what establishes facts on the ground. It must be maintained as a sharp tool that integrates efficiently with air power to enable Israel to achieve rapid objectives during future conflicts. In addition, withdrawing ground forces from captured territories within relatively little time is also key to enabling the Israeli government to translate future military accomplishments into political gains. The Six Day War's legacy drives home these lessons.
The fact that for the past 54 years Israel has been present in Judea and Samaria and that it continues to exercise a military government for the Arab civilian population, sharpens the need to disconnect military contexts from future areas that the IDF might be forced to fight in and capture.
Lebanon has taught Israel that staying on the ground too long creates an erosion of operational and strategic advantages. The disengagement from Gaza was a reflection of that realization by late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The only area in which such a clear solution cannot be implemented is Judea and Samaria.
On the other hand, this area, conquered from Jordan in 1967 in the defensive Six Day War, has, since 2006, and following much blood shed in the Second Intifada, seen the stabilization of a Palestinian autonomy with economic independence and internal security forces.
The big question is whether a brave Palestinian leader, currently not visible on the horizon, will agree to realistic end-of-conflict conditions that would require the Palestinians to give up the claim to a ‘right of return.’
The connection between extremist religious movements and lack of requisite maturity on the Palestinian side that would enable it to give up on a right of return has been evident repeatedly, even in the face of far-reaching Israeli compromise offers, such as Camp David in 2000. This underlines the fact that the issue will accompany us for many years.
Ultimately, the new Israeli government faces a heavy responsibility to plot new strategic paths on wide ranging issues, many of which can trace their development to the 1967 Six Day War.
Applying the preemptive model to threats such as the Iranian nuclear program must be included as a realistic possibility, but Israel also needs new thinking to create a model of co-existence between Jews and Palestinians.
Major-General Eitan Dangot concluded his extensive career as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.) in 2014. Prior to that post he served as the Military Secretary to three Ministers of Defense; Shaul Mofaz, Amir Peretz and Ehud Barak. Read full bio here.