JUNE

05/06/1967

Six Day War: Israel overcomes the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies.

The smell of war had been in the wind for several months and a series of events led to its break-out. The Arab states mustered forces along the borders – preparing attack according to Israel – or fearing an attack from Israel according to themselves.

It is considered that the casus belli was the Egyptian blockage on the Tiran straight barring Israel from its only outlet to the Red Sea and impeding its oil supply from Iran. Then, on the assumption that the breakout of war was imminent and inevitable Israel struck first. The issue of the war was settled in a few hours: the Israeli air force destroyed the enemy planes on the airfields to be followed by a blitzkrieg warfare involving swift tank divisions chasing back the Arab armies.

The Six-Day War left the following legacy:

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It started by the relentless carpet-bombing of a Ain El Helweh refugee camp near Sidon where heavy use of cluster, concussion and phosphorus bombs were involved. The New York Times reported that 2,000 people died in the bombing of Ain-El-Helweh on that first week.

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American intelligence ship USS Liberty attacked by Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats during the Six Day War between Israel and the Arab States for 75 minutes in international waters  Thirty-four men died and 172 were wounded.

Israel and its supporters insist it was a "tragic case of misidentification", that the US man o war was mistaken for the out-of-service Egyptian horse carrier El Quseir and that the Americans brought the attack upon themselves by operating in a war zone without displaying a flag. Other arguments to sustain the “mistaken identity” theory are recorded failure in US communication and that friendly fire is not uncommon in wartime.

Survivors and relatives of the ship crew stick to the version that the attack could only be deliberate: she was in international waters, far from any fighting, flying a bright, clean, new Stars and Stripes flag in an area already secured by the Israeli air force, she had been reconnoitred by successive Israeli aircrafts before the attack and that evidence was faked to support the Israeli claim.

Several US and Israeli inquiries have concluded to “mistaken identity”, much to the disarray of the survivors. "Never before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers". Captain Richard F. Kiepfer, Medical Corps, US Navy (retired), USS Liberty Survivor.

The accusation of deliberateness would not hold water without a motive. The USS liberty was engaged in an espionage mission of Soviet-supported Egypt to collect intelligence from electronic sources in the area. for It was not the only time that serious clashes of espionage happened between two staunch allies such as Israel and the US. Jonathan Pollard – for one – is a Zionist American serving a long sentence in the US for releasing intelligence to Israel.

It would take a very long time to survey all records, a sound military knowledge and fact-finding abilities to reach a fully conclusive independent version, which the inherent secrecy of an espionage wartime mission makes further difficult.

The many shadows of the case are considered reason enough to press US senators and representatives to demand the investigation to be reopened.

Read more in English at www.ussliberty.org

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Palestine National Council votes in favour of two-states solution, a major and mostly looked-over shift in Palestinian politics.

Palestinians and Arabs are sometimes blamed for their failure to form a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 1948 and 1967 when they were respectively under Egyptian and Jordanian administration until when they were invaded by Israel. This is ignoring foremost historical facts.

In fact the Palestinians never did recognise the legitimacy of the Zionist colonisation nor the 1947 and 1948 state borders. Establishing a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip implied the recognition of a Jewish State in the rest of Palestine and it still does. The original 1964 charter called for the dismantlement of Israel and “a democratic secular state” on the whole of the country with equal rights for all citizens. The point here lies in the difference between what is considered legitimate and what is considered achievable in view of the force balance.

After the 1967 defeat and the realisation that the world powers supported Israel’s existence, the Palestinians lost short or mid-term hope of recovering the pre 1948 territories and focused on “establishing a national authority on any lands that can be wrested from Zionist occupation”.

This is what has been on the mainstream PLO agenda ever since. However the “one state” option was never quite buried and it is growingly considered in view of recent and present developments.

Survivors of Sabra and Shatila 1982 massacres demand Sharon prosecuted for war crimes in Belgium as the law of this country makes it possible to sue presumed war criminals for acts committed abroad.