Six Days and Six Hundred Days

From Self-Preservation to Occupation in Israel’s Shortest and Longest Wars

This week, we marked the Jewish calendar anniversary of Israel’s shortest war, the Six Day War, the brief conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967. And as inconceivable as it sounds, we surpassed the 600th day of