The Rabin-Peres Years

Abstract

If there was one thing successive US administrations could agree on from 1967 to 1993, it was that progress on the Arab- Israeli front was slow, painful, and at best incremental. Until the immediate aftermath of the June 1967 war, the United States had not played a major role as Israel’s top defender on the world stage,1 nor had it pushed Israel forward into a peace process. That all changed in both the lead up to and the aftermath of the war. The conflict suddenly created a dramatically changed Arab- Israeli front, one that brought both new opportunities and fresh obstacles to the search for a lasting end to hostilities and a normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In fact, the map figuratively and literally changed from June 5 to 11, 1967, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) swiftly humiliated the numerically overwhelming Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies.2 The war brought about the following major changes: 1. Geography. Israel now controlled theGaza Strip, the launching pad of Palestinian terrorist raids since the end of the 1948–49 War of Independence; the Golan Heights, the base of Syrian shelling on Israeli northern settlements and the home of important regional water sources; the West Bank (including East Jerusalem and its Old City), the physical cradle of the Jewish biblical narrative; and Egypt’s expansive Sinai peninsula, offering a broad land cushion between Israel and Egypt. 2. Demography. Israel now controlled one million Palestinians in the newly acquired territories (in addition to the roughly 20 percent of its citizens who were Israeli Arabs). As a result, Israel was no longer seen by others as a besieged nation; it was now a regional military power responsible for a large population under military occupation, which in turn made that population increasingly dependent on Israel’s economic and political policies. 3. Domestic political debates. Israeli Jews were basically divided into two camps. One believed that the captured lands brought a tremendous bargaining chip for peace;3 the other believed the Jewish people had been rightfully restored by God as the rulers of land that could never be voluntarily relinquished.4 This clash of visions has reflected an increasingly sharpening Israeli political debate ever since and was featured prominently in the 1995 Rabin assassination. 4. Diplomacy. The United States supplanted France as Israel’s top military and diplomatic patron. The relationship—spurred in part by the Cold War (Israel was a staunch US ally and most Arab states were Soviet patrons, Jordan being a notable exception)— grew so close so quickly that only six years later, one week into the 1973 October/Yom Kippur War, US president Richard M. Nixon authorized a massive US resupply for the Jewish state, which included 22,000 tons of equipment on 566 military flights that replenished Israel’s rapidly diminishing war materials.5 5. Energizing of Diaspora Jews. Jews around the world surged with Zionist pride, particularly in the Soviet Union (which sparked the Soviet aliyah, or remigration to Israel and refusenik(those denied the request to emigrate, and who would then lose their jobs) movements). In the United States, Jews, many of whom were ambivalent about Israel’s fate before the war, became increasingly committed to its well- being. Indeed, advocating on behalf of the Jewish state quickly became the top item on US Jewry’s advocacy agenda.