EPAIsrael was forged in, and defined by, war. Each armed conflict, large and small, left its mark. But it is the shortest, the Six Day War of June 1967, that seems to resonate more than all the others. Why?Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza ReutersFor many Israelis, this was a moment of euphoria. Their young state's military prowess had been amply demonstrated. The whole of Jerusalem, and all of Judaism's holiest places, were back under Jewish control for the first time in 2,000 years. Just 22 years after the Holocaust, the Jewish people's future now seemed secure, in their ancestral homeland. This was heady stuff. For the Palestinians, it was a different story. More than a million Palestinian Arabs came under Israeli military rule and hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes, some of them for the second time. For them, this was a grim sequel to the "Nakba" (Catastrophe) of 19 years earlier, when Israel gained its independence and more than 700,000 Palestinians beca...
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