Ed O'Loughlin
June 2, 2007
Forty years ago, Israel captured land from Syria, Egypt and Jordan, but this did not translate into lasting peace. Many on both sides of the battle are now pondering the lost opportunities.SOME say the war that broke out in the Middle East 40 years ago this week had changed the entire region when it ended six days later. Others say it never ended at all. Of all the territories captured by Israel in the Six-Day War, only the Sinai peninsula has been returned to its former owner, Egypt, thanks to former US president Jimmy Carter's Camp David accords.
On Israel's northern front, its troops and settlers still occupy the Golan Heights, seized from Syria on the fifth day of the war. Their conventional forces may no longer be engaged with each other but a state of phoney war still exists between Israel and Syria. Sometimes — such as last July, for instance — it erupts into proxy violence in neighbouring Lebanon.
In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers and paramilitary police are needed to control 2.5 million Palestinians and to protect the 450,000 Jewish settlers planted in their midst since the war.
To the south, the isolated Palestinian enclave of Gaza remains, in the eyes of the United Nations, under Israeli military occupation despite the withdrawal of about 7500 Jewish settlers in 2005.
Gaza's air space, sea access and border crossings are still under tight Israeli military control, its economy subject to an Israeli embargo backed by Western powers.
More at;
The Age