The war that changed the region

More than just a military defeat by Israel, the 1967 Six-Day War dealt a deathblow to Arab nationalism, which helped Palestinian groups to free themselves from Arab governments. “The Arab defeat in the 1967 June war with Israel, together with the death of (Egyptian president Gamal Abdel) Nasser in 1970, was the last straw that broke Arab nationalism’s back,” says Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

“For years, people had been fed a diet of cultural glory, empowerment, and unity,” which were overturned in a matter of hours by the forces of the young Jewish state.

“The failure of this foundational myth and the humiliation of its custodian, Nasser” meant that “the rosy promises of Arab nationalism were shattered beyond any mending,” said Gerges.

After this defeat, the Arab nationalist regimes — Egypt, whose president championed Arab unity, Syria under the Baath party and later Iraq under a rival branch of the same party — “gradually mutated into a variety of police states” using nationalism to justify their power, he said.

“For a long time, the Palestinians counted on their Arab ‘brothers’ to liberate their homeland,” said journalist and historian Dominique Vidal.

“It was this illusion which disappeared following the crushing defeat of the Arab forces in June 1967. Conversely, it reinforced the involvement of the fedayeen (Palestinian guerrillas) in the armed struggle that Yasser Arafat’s Fatah launched in 1965.”

With Israel seizing the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt, the Palestinian groups would go on to make Jordan their staging ground for a counteroffensive, and their success in holding off Israeli forces at Karameh in March 1968 “symbolised this new direction,” Vidal said.

Boosted by their victory, the Palestinians managed to take matters into their own hands in 1969 when Arafat took over leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. —AFP