A Surgeon's Story

8 † FTWeekend 3 June/4 June 2017 Six days and 50 years Essay |AmilestoneinIsrael’shistoryis promptingare-examinationofthe1967war and its consequences, writes John Reed sraelis remember the Six Day War The Six-Day War: Israeli as one of their finest moments — a The Breaking of the Middle East paratroopers national emergency when they by Guy Laron beside fought a lightning offensive on Yale University Press £20/$28, 384 pages Jerusalem’s three fronts against Egypt, Syria Western Wall Iand Jordan, destroying the Arab states’ Kingdom of Olives and Ash: in June 1967 airforceswithinhoursandthenpushing Writers Confront the Occupation Getty Images deep into Sinai and the West Bank. A by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman defining image shows three Israeli para- Fourth Estate £12.99/Harper $16.99 448 pages troopers gazing up beside Jerusalem’s WesternWall,theJewishsiteofdevotion City on a Hilltop: American Jews that had until then been under Jorda- and the Israeli Settler Movement nianrule.Takenfrombelow,DavidRub- by Sara Yael Hirschhorn inger’s picture cast the men in heroic Harvard £31.95/$39.95, 368 pages light, capturing their awe at the sacred, disputedterritorynowinIsrael’sgift. The Only Language They Though dizzyingly swift, the war had Understand: Forcing Compromise been a long time coming. Tensions in Israel and Palestine betweenIsraelanditsneighbours,rising by Nathan Thrall since the 1956 Suez crisis, had deepened Metropolitan Books $28, 336 pages with the emergence of a Syrian- supported Palestinian guerrilla movement capable of attacking Israel from With the occupation now in ripe mid- thefamiliarone:Israelactsswiftly,reck- a long back story and complex legal and soundbites from settlers with Brooklyn cliché often heard on both sides — Jordanian territory in the West Bank. dleage,anengagingcropofnewbooksis oning it has two or three days at most historical dimensions; however, with orNewJerseyaccents. Nathan Thrall suggests that the answer These tensions came to a head in May re-examiningitsconsequences—and,in to establish dominance on the ground a few exceptions, the writers prove The American-Israeli settlers, Hir- to that question is more likely to be 1967whenEgypt—respondingtoafalse the case of Guy Laron’s The Six Day War, beforethesuperpowersandtheinterna- themselves up to the task. Rachel Kush- schhornwrites,arealsochildrenof1967. decided in Washington than in Jerusa- SovietreportofanIsraelitroopbuild-up making us look afresh at the events that tionalcommunitydemandaceasefire. ner’s memorable essay looks at the The war marked a sea-change in the lem or Ramallah. Thrall, an analyst for along its borders — massed its own led to conflict between Israel and its The war cemented the Israeli mili- Shuafat refugee camp, a high-rise, lives of Jewish-Americans, many of the International Crisis Group who is troops around the Suez Canal, then neighbours. Laron, a historian at Jerusa- tary’sformidablereputation,andwithit walled piece of lawless urban blight whom embraced Zionism in the wake of one of the best-informed and most closed the Straits of Tiran, at the mouth lem’sHebrewUniversity,arguesthatthe Israel’s faith in an offensive doctrine inside Jerusalem’s city limits. Geraldine the victory. Some identified with Israel; trenchant observers of the conflict, of the Red Sea, to Israeli ships. Israel war was no accident; rather, it was that it has deployed in numerous Brooks, who covered the first intifada as others were uncomfortable with the argues that in the past only coercion or struck on June 5; two days later its army “designed and even desired by promi- smaller conflicts in the five decades a news reporter, writes incisively about directiontheUScounterculturewastak- outright force have been enough to reachedJerusalem’sOldCity. nent military figures in the warring since. Yet Israel had also been left Ahmed Manasra, a Palestinian teenager ing,includingnewcriticismofIsraelthat move either side towards peace: “Faced The conquest and subsequent occu- countries”.Takingissuewiththenarrow with responsibility for the fate of mil- jailed for attempted murder for his role surfacedinleftistcirclesafterthewar. with the threat of real losses — whether pation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank national and military focus of some past lions of Palestinians; the occupation inastabbingattackintherecentwaveof There was a distinctively hippie-ish, human,economic,orpolitical—Israelis and the Gaza Strip transformed both accounts, he zeroes in on the role played became, in Laron’s words, a “low-cost violence, when many of the assailants utopian cast to some of the early set- and Palestinians have made dramatic Israel and the way the outside world by economic pressures, generational permanentcondition”. andvictimsalikewerechildren. tlers,whichHirschhorncaptureswellin