The Six Day War

 he Six Day War that came about in 1967 was a result of increasing tensions and border conflicts between the Arabs and Israelis. On June 5, Israeli forces planned a preemptive air assault that destroyed almost all of Egypt's air force on the ground. After this, Israeli forces had control in the air. At the end of the Six Day War, Israel had occupied not only the West Bank and Jerusalem, but also the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. . All of historic Palestine had come under Israeli control. General Shlomo Goren blew the shofar, a musical horn made of a ram’s horn, for the first time at the Western Wall since 1929. Jewish soldiers ran through the narrow streets of Jerusalem covered in mud and blood to get to the Western Wall. To the Jewish people “the wall was not merely a historical site but a symbol that reached right down to the core of each soldier’s Jewish identity” (Armstrong 399). Jews felt like everything had fallen back into place, but Arabs could not have thought more differently. To Arabs, “The Israeli conquest was not ‘reunification’ of the city but its occupation by a hostile power” (Armstrong 402). Bodies of soldiers of the Arab Legion, along with Arab civilians, laid on the streets of Jerusalem. Men were taken from their homes convinced they were never going to see their family again because they were walking to their deaths. Looters came in and stole from the mosques and “the Dead Sea scrolls had been removed from the Palestine Archeological Museum” (Armstrong 402). On June 10, bulldozers came into the Maghribi Quarter, which was home to the Arabs, and reduced it to dust. Before the bulldozers came in, the 619 inhabitants of the Maghribi Quarter were given three hours to evacuate their homes. This plan to demolish this important historic district of Jerusalem was supervised by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, in order to build a plaza big enough for the thousands of Jewish pilgrims coming to Jerusalem to visit the Western Wall.

As we discussed in class, it is interesting that such a holy place can cause such violence and war. Because Jerusalem is such a sacred and important place of worship for so many different kinds of religions, it brings out the worst in people.

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