The Atlantic: The Myths About 1967 That Just Won't Die

[TomSea]

The Myths About 1967 That Just Won't Die

Fifty years after the Arab-Israeli war, popular assumptions about its impact are begging to be reexamined.
    Aaron David Miller Jun 2, 2017 Global

The Arab-Israeli war that took place in June of 1967 was undeniably a major watershed in modern Middle Eastern history and a fundamental inflection point in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In conquering the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan, and east Jerusalem, Israel created new and enduring realities that would frame the pursuit of peace and the waging of wars for the next half century. For Palestinians, the experience would be particularly bitter.

At the same time, the notion that the proverbial six days of war created a figurative Seventh Day—a kind of dark shadow under which the Arab-Israeli conflict has played out, inexorably and depressingly, these many years—is too simplistic a read.
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Read more at: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/six-day-war-myths/528834/

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Amazing this was in The Atlantic.  They are right...

“The 1967 war was the most consequential and impactful of the conflicts between Israel and the Arabs.”

I agree that the 1948 war was.

“There were very real and missed opportunities for Arab-Israeli agreements in the wake of the war.”

Again, I agree that this is a myth.  This quote sums it up well...

Even if the Israeli offer had been concretized, it would have faced impossible odds. Egypt’s launching its war of attrition and the public hardening of Arabs’ attitudes seemed to make any serious process impossible. The Arabs’ three no’s at the Khartoum summit of August 1967—no peace; no negotiation; no recognition—seemed to sum up the impasse . . .

“The war was an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians.”

Again, the myth is correctly refuted.  For example:

And Palestinians would begin to make the transition from hapless refugees in the 1940s and 1950s to terrorists and guerrillas during the 1960s and 1970s to political interlocutors by the 1980s.

“The 1967 war was a catastrophe for peacemaking.”

They pop this myth easily, too.  The Arabs wanted Israel destroyed.  There would have been peace without the Six-Day War only if Israel was eliminated.

“Fifty years later, Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians are ready to solve the conflict.”