Forty years on, the repercussions of Israel's victory in 1967's Six-Day War continue to reverberate. Roger Hardy reports.

Why does it matter now, a short, sharp Middle East war four decades ago? The answer is because Arabs and Israelis, and the rest of the world, are still living with its consequences.

The June War of 1967 was a remarkable Israeli victory and a humiliating Arab defeat. The Jewish state, born less than two decades earlier, crushed the armed forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a mere six days - in the words of one embittered Arab writer, "quicker than the lighting of a match".

Israel showed its military prowess and, at a stroke, significantly increased the territory it controlled, capturing the Sinai desert, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the West Bank - and, in an act of great symbolic importance, East Jerusalem, thereby unifying the holy city under its rule.

The war fundamentally changed the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the character of Middle East peacemaking

The war dramatically changed the Middle East landscape in ways that only gradually became apparent. First, it struck a heavy, perhaps mortal, blow to Arabism - the dream of a single, united Arab state stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf - and to its champion, the charismatic Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Arabism lingered on as a sentiment, but the June War knocked the stuffing out of it. Many consider the Arab defeat marked the beginning of the "Islamic revival" in the region, as Islamists took up the banner from what they regarded as the discredited Arab nationalists.

Second, the war changed the relationship between Israel and the US. Under President Eisenhower in the 1950s, the Americans had been rather cool towards the infant Jewish state - whose main arms supplier was France, not the US. But after the June War, with President Johnson's decision to arm the Israelis with F-4 fighter planes, the relationship blossomed into the strategic partnership we know today.

Third, the war turned Israel into an occupying power, ruling over more than a million Palestinians. Over time, Israelis become polarised over whether holding onto the territories was a good or a bad thing. Proponents of "strategic depth" argued that the old, pre-1967 Israel was less easily defensible than a state that had Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan as buffers.

The Israeli peace camp, in contrast, argued that the military presence in territories containing an angry and resentful Palestinian population was as corrupting for the occupiers as it was for the occupied. Peaceniks argued that giving up the territories through negotiation was in Israel's interest as well as that of the Arabs.

Fourth, the war fundamentally changed the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the character of Middle East peace-making. From this point on, the essence of any eventual peace deal would be an exchange of land for peace. If Israel disgorged the occupied territories, the Arab states would make peace with it. This idea was enshrined in 1967's UN Security Council Resolution 242, which became the central text for future peace-making efforts.

William B Quandt, pre-eminent American historian of the peace process, sums up Israel's post-war options, "If Israel kept the newly-conquered land and granted the people full political rights, Israel would become a bi-national state, which few Israelis wanted. If it kept the land but did not grant political rights to the Palestinians, it would come to resemble other colonial powers, with predictable results. Finally, if Israel relinquished the land, it would retain its Jewish character, but could it live in peace and security?"


Forty years on, Israel has relinquished only two bits of the land it gained in 1967: the Sinai desert, returned to Egypt as part of the Camp David accords of 1978 (reached after direct mediation by President Jimmy Carter); and the Gaza Strip, taken over by the Palestinian Authority following Israel's unilateral withdrawal in 2005.

Israel still maintains its presence in the West Bank and the Golan Heights and still refers to Jerusalem as its "eternal, undivided capital". It has paid a certain political price for doing so. Two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, in the late 1980s and in 2000, show that ordinary Palestinians are far from reconciled to long-term Israeli occupation. And prolonged claims to disputed land have contributed to an erosion of international support for Israel, for example in Europe.

Some Israelis are also haunted by what has become known as the demographic timebomb - the idea that Arabs will eventually outnumber Jews in the territories under Israel's control. This was one of the factors that led Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take the domestically controversial decision to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in 2005.

Forty years on, Israel has relinquished only two bits of the land it gained in 1947

Elusive though it may be, a land-for-peace deal remains the goal of Middle East diplomacy. After long being accused of keeping the Arab-Israeli problem at arm's length, the Bush administration in recent months has finally re-engaged with it. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made repeated visits to the region in an effort to revive the moribund peace process.

At their summit in the Saudi capital Riyadh in March, Arab leaders revived a peace initiative they had originally launched in 2002. Under the plan, they collectively offered to normalise relations with Israel if it returned all the land occupied in 1967 and agreed to a "just solution" of the Palestinian refugee problem.

Having rejected the plan five years earlier, the Israelis now found positive elements in it. After the summit, and with a good deal of coaxing from the Americans, Israel and the Arabs began to talk about the possibility of a regional summit bringing together Israelis, Arabs and outside parties in a bid to breathe life into the peace process.

But if most analysts remain sceptical about the chances of a breakthrough, it is because the core ("final-status") issues remain as difficult and emotive as ever. Israel insists it will never accept the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now the state of Israel. Israel is unwilling to withdraw from all of the territories it occupied in 1967, not least because parts of the West Bank have now been heavily colonised by Israeli settlers.

The question of some sort of division of Jerusalem remains hotly contentious.
For Arabs and Muslims, the city's future is an essential component of any peace settlement. For many Israelis, the issue is non-negotiable. Four decades on, what is remarkable is that that short-lived June war has cast so long a shadow.

Roger Hardy is a Middle East analyst for BBC World Service

In May, Jeremy Bowen will presentThe Six-Day War, a four-part documentary series reflecting on the landmark conflict and the impact it continues to have in the region