The Six Day War, which turned 55 this month, is a historic turning point in the history of the State of Israel, as well as in its relations with the Arab world around it, since the war broke through the first wall of Arab hostility and refusal, which until then relied on the belief To defeat Israel and eliminate it.
But alongside all this, the war is also an important milestone in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since its results are in fact what "created" the Palestinian people.
True, in an effort to advance the Palestinian narrative and its claim to ownership of the Land of Israel, the Palestinians go so far as to claim that they preceded not only the Zionist settlers of the late 19th century but also the Israelites, for they are the descendants of the ancient Canaanites. , Which gives them the first right to land.
But to rewrite, and in fact to fabricate the history and hang on to the Canaanites and Jebusites, the lord of Jerusalem before it was conquered by King David, there are no buyers even among the Palestinians themselves.
And as evidence, when these carry out systematic destruction of archeological remains in order to erase any trace of the Jewish past of the land, they also do not miss finds and sites from the period before the conquest of the land by the children of Israel.
On the other hand, the claim that the Palestinian national movement is a mirror image of Zionism, and that its emergence as early as the 20th century is a reaction of the local population to the challenge posed by the Zionist movement, which the British sought to settle, is very widespread. The country and establish a Jewish state there.
But the truth is, it was precisely the Six Day War that suddenly turned the Arabs of the Land of Israel into Palestinians.
Until the Six Day War, the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria, even in their own eyes, were perceived as Jordanians, and in any case held Jordanian citizenship.
Ariel Sharon did reiterate that "Jordan is Palestine" whenever it was necessary to bring about a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.
But this statement was actually coined by King Abdullah I, the patriarch of the current king, who founded the Kingdom of Jordan and annexed Judea and Samaria to his kingdom after the War of Independence.
Compared to residents of the West Bank, residents of the Gaza Strip found themselves under Egyptian military rule, which treated the Strip as if it were part of the Egyptian state, and of course did not consider becoming an independent entity.
But in June 1967, the Arabs dragged Israel into a war that no one had watched and no one wanted.
The price of their adventure was the loss of Judea and Samaria and the Sinai Peninsula.
Millions of Arabs, who until then had lived as Jordanians or under Egyptian military rule, became subject to Israeli rule, and in one moment "discovered" or in fact there were those who "discovered for them" that they were Palestinians.
Their claim to be recognized as a people with national rights was now supported by Arab states, which had previously not considered establishing a Palestinian state in the territories under their rule, but were now in a hurry to adopt it to harm Israel.
It must be admitted that the indecision, hesitation and especially Israel's unwillingness to decide on the future of the territories it occupied in the Six Day War, let alone claim it for itself, played into the hands of the Palestinians who became the pioneer force in the Arab struggle in Israel.
Needless to say, Israeli Arabs were also quick to join the celebration, and instead of becoming a bridge to Israeli-Arab peace and a model for coexistence, they have adopted a Palestinian identity that has been going on since June 1967 and makes it difficult for them to integrate into Israeli society.
In the end, Israel surrendered to what appeared to be an inevitable and also irreversible process, and in the Oslo Accords of September 1993 it recognized the Palestinians as a people and the PLO as their representative.
And so, thanks to Israel's victory in the Six Day War, the Palestinians came into the world.
Were we wrong?
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