In the aftermath of the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol declared that the threat to destroy Israel since its founding had been eliminated. He further emphasized that Israel would not allow it to return. On October 7, 2023, following the attack launched by Palestinian Sunni military group and political party Hamas — which began with a barrage of rockets and was followed by infiltrations into the Gaza periphery — Israel’s image as an “invincible” military power was shaken temporarily in the Arab imagination and even more profoundly within Israeli society itself.

Throughout the history of the conflict, Israel’s portrayal as a formidable fortress and deterrent has been closely tied to its survival. It is thus unsurprising that Israel has made brutal efforts to restore this image, drawing inspiration from its past victories, particularly the Six-Day War. This war remains a pivotal moment in its military and political history. It not only led to geographic expansion by occupying Arab territories that remain under its control today, but also established the foundations of political and strategic influence that have shaped its future policies and global alignments.

A reading of the current reality, alongside reflections on the conflict’s past, suggests we are witnessing a more dangerous and transformative moment whose repercussions may surpass those of the Nakba — the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War — or the Six-Day War.

Reflections on the past

Israel learned its lessons after the 1956 Suez Crisis. At that time, it allied with colonial powers France and Great Britain, desperate to defend their empires in a rapidly changing world, without gaining direct support from either of the new global superpowers. By the time of the Six-Day War, Israel concentrated its diplomatic and propaganda efforts on securing support from the United States.

Central to Israel’s propaganda campaign was its portrayal of the Soviet Union as the arms supplier to Arab states and of itself as a victim of imminent Arab aggression, ten years after its withdrawal from Sinai. In Western media, Israel was depicted as a small democracy under siege, evoking sympathy from both the American public and decision-makers. The narrative drew on memories of Nazi horrors, with protesters outside Soviet consulates dressed in the uniforms of concentration camp prisoners.

US support for Israel, initially hesitant but increasingly explicit after the war, was motivated by the desire for a strategic ally capable of countering regional Soviet influence. With meticulous planning, Israel framed its surprise aerial assault on June 5, 1967, which decimated the Egyptian Air Force, as a necessary preemptive measure to avert an existential threat. 

This existential danger was the justification for its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The war also caused the displacement of an estimated 300,000 Palestinians and placed over a million more under Israeli rule in the occupied territories.

For Israel, the gains from this war surpassed those of any other conflict in its history. While the 1948 Arab–Israeli War allowed Israel to seize more territory than the UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) had allocated, the long-term political and strategic gains of 1967 set it apart.

Eternal recurrence

Israel has reused the same tactics in its policies and military operations for decades since, but they have become more blatant in the current war on Gaza. Israel could have framed Hamas’s attack as an act of terrorism or a security incident, as it has traditionally characterized Palestinian armed resistance operations. This time, however, it chose to depict the attack as an existential war, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing it as the most dangerous event in Jewish history since the Holocaust.

The existential threat to Israel is now framed as Iran and its regional proxies, with the ongoing war exhibiting a level of violence and madness unprecedented in the conflict’s history. Israeli authorities justify this carnage by aiming to permanently destroy enemy combatant capabilities.

Who stops wars?

No armed conflict in history, least of all in the Arab–Israeli context, has ever ended due to global sympathy for civilian suffering or horror at images of mass graves and severed limbs. Wars end only when someone with the means and interest to stop them intervenes, whether victors or powerful actors with sufficient military or economic leverage to impose a resolution. This is the Hobbesian world of realism, not Kant’s vision of perpetual peace.

During the 1956 Suez Crisis, the UN Security Council’s ceasefire resolution was initially ignored, as is often the case with resolutions that lack enforcement by major powers. The war ended only after the Soviet Union directly threatened military intervention and the US, in an attempt to maintain the regional balance of power, exerted considerable diplomatic pressure. Israel withdrew from Sinai five months later, following numerous massacres. An international peacekeeping force was deployed in Sinai.

In 1967, Israel was the first to accept the UN Security Council’s immediate ceasefire resolution because it had already achieved its objectives, which inflicted massive losses on the Arabs. However, US support, initially hesitant, became stronger after the war. Subsequent Security Council sessions called for a permanent ceasefire and Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories. The Soviet Union led these demands.

But the US insisted on a permanent ceasefire before addressing withdrawal, ultimately leading to the adoption of UN Resolution 242 five months later. This resolution, which reflected the US position, tied Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories (or “the territories” with the definite article, in Arab interpretation) to the establishment of permanent peace. “Land for peace” became the framework for post-1967 negotiations, shaping the Camp David and Oslo Accords signed in 1978 and 1993, respectively.

Israel thus secured catastrophic gains from Arabs, reshaped the Middle East map to this day and solidified its doctrine of power as the surest path to security, with international approval.

A historical shift

In the ongoing genocide, Israel has killed over 46,000 Palestinians at the lowest estimates and 186,000 at higher ones, with 120,000 wounded and at least 10,000 missing. It has displaced 1.9 million people within Gaza, out of a population of 2.2 million. A UN study found that the proportion of amputated children in Palestine is the highest in the world relative to population size.

The horrors of the current genocide are often compared to the Nakba, but there is a critical difference: Palestinians in 1948 had the option of fleeing to neighboring countries or the West Bank and Gaza to save their lives. Despite the displacement of nearly 750,000 Palestinians and the killing of an estimated 15,000 in 1948, today’s Nakba is compounded by more than just numbers — Palestinians in Gaza faced perpetual killing and displacement within its borders, with no escape or refuge.

Even if the current fragile ceasefire was to turn into a permanent truce today, reconstruction would take until 2040, raising dire questions about the fate of Palestinians in a devastated territory where more than an estimated 80% of buildings and infrastructure are destroyed.

The current situation is undoubtedly worse than 1967. The Security Council has failed to pass a resolution for an immediate ceasefire, repeatedly vetoed by the US over the past year. The supposed three-phase plan for a permanent ceasefire, if completed (which is highly unlikely amid the ongoing developments), will come only after strategic calculations to ensure the long-term security of Israel and its allies. This is clearly part of a broader plan to reshape the region, and it is not only about Palestine.

On the Lebanese front, after a ceasefire and the complete neutralization of Lebanese Shia party and paramilitary group Hezbollah’s regional power, Israel is attempting to establish a depopulated buffer zone in southern Lebanon, issuing warnings to residents of border towns not to return. Israel has also destroyed border villages during its incursions. Similarly, after President Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell in Syria, Israel expanded its control over the Golan Heights buffer zone and declared it Israeli territory forever.

As the US supported Israel in the infamous Resolution 242 and rejected unconditional Israeli withdrawal, the same is expected now. Israel is unlikely to relinquish its gains from this war or its aftermath.

Any prospect for ending the war?

Despite the recent issuance of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for the arrest of Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, there was already evident international hesitation to accept the legitimacy of the decision — even before US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on ICC officials. Like prior rulings by the International Court of Justice and Security Council draft resolutions lacking US support, the ICC warrant will likely face a similar fate.

No real external political pressure will be exerted on Israel without US consent, as has been the case since the Six-Day War, with only rare exceptions under successive American administrations. Even before Trump’s administration resumed office — and aside from his recent proposals to “own Gaza” — expectations regarding Gaza were predictable. His previous administration’s priorities on the Palestinian issue were embodied in its “peace plan,” which presented a vague interpretation of the two-state solution, diverging from the provisions of Resolution 242.

The new reality

This new reality makes the two-state solution envisioned by Resolution 242 and the June 4, 1967 borders appear like relics of a distant past. Arab mediation efforts are now focused on unifying the divided Palestinian leadership, but these efforts have failed. The outlook remains bleak — both in terms of the immense devastation in Gaza — and in the West Bank for that matter — and human loss and the prospects for the Palestinian cause of national liberation.

Halfway through the war, some voices from within Gaza occasionally surfaced on social media, calling for Hamas to disarm; others do not object to excluding Hamas from the political scene altogether. Mohamed Al-Tous, a recently-released Palestinian prisoner who spent 40 years incarcerated in Israeli prisons has denounced the idea of armed resistance under the current circumstances where it has led to more devastation for Palestinians rather than to national liberation. Instead, he urged reconciliation between Hamas and Palestinian political party Fatah that governs the West Bank through the Palestinian Authority (PA). Yet the general will of Palestinians and their right to choose their representatives remain unknown and absent from the picture, after nearly two decades of political vacuum without elections.

Amid international and local betrayals, Palestinian suffering continues in Gaza and the West Bank, alongside the displacement of civilians in Southern Lebanon due to the new occupation. All of this unfolds amid a broader regional transformation that will shape the coming decades.

A grim future

In this bleak reality, which Hamas insists on calling a victory, Arab commentators continue to demand Arab leadership intervention. Others still engage with international legal mechanisms that have proven to be undeniably useless in stopping the massacres.

However, what everyone knows but refuses to admit is that Palestinian liberation from occupation will never be achieved by pinning hopes on international law, Arab regimes or the current Palestinian leadership. Nor will it come from civilians rallying around and cheering for armed factions in a quagmire of proxy wars, hoping they will fight their just battles for them.

A single principle underpins these challenges: the necessity of a unified Palestinian front. Some view a return to the heyday of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was replaced by the current PA after the Oslo Accords, as one possible path. The PLO was only as powerful as it was representative — not just of Palestinian factions but, more importantly, of a vast base of unions, syndicates, feminist groups, self-governing bodies in refugee camps, academics, diaspora communities and others — and when it renounced violence. Others advocate for the Palestinian National Initiative or an entirely new grassroots organizational structure that Palestinians themselves choose to represent their national aspirations.

Arab intellectual and political circles, particularly those in opposition to current Arab regimes, must engage in serious reflection and reassess resistance strategies. Resistance is a far broader concept than armed struggle — it must begin at home, where oppression has shaped citizens’ lives for decades. Time and again, grassroots, people-powered organizing and anti-oppression, anti-occupation movements have proven to be the way forward. There is no easy way out.

[AlManassa published an earlier version of this piece in Arabic.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.