Four
Decades Of Occupation
By Sandy Tolan
08 June , 2007
Boston
Globe
Who
could have known that a six-day war would last 40 years?
Israel's lightning victory
in June 1967 -- preordained by overwhelming air power in the first six
hours of fighting -- seemed complete.
The air forces of Egypt,
Jordan, and Syria lay in smoking ruins. President Gamal Abdel Nasser
of Egypt, hero to the Arab masses and scourge to Israel, was disgraced.
The ragged remainder of King Hussein's ground forces had beat a humiliating
retreat to the east bank of the River Jordan. And by June 10, Israel
occupied vast chunks of land: the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights,
Gaza, and the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem.
But Israel's legacy from
1967 is not victory but occupation, of the Palestinians and of themselves.
Within weeks, the Jewish state's initial euphoria, born of the immense
relief of Holocaust survivors who had feared annihilation, would give
way to moral quandary as the realities of occupation sank in.
"It's an absolutely
lousy feeling being in a conquering army," one kibbutznik told
the young writer Amos Oz, unknowingly prophesying four decades of Jewish
soldiers to come.
As Israel solidified its
gains -- annexing East Jerusalem, securing coveted water resources in
the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and, later, allowing waves of "pioneers"
to settle in the West Bank -- generations of 18- and 20-year-olds would
begin enforcing Israel's new colonial reach.
They found themselves brandishing
automatic weapons at tense, alien checkpoints; firing live ammunition
at stone-throwing Arab teens or breaking their bones under military
orders; hauling suspected militants from their homes in refugee camps;
bulldozing entire blocks in Jenin; squeezing the triggers from American-made
helicopter gunships.
The leaders who sent these
young people into the occupied territories were themselves soldiers
or former soldiers whose sense of survival was distilled into two words:
Never again. Yet this strategy, rooted in the horrors of Europe, would
instead help ensure the opposite.
In Gaza, the West Bank, and
later southern Lebanon, Israel would describe its military action as
preventative security, or retaliation. But just as the average Israeli's
deep psychic need to feel secure could be traced to the Holocaust, so
the government's response -- massive retribution on a scale far greater
than the provocation -- turned "never again" to "again
and again."
In each assault on the occupied
enemy, the bitter aftermath bred a new generation of Arab hatred. In
1968, Israeli forces tried to root out Palestinian insurgents in the
east bank town of Karama, succeeding instead in strengthening their
leader, Yasser Arafat.
Twenty years later, in the
dawn of the first intifada, Israel tried to weaken Arafat by supporting
a rival Islamist faction in Gaza. Instead, they encouraged the growth
of Hamas. Last year, Israel's invasion of Lebanon strengthened the target,
Hezbollah. One in every four Lebanese was driven from his home, and
the people blamed Israel far more than the Islamists.
Forty years on, the occupation
of the West Bank and Golan Heights continues, not only in the name of
security, but for natural resources and economic benefits. Israel's
presence in the West Bank allows it to control the vast mountain aquifer,
80 percent of which lies under Palestinian land, but which Palestinian
farmers and villagers are restricted from using. Occupation of the Golan
Heights gives Israel control of the circumference of the Sea of Galilee,
and prevents Syria from diverting its headwaters.
Then there is lifestyle.
Some Israelis contemplating a possible handover of the Golan Heights
to Syria (a remote prospect) lament the loss of the upper Jordan as
a place where they can float on kayaks and inner tubes. Grapes from
the Golan Heights also produce much of Israel's wine. Many Israelis
on the West Bank now live nearly suburban lives, their movements protected
by soldiers and facilitated by smooth, Israeli-only roads that zip them
to Jerusalem.
Occupation denial has set
in. The occupied population has become nearly invisible, a distraction
to drive past with the windows rolled up and the air conditioners on.
Meanwhile, 2.4 million Palestinians
live on the West Bank. For them, whose movements are controlled by checkpoints,
who are denied permission to pray at the Jerusalem holy sites, whose
homes and workplaces, in many cases, are subject to random search by
the occupying military authorities, and whose teenaged children blankly
speak of having no future, the occupation is as intolerable in 2007
as it was on the day, 40 years ago, when it began.
Sandy Tolan
is the author of "The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart
of the Middle East."
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