concessionstoavertthem.” sees it. Palestinians call 1967 the naksa conflict and civil-military tensions in The day-to-day reality of that “per- This book will make a lot of rightwing her meticulous account of Yamit, a sea- Thrall writes favourably about the (“setback”), their second national pushingallpartiestowardsthebrink. manent condition” is the subject of Israelis angry — but they aren’t the side settlement in Sinai that was evacu- presidency of Jimmy Carter, whose per- calamity after the nakba (“disaster”) of Egypt, in the 1960s, was enmeshed in intended audience. The writers’ essays ated after Israel’s peace treaty with sistent pressure on both sides pushed Israel’s founding in 1948. Euphoria an expensive and grisly military inter- Young Turks in the army reflect a broadly faithful, if bleak, Egypt. “We had different levels of edu- IsraeltomakepeacewithEgypt,andthe aroundthewarinIsraelfedaJewishset- vention in Yemen that burdened its account of how life under occupation cation and divergent interests, except Palestinianstomovetowardstheprinci- tler movement whose population now economy and pushed Gamal Abdel had been pushing since the stunts many Palestinians’ lives and live- when it came to Yamit,” Gedaliah ple of accepting the two-state solution. numbers more than 600,000 in East Nasser, its president, closer to Abdel early 1960s for Israel to lihoods. (It’sworth noting that the criti- Mazal, one of the settlers observes. Palestinian violence, he writes, played a Jerusalem and the West Bank, land that Hakim Amer, his first vice-president cal accounts of the occupation offered “There we were all united: we would roleinpushingIsraeltowardsthenotion thoselayingdownrootscallbytheBibli- and army chief of staff. There, as in achieve ‘strategic depth’ by these writers — much like the dis- create a completely unique community, of two states for two peoples, as did the cal name Judea and Samaria but which other Arab countries, the military was patches of foreign journalists based in one where anyone, from any walk of Palestinians’ recognition of Israel’s is viewed by the UN as illegally occu- used largely for domestic purposes, to the region — are often echoed in the life, would be welcome.”Jewish-Ameri- undeniable military prowess in the pied. The conflict has played out spy on the public and quash dissent — Kingdom of Olives and Ash, an anthology analysis of serving and former Israeli can immigrants also established Efrat, yearsafter1967. through two Palestinian uprisings and a a distortion that was to prove disastrous ofreportageandreflectionsonPalestin- military and security officials, who, an upscale suburban settlement some- While US presidents from Bill Clinton recent round of stabbings and other oncethewarstarted. ian life edited by novelists Michael unlike most Israelis, spend ample time times called “occupied Scarsdale” to Barack Obama have embraced Israel attacks on Israelis in which scores of In Israel too, a balance of payments ChabonandAyeletWaldman.Lastyear, in the West Bank.) “How does a Pales- because it offers million-dollar man- rather than browbeating it in their push peoplediedin2015-16. crisis was undermining the authority of the husband-and-wife team corralled a tinianknowlifeispassingby?”Palestin- sionsovertheGreenLine. to advance peace, Thrall favours a TodaythePalestiniansaremoreinter- prime minister Levi Eshkol, paving the world-class roster of their peers — the ian author Ala Hlehel writes in one of Hirschhorn’s central theme is “the tougher approach. “Forcing Israel to nally divided — both ideologically and way for a cabinet shake-up that would list includes Colm Tóibín, Mario Vargas the collection’sstrongest essays. “By the clash between Jewish-American set- make larger, conflict-ending concess- physically — than at any time in their install the upstart military veteran LlosaandHariKunzru—tobearwitness endless red tile roofs which stand out, tlers’ liberal personas and their illiberal ions would require making its fallback recent history, thanks to the political Moshe Dayan, 20 years his junior, as to the occupation as guests of Breaking stand out and increase, amid the ver- project”. Neither excusing nor down- option so unappealing that Israel would splitbetweenFatahandHamas,andthe minister of defence. While Eshkol the Silence, a pro-peace non-govern- dancyofthisconfiscatedland.” playingsettlerviolence,shenonetheless view a peace agreement as an escape Israeli walls, fences, checkpoints and was wary of war, Young Turks in the mental organisation. The resulting col- One set of voices largely absent from gives voice to one part of a community fromsomethingworse,”hewrites. travel permit requirements that restrict army had been pushing since the early

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