David Makovsky: Once foreign people start dying for Israel, that's the end of US-Israel
relations.
We don't want any American dying for Israel.
They clearly want American weapons, they want American aid…
Danielle: But they wanted to help themselves.
Danielle: David Makovsky from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
You're a senior fellow there, but you've been involved at the state department, with The
Hill as a journalist for so long with issues relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict...
Thank you for joining us to talk about...
David: Delighted to be with you, Dany.
Danielle: The Six-Day War was a Six-Day War.
It is one of the few conflicts that isn't named something different everywhere.
Talk a little about it.
David: Look, the run-up to the war was fascinating, because there's so much lessons that you could
really take from that whole month leading to war.
And... the debate still rages.
How much of it was a miscalculation?
How much of it was inevitable, you know?
You could wonder in your mind.
You know, if you Soviets didn't plant false information that Israel was about to attack
Syria, and then gave that information to the Egyptians, would Nasser have brought troops
into the Sinai?
Would he have kicked out the UN emergency force right there?
Would he have closed the straits?
But once he closed the straits...
What you realize is that, in certain ways, the run-up to the Six-Day War even goes back
to 1956 and the Suez crisis and its aftermath.
Danielle: So let's talk as if this is new to us.
The '56 conflict is very much a piece with history, because the United States is not
on Israel's side.
David: Right.
With Eisenhower in '56, he is trying to get Arab nationalists on America's side.
He feels what the Brits and the French and the Israelis have done have, you know, by
taking Suez, the Suez canal, they will ensure that the Arab nationalists and their new charismatic
leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, sides with the Soviets.
So he's determined to push back on that.
Now, one of the pieces of this is the waterway leading up to Israel that Nasser closed what's
called the Straits of Tiran, that goes all the way up to Israel's southern port of Aqaba.
He says, "Look, you just gotta get out of everywhere.
You gotta get out of the Sinai.
You gotta get off the Suez canal.
We gotta hope that he doesn't do it again, and I'm even gonna sign an aide-memoire diplomatic
speak that says he shouldn't do it again, and if he does it again the United States
will open up the canal."
The Israelis take the president of the United States seriously.
Now, what's happened also is that Israel has cultivated a quiet relationship with the Shah
of Iran, also something very historical.
Israel is getting all of its oil through that place.
So when Nasser cuts off the straits again in May of 1967, you know, 50 years ago this
month, what happens is that Israel says, "We can't afford the straits to be closed, because
all our oil, that's our lifeline.
We got a promise from the United States of America."
Now, the only thing is is that Eisenhower doesn't fully bring the Johnson team, or the
Johnson team is so preoccupied in Vietnam, they don't exactly know what Eisenhower agreed
to.
They go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to say...
Danielle: Where Ike lives at this point.
David: ...Where Ike lives in retirement, and...
What's the deal, you know?
They find out what was the commitment.
But the Israelis think they have a commitment.
Now, look at how the changing world impacts this one crisis.
It's fascinating.
So Eshkol is this prime minister.
He's like the antithetical Israeli prime minister, to a certain way...if the new
sabra, the new native born Israeli, very confident, has some swagger, Eshkol is the old Eastern
European Jew.
He speaks Hebrew with a Yiddish accent, and all these generals are saying there's gonna
be war with Nasser.
He's closed the straits.
He's brought in troops into the Sinai.
There's gonna be a war.
We need some surprise, and we mobilize the country.
The whole economy comes to a standstill.
There's this young chief of staff named Yitzhak Rabin, and he says, you know, "What are we
waiting for?"
Eshkol says, "America.
America, America, America.
We don't move without America.
Let's see if we can stave off this war."
He singlehandedly holds off the generals.
By the way, he's the defense minister too, which created its own crisis, because he didn't
seem like the defense minister type, and he's actually replaced by this guy with an eyepatch.
Danielle: That guy!
David: Named Moshe Dayan...
Two days before the war, because he gives a speech in Yiddish, and he kind of gumbles
it and mumbles it, and people said, "Oh, no.
This isn't good."
But, anyway.
Eshkol is holding off the generals.
He said, "If America makes a promise, America's commitment has gotta be worth something."
So he sends this very eloquent foreign minister of his named Abba Eban and says, "Go, tell
them they made a commitment."
It wasn't just Eisenhower.
It was really the world, in many ways.
"Go to De Gaulle.
Go to the Brits and go to the United States.
Go to the White House."
So that's what, you know, Eban does.
Eban said, "But you made a commitment!"
He said, "Ah, yeah.
That was 1957.
Now it's 1967."
I think that sentence seared into the Israeli consciousness.
This idea of the futility of international guarantees.
You know Menachem Begin would subsequently say, "There's no guarantee to guarantee a guarantee."
And Eban, who puts his faith in the United States, basically, and is the leader, and is with
Eshkol in trying to stave off war and say, "Well, America made a commitment," and basically,
they see these international guarantees as useless.
I think, as someone who was actually in the state department during the Israeli Palestinian
negotiations, the ghost of '67 always hovered, because if you had said, "Well, what about
guarantees?"
I would look around and say, "The Israelis still remember '67."
Danielle: But, I mean, to be fair, jumping forward, the Israelis got a guarantee from
George W. Bush that Barack Obama basically said, "Eh, you know."
Right.
David: Right.
That was a letter, and it wasn't even...
This is even, coming to Israel's aid at war...
Basically, no one is willing to open up the straits.
Then Eshkol realizes this is war, but then he has this insight.
He says, "You know what?
I'm gonna send a second guy to Washington.
But we're gonna ask a different question.
We're not gonna ask, how do we avoid war?
We're gonna ask, what does the US do if Israel goes to war?"
He sends a guy named Meir Amit, the head of the Mossad, and he meets with his Pentagon
people and his CIA, and all that.
What's fascinating is a split screen reality of '67.
The public in Israel thinks there's gonna be a second Holocaust.
The central park of Israel is a place called Park HaYarkon in Tel Aviv.
People are digging mass graves.
They're convinced a second Holocaust is coming, that all the Arabs...
Nasser says he's gonna push Israel into the sea.
He's gonna liquidate Israel.
I mean, he doesn't mince words.
So having tried to hold off the generals to secure this American commitment
based on what Eisenhower said in March of 1957 as a way to get Israel out, Amit says,
"Okay.
What's your assessment?"
He goes, "The Pentagon, the CIA, I'll say you're gonna win big.
Our assessment is that the military thing is stacked for you."
They're right.
They got it right.
I don't know if they say six days you're gonna triple the size of the country, but they say
you're gonna win.
Amit basically comes back and says, "If Israel goes to war, the US isn't gonna confront Israel
on the high seas or not gonna shoot down Israeli planes, or anything like that."
It's fascinating.
It's a fascinating month.
But what sears into the consciousness of Israelis is these international commitments are worthless.
Danielle: And people think about this in the context of guarantees, you know, back then.
But of course a big element of efforts towards the peace process has been this notion that
if we can just offer Israel a sense of security vis-a-vis certain parties, then we can really
make them feel the confidence to be able to make the concessions necessary.
What you're really saying is, no.
Having gone through this, Israel is just not going to accept it.
And Israel, of course, has never been willing to accept a formal security guarantee
from the United States.
David: That's right.
Danielle: Never.
David: That's right, and that's what really, I think, is this turning moment in the Zionist
history, is that it really deepens this ethos of self reliance, and that Israel believes
it's a moral point too, that no foreign country should die for Israel.
Israelis should die for Israel, because they really fear...
It's remarkable.
I mean, you talk to their leaders.
They say it.
Once foreign people start dying for Israel, that's the end of the US-Israel relations.
We don't want any American dying for Israel.
It's a remarkable...
They clearly want American weapons.
They want American aid.
Danielle: But they wanted to help themselves.
You know...
...But I think a lot of people think this comes from the Holocaust, and this is
perhaps one of the unexplored -- certainly for us in these moments -- unexplored aspects
of this, is that you've spent so much time in Israel.
I am also very familiar with Israel....
Israel in the mind's eye of the outside world is a country that was created in the aftermath
of the Holocaust, and is, in many ways for the West, an expiation of the Holocaust, even
though, for Israelis, it never was.
David: Right.
Danielle: To the contrary, Israelis in Israel...
Ashkenazis have contempt for people who lived through the Holocaust, because they weren't
smart enough to be Zionists and come.
So we think of this, and then suddenly we have this war, and in some ways the '67 war
is so much more formative of the Israeli modern state, the Israeli consciousness...
David: Sure.
Danielle: ...The Israeli relationship with the outside world, than the Holocaust ever
was.
This is interesting.
David: Right, no.
It's fascinating.
Look, when President Obama gave a speech in Cairo and kind of suggested that Israel's
right to a state seemed to derive from the Holocaust, I think that had a bigger impact
than him not visiting Israel at that time.
Danielle: Because they were offended?
David: Because they were offended.
Their view is, their history to their connection to that land goes back thousands of years.
Now, he corrected the record.
But that was a key moment.
Israel doesn't believe, if there was no Holocaust, there would be no Israel.
Israel believes if there was an Israel, there might not have been a Holocaust; if they could
have defended themselves in the '30s.
But anyway, but look... there's no questioning also the impact this war had on the Arab psyche.
Danielle: Right.
David: Until the Arab Spring of 2011, in many ways you feel the Arabs were living in the
seventh day of the Six-Day War.
They were just this sense of paralysis, inertia, humiliation.
Here was Nasser, who was...
The whole idea of Pan-Arabism was riding high.
It just shatters in '67.
Danielle: And in such a humiliating fashion.
David: Humiliating way.
I mean, Israel's attack on the Egyptian Air Force to start the war just meant they control
the skies.
Danielle: So they control the skies.
They take out the Syrian air force in less than a day.
David: Right.
Danielle: They take the West Bank.
They take Jerusalem.
David: Right.
So we've said this in our conversations about the Six-Day War more than once, that the Arabs
recognized that the state of Israel is now here to stay, and not only that, but they
can kick the crap out of us, to use the term of art.
Why does the '73 war happen, then?
David: Anwar Sadat, who was seen as a lightweight, an interim figure, you know, that Nasser wanted
as a vice president because nobody would think that he was a competitor to the great Nasser.
He comes along and he says, "You know what?
Ultimately, the Soviets, they're good at getting us to war, but they can't get us to peace,
because America and Israel, they've got the cards.
And America has the relationship with Israel."
But his insight was, if I cross the canal, just cross the canal...
Danielle: The Suez canal.
David: ...The Suez canal, I've shattered the status quo.
I've regained the dignity, and then I could go for peace.
But, basically Sadat does make one blunder, in my view.
He's knocking Israeli planes out of the sky, and he crosses the canal.
But then he says, "I'll do a little more.
I'll do a little more."
Now, he wasn't going to Tel Aviv, but he did have a Soviet airlift going.
Kissinger in '73 is thinking détente, that I had just cut this deal with the Soviets.
I'm not gonna intervene in a massive way if they don't, which wasn't easy for Kissinger,
who felt closely to Israel.
You know, they're always thinking the last war.
The Israelis will win.
They will push them back.
So in the beginning he thinks, "Well, maybe it won't have much of a cost anyway."
Then he sees, well, maybe there is a value of ending this war with Egypt getting a limited
victory diplomatically.
They cross the canal, have a security counsel resolution, lock in the status quo,
start the diplomacy from a place that the Egyptians can say, "I crossed the canal."
Except Sadat complicates it.
He's got the Soviet airlift.
Kissinger hears about this and goes...
He goes, "What?"
He goes, "I did not intervene, because I wanted to preserve détente.
But I don't want the Soviet Union...
They'll claim victory.
They're the ones who brought you across the canal.
It'll be because of them in a way."
Then he turns it on, and then the tide of the war changes, and Israel--
Danielle: And Israel gets to the gates of Cairo.
David: Right, gates of Cairo, gates of Damascus.
Everything changes.
But, you know, you have to look at the superpower competition.
Danielle: So maybe the lesson wasn't really learned as much until '73.
David: Right.
Danielle: Is that fair?
David: I think what happens then after '73 is that they do feel there's a value.
If we could flip Sadat, if we could get Egypt squarely on America's side, and that's what
happens.
These two disengagement agreements of Kissinger really set the predicate for...
Danielle: Camp David.
David: ...This historic, electrifying moment of the second half of the 20th century.
Sadat is getting on an airplane flying to Israel.
By the way, the guy who didn't like this -- sadly, I say this very sadly -- was a guy by the
name of Jimmy Carter, who is now the president.
He has this idea that there's gonna be a grand Geneva Peace Conference, and I'm gonna get
the Syrians there and I'm gonna get all these players there, and we're gonna have one big
comprehensive peace.
Sadat says, "This is no good.
This is no good."
Danielle: Because he knows the Syrians ...
David: He knows the Syrians are an ally of the Soviets.
They are not serious.
So I think Sadat goes to Jerusalem to preempt Carter, who had just announced with the Soviets
in October '77, that they're gonna have a joint approach to this, a joint major peace
conference, and Sadat understands this isn't going nowhere.
I gotta go on my own.
He writes Carter a letter.
Don't do this.
Let me go on my own.
He goes on his own.
Carter was not happy.
The United States was basically silent for, like, the first week after this electrifying
moment because Carter thinks, "He's destroying my plans."
But then, to be fair to Carter, once it's in full swing at Camp David, it's a different
thing.
Danielle: So we have the moment.
We have the Six-Day War.
This changes Israel, and it turns Israel into the country that we know today.
David: Right.
Danielle: It changes the Arabs, because it changes them into the countries, at least
vis-a-vis Israel -- we don't want to over do it -- that we know today.
Countries that don't feel like they can win in combat with Israel.
And no Arab country takes on Israel from then on.
David: Right, and Egypt believes that it's gotta look out for its own national interests.
It's not just the Pan-Arabist thing from Nasser.
Sadat says, "Look, we fought for the Palestinians in '48, '56, '67, war of attrition, '68,
'70, '73.
That's enough.
We want our land."
Danielle: So one last effort in '73 after '67, and then they're done.
David: Right.
Danielle: Okay.
But now--
David: And without Egypt, there's no Arab war coalition.
Danielle: Right, and Egypt is still the big man on campus...
David: Right, absolutely.
Danielle: ...In terms of the Arab world at this point, which it no longer is now.
Okay.
So we've got this scenario, and fraught drama.
The United States is now in the Israeli camp.
It has come down on the Israeli side.
Everybody identifies the United States as part of this.
Okay.
But now Israel has the West Bank.
What...
This also changes Israel.
David: Totally.
Danielle: Right?
Because yes, it's true it's no longer this country that people confuse with a country
that had to be born out of the Holocaust.
It's an independent country.
It's a Zionist, proud, very forceful country.
David: Right.
Danielle: But it's also an occupying power, and it's got all these people, and it doubles
their size.
It takes back Jerusalem.
That also changes Israel.
David: Oh yeah.
Danielle: So what happens?
David: Well, there's a secret cabinet meeting right after the Six-Day War.
Danielle: In America?
David: In Israel.
Danielle: In Israel.
David: They say, "If we get peace with Syria, we give up the Golan.
If we get peace with Egypt, we give up the Sinai."
But the West Bank has a much more biblical resonance, and East Jerusalem...
Jerusalem, you know, the idea of it was, after 2000 years since the last Jewish commonwealth,
it is overwhelming, and Israel annexes Jerusalem.
Danielle: Even though these people aren't religious Jews.
David: No, not at all.
Danielle: Even though they're not messianic in any way...
David: No, not at all.
Danielle: ...It's still got this power.
David: Right.
The power of nationalism.
Danielle: Destiny.
David: Of peoplehood, of a rendezvous with destiny.
All these things.
Danielle: Right.
David: Look, it divides the country.
Danielle: And it still divides the country.
David: To this day.
The access points of Israeli politics largely turn on this issue.
Now in America, when we say he's right of center or left of center, that
means we have a certain view on either side of what is the role of government in society,
of taxation, what's the right amount. On social policy, you know, a social conservative, social
liberal...
I mean, all these access points in America don't translate there.
I mean, many don't.
I shouldn't say none. But...
And there was opportunities that were missed.
Yeah, right.
Danielle: But it's not just the Palestinians who have missed opportunities.
It's that famous quote from Abba Eban
David: Abba Eban's famous line, that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Israel missed and opportunity too.
I mean, Jordan was, you know...
I've talked to a bunch of these generals.
I say, "What is the biggest moment missed?"
They'll say, "1987," because it was a chance to give Jordan, to be--
Danielle: To give the West Bank back to Jordan.
David: Right.
Danielle: And in 1988 came Hussein...
Gives up.
I don't want this anymore.
David: July 1st. 1988.
Danielle: Good luck with that.
David: Good luck, you're on your own.
Danielle: And of course, this continues to roil Israeli politics, Israeli relations with
the United States.
Now, interestingly, of course, it also roils Israeli relations with the Arab world.
This is one of the most interesting things since the Arab Spring, but I would say more
since Iran has become such an expeditionary power.
Less about the Arab Spring.
More about Iran.
David: Absolutely.
Danielle: That the Arab countries basically have, in the 21st Century, taken the reality
of 1967. Yes, you can beat us, yes you're here to stay, yes we know it, but rhetorically
we're always gonna stand with the Palestinians.
We're not gonna do much.
But we're gonna stand with the Palestinians.
Never gonna go to war for the Palestinians again, but we're gonna stand with you.
First of all, the Palestinians stand with Saddam Hussein when he invades Kuwait, and
this is a shock wave through the Gulf.
Then we have the rise of Iran and the sense that this is the real problem, and who is
standing against Iran?
It's not the Palestinians, because Hamas has arranged with them.
It's the Israelis.
David: Right.
Danielle: So we have an upending of that status quo that was created 50 years ago in this
century.
David: I think in many ways...
That's why I say after the Arab Spring, and certainly you're right to put the focus on
Iran...
That's where I feel we've finally...
Out from under the seventh day of the sixth day war.
The Arabs have other issues, and--
Danielle: So now we're on the eighth day.
David: We're on the eighth day.
Danielle: We're on the eighth day.
David: And the Arab states say, "you know, Israel could be part of a solution here."
They're not just part of a problem.
Danielle: Okay.
So here's the question.
I don't want the Palestinians to be a prop here.
For the Arabs, the Palestinians have been a prop since '67, in reality.
Maybe since '73, although we can argue that wasn't about them.
Now they don't even, you know, mouth platitudes about this.
It's just an afterthought, if that.
But, of course, these are real people.
David: Of course.
Danielle: They have real challenges.
They have real hopes and dreams.
David: Absolutely.
Well, this is where I think we have a split screen reality.
What you point out is accurate.
There is this strategic convergence under the table with Israel and its neighboring
Sunni states.
They're worried about Iran being able to segue from this nuclear deal to having hegemonic
aspirations in the region, and what this means for Sunni Arabs, given the enmity between
the Shia Iran and the Sunni Arabs, historically.
So this has really galvanized them.
You know, we could joke and say President Obama turns out to be the greatest unifier
of Arabs and Israelis.
Danielle: That's true.
David: Because of the nuclear deal.
Whatever it is.
To be fair to the President, I think that, you know, there are elements of a nuclear
deal that are important.
But they are the sunset issues that are not resolved, okay?
So, basically, you've got a split screen where there's a commonality of threats.
The fear of Iran, the fear of Jihadi groups like ISIS and things like that, ISIS in the
Sinai, Hamas also in Gaza.
Danielle: The Muslim Brotherhood.
David: The Brotherhood.
All these countries.
I mean, if you look at the 2014 war in Gaza, the Arab states, they don't see them as just
pietistic Muslims anymore.
They see them as, they're destabilizing.
We have this problem in our countries too.
They felt that way in 2006 with the Hezbollah war.
They felt that way in 2008.
But the pictures of Al Jazeera are powerful, and they back away.
By 2014, they're not backing away.
Egypt is leading the harder line.
No breaks for these people of Hamas.
So you've got, on one hand, this convergence under the table.
But what you were hinting at before, which is I think above the table, is a nervousness,
a little bit, of we don't want to be breaking ranks publicly.
So whatever we do under the table is okay.
There's this quote from Pardo, Tamir Pardo and the Israeli president.
He tells Netanyahu, the former head of the Mossad, he says, "Israel has become the mistress
of the Middle East.
Everyone wants to be with us, just not publicly."
So what you've got is this split screen where there's more of the strategic convergence
with the Sunni neighbors in Israel, but yet they're not ready to open up an Israeli embassy
with a flag Riyadh.
Danielle: Exactly.
But this is, again, the history.
This is the first World War 2 history.
This is not '67.
This is just the education system.
I hate to come back to something so nerdy.
This is the education system and the rhetoric of the Arab world, which is, for the last
70 years, we've been saying, "Israel is the enemy, Israel is a cancer in the heart of
the Middle East.
Israel is doing nothing but oppressing the Palestinians, and by the way, they're on the
way to doing even worse things," and we could detail even more outrageous rhetoric.
This is still an integral part of the education system throughout the Arab world.
All of a sudden you turn around and you say, "We've been saying two plus two is four for
the last 70 years, but you know what?
It's five.
Believe me, it's good."
People may be quiescent, but they're not that quiescent.
This is gonna be a process.
This is gonna be a process for Israel.
What I see, though--
David: That's why it's still more under the table.
Danielle: Yes, but what I see -- and you tell me if we're wrong -- is somehow an inexorable
process from 1967 in which Palestinian fortunes decline, sometimes slowly, sometimes faster,
and sometimes at breakneck speed, as over the last decade or so, and as you look at
it, you were involved with the negotiations, with the discussions...
We talk about a partnership of peace and we talk about conditions for peace.
50 years later, are they there, or were they more there in 1968?
David: Well, look.
Here's what has changed for the better, and this is why I think there is, you know...
I don't know if you'd say it's a trajectory of history, but, look: Israel is certainly
better off than where it was in '67.
It got peace with Egypt, peace with Jordan.
I did a back of the envelope thing.
If Israel's GNP hit 50%, according to US figures, in the '74, after '73 war, went to military
spending...
Danielle: Wow.
David: ...Okay, 50%.
That would mean that today's GDP terms $150 billion would be Israel's defense budget in
today's terms.
Today Israel's defense budget is $15 to $18 billion.
Danielle: So 10% of that.
David: Right.
10% of that, and it's really, like, 5% overall.
So the fact that, as you pointed out correctly, '73 is the last Arab state - interstate - war, has meant...
So between $150 and $18, where's that delta going?
It's going to improve quality of life, schools, clinics, universities.
Danielle: Israel.
In Israel.
David: Here, I think, the good thing is, you and I might have a respectful...
Danielle: Always.
David: ...Difference of opinion of Oslo, about '93, the secret talks.
But I think the fact that the Palestinians could run their own affairs in every Palestinian
city of the West Bank was good, for the most part, because if the Palestinian national
movement collapses, I think you're gonna see more of a clamor for one person, one vote
there.
I think that's what Israel doesn't want.
Israel wants to be a Jewish state and a democracy.
Those are the twin wings of the Zionist aircraft.
So I think that Israel doesn't want to see the Palestinian national movement collapse.
Danielle: Sure.
Israel has a stake in Palestinian success.
They haven't always worked in that direction, but I think there's a broad recognition that
at the heart of Palestinian failure is this lack of governance, this lack of institutions,
and that's not getting better.
This is the irony, is--
David: Well, look, you had a guy, Yasser Arafat, who yelled jihad, who led his people to a
self destructive intifada 2000 to 2004.
Many more Palestinians killed than Israelis.
His economy was in ruins.
I mean, it gave them nothing, and at least you've got a leader now who basically thinks
violence is self destructive for Palestinians.
He's not Arafat in that way.
He's not up to what's needed.
He's not up to what's needed, believe me.
Danielle: This is fundamentally the story of Israel and the Palestinians, is that Israel
is successful enough, compelling enough, and the region has changed enough and the global
environment has changed enough, that in fact the Palestinians have become an afterthought,
and that the things that they do to call attention to themselves and their plight involve violence,
which are fraught with risk for them as much as for everybody.
This is a tragedy.
This is a tragedy for them and for the Middle East.
What do you think?
David: No, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
I agree with that.
Danielle: 50 years from now.
David: Where are we?
Danielle: Where are we?
No one would have said in 1967 that 50 years from now, we would still be essentially where
we are today.
At least territorially.
David: Look, I do believe...
Look, here's why you get up in the morning, you're a professional optimist.
I do think that Israel and the Palestinian authority have something in common, a strategic
interest...
Is they don't want Hamas or these jihadi groups to take over.
That's common to both of them.
I have to believe that that commonality of threat is going to be able to find a way to
solve this issue.
Now, will it solve it at once?
I can predict that.
I don't think so.
Danielle: There was a huge inflection point in the Middle East in 1967.
Do you think there's gonna be another huge inflection point?
David: That, I hope there's not another war.
But look, let's be humble.
In 1967, no one predicted Sadat going to Jerusalem 12 years later.
Danielle: There you go.
David: No one predicted an Egypt Israel peace treaty 14 years later.
No one predicted the Jordan-Israel peace treaty.
No one predicted that Israel and the Palestinian National Movement would shake hands and set
up a coexistence.
None of these things were predicted.
Let's be humble, you know, that we don't know for sure, and therefore you want to do sound
policies, which is curb radicalism, promote economic opportunity, see where you build
institutions.
What I wish for the Palestinians, and I'll end on this point, is a story I heard from
Salam Fayyad.
By the way, his numbers were good on the Palestinian side because they saw him when it came to
governance, that he was actually producing.
He said something to me that I'll never forget.
He said, "Look, I'm probably the only Palestinian who reads Zionist history at night.
What do I read?
I read that between 1917 and 1947, from the Balfour Declaration, which is when the British
recognized the idea of a Jewish homeland, and the UN partition, which is two states,
November 29, 1947, Israel built the country.
They built that state.
Through institutions."
He didn't know the Hebrew names, but he said, "They built that university, right?"
I said, "Yeah, Hebrew University in Jerusalem.."
He goes, "They built that hospital, right?"
I sad, "Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem."
He goes, "Yeah."
He goes, "They built the proto government."
I said, "Yeah, the Jewish Agency."
He goes, "They built the trade union."
I said, "The Histadrut."
They built the sick fund, right, the Kupat Holim, which is the sick fund.
We went through...he goes, you know what he said my conclusion is?
By the time they declared the state, they had already built it.
That's what we gotta do.
So what I wish for the Palestinians is that they read some Zionist history, and do more
institution building, governance, bottom up.
That, I think, is a sure footing.
I would not want any cataclysmic wars here.
I hope that's in the past, but I just think we have to be humble.
In '67 we didn't know these grand predictions.
Danielle: We should be surprised in a good way.
We have been in the Middle East.
We tend to forget that.
Thank you so much.
David: Thank you very much.
Danielle: Hi folks.This the end of our Viewpoint series on the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War.
Thanks for watching.
As always, let us know what other topics you'd like AEI scholars to cover on Viewpoint,
and be sure to check out the rest of our videos and research from AEI.
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