The conference was opened by Dr. Lars Hänsel, resident representative of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Jerusalem, and Dr. Eran Lerman, executive director of AJC's Israel/Middle East Office. Both stressed the importance of the Six-Day War as a transformative event in Israeli, Middle Eastern and World history. "We will not only look back during this conference, but we will also talk about the legacy, the future and about prospects for peace," Dr. Hänsel said.

Dr. Eran Lerman (AJC) welcomes the participants in the Konrad Adenauer Conference Center

Prof. Prof. Kenneth Stein during the opening presentation

In his following keynote address Professor Kenneth Stein, former director of the Carter Center and founder of the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel at Emory University, put the Six-Day War in a historical perspective. Doing so, he presented the war as an event with far-reaching consequences. According to him the Six-Day War caused the end of Pan-Arabism and led to a situation in which the Arab world was no longer united against Israel. As a consequence of the war almost all Arab states saw the necessity to accept the State of Israel as a reality. Also for the end of the Cold War the events in the Middle East were of great importance: The defeat of the Soviet satellite states and Egypt’s turning to the USA did in the long term have a big share in the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stein said.

As a great danger for peace and understanding Professor Stein identified the development and increasing importance of narratives about the war. In contrast to objective history, narratives served to delegitimize the other, to glorify oneself, to depict oneself as the victim and finally to instigate new animosities. Unlike fact-based analysis of history, narratives were polemical and always served a political goal, Stein explained. Therefore it was of crucial importance for the success of any efforts in reconciliation to counter myths and wrong historiography.

On the second day of the conference, the role of ideology was initially in the focus. Professor Shlomo Avineri of the Hebrew University showed the tectonic changes of Israel’s political landscape in his presentation. According to him the war of 1967 fundamentally changed the meaning of the political terms “right” and “left” in Israel.

Prior to 1967 the differentiation line was drawn along attitudes towards socio-economical questions, just like in Europe. Since 1967 parties of the “left” and “right” differed – first and foremost in public debate – mainly in their positions towards the status of the occupied territories, the settlements and the peace process. “The Israeli political system as we know it today is thus a direct consequence of the Six-Day War,” said Avineri.

Dr. Martin Kramer of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy illustrated that the Six-Day-War was also very important for the political development in the Arab states. Unlike former years there were no political uprisings in the Arab states following the trauma of 1967, Kramer explained. On the contrary, the severity of the defeat caused the regimes and populations to move closer together – since both feared Israel might repeat its military victory of 1967 on another occasion. This lead to an unwritten agreement between leadership and people: The regimes made sure there would be no renewed war with Israel and in return the people refrained from trying to topple their governments.

Dr. Martin Kramer, Near East Institute

Col (ret.)Daniel Reisner, International Legal Counsel

According to Kramer this is how the war of 1967 heralded the end of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. It was later on finally ended by the Yom Kippur War and Egypt’s turning to the USA.

The current developments in the Middle East, such as the rise of Islamism and the offensives of Hizbollah, Hamas and Al Qaida, were interpreted by Kramer less as a consequence of the Six-Day War but much more as one of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Therefore Islamism could not be stopped by solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but only by a rollback of Iranian influence in the region.

The paradoxes arising from the Six-Day War for Israeli Arabs were presented by Dalia Fadila of the Al Qasemi Academic College of Education. According to her, until 1967 a part of Israeli Arabs saw their existence in Israel as a kind of waiting period and the state of Israel as a purely temporary phenomenon. This assessment was thoroughly altered by the war. The reunification with the Arabs from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank – such contacts became possible for the first time after 19 years – showed that the groups had partly developed into different directions. Israeli Arabs felt caught between two stools, seeing themselves neither as “real” Israelis nor as “real” Palestinians.

Dalia Fadila, Al Qasemi College

Guest speaker during dinner: the Syrian opposition leader in exile, Farid Ghadry

Fadila warned that most Israeli Arabs nowadays do not see themselves any longer as Israelis, a process that had become obvious at the latest since the October 2000 clashes between Israeli Arabs and Israeli security forces. In the future this would be a big problem for the state. She demanded to counter this challenge with a campaign against discrimination.

The panel “Military Government, Human Rights and Constitutional Dimensions” provided a promising example for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and understanding. In it Daniel Reisner, former head of the department for international law in the Israeli Defence Forces, and the Palestinian activist for peace and human rights, Walid Salem, debated each other. Reisner told how strange his professional routine in the 1990s was: “I was responsible for 2.5 million Palestinians but I hardly ever saw any.” Only after personal contacts at peace negotiations it dawned on him what negative consequences the occupation had. Reisner and Salem both came out in support of a two-state solution as the only possible way to peace for the two peoples.

On the morning of the closing day, the Soviet role in the Six-Day War was focused on. Dr. Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez presented their controversial research results. According to their investigations, the Soviet Union played a much more active role than has been assumed so far: The USSR consciously instigated the war in order to have Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona destroyed. This, said Ginor and Remez, was prevented only by Israel’s swift victory.

Natan Sharanski, former Soviet dissident and Israeli democracy activist, gave an impressive account of his personal experiences. For him, as for many Soviet Jews, the Six-Day War was a turning point. Israel’s crushing of the Arab armies seemed like the crushing of the Iron Curtain to him. Also there was a marked change in climate in Russian society: “Suddenly the jokes about Jews sounded totally different. First we were the soft cowards. After the war suddenly the jokes were about the chuzpe of the Israelis defeating the stupid Arabs.”

Natan Sharansky

Dr. Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez

Sharansky supported Professor Stein’s aforementioned theory according to which the Soviet Union was not able to recover from the defeat of the Arab armies in the Six-Day War, one reason being that oppressed minorities within the country felt encouraged by Israel’s example.

The closing remarks were given by Knesset member Amira Dotan, with whom KAS enjoys a long-standing cooperation. She skillfully interwove the different threads discussed during the conference and advocated investing all available resources in international cooperation and the search for peace in the region: “In order to revive the peace process we need fresh ideas. Only with new impulses we can achieve the desperately needed peace.”

Amira Dotan MK delivers the closing remarks at Beit Moses, AJC. To her right: Dr. Lars Hänsel, resident representative of KAS in Israel.

Rolf Behrens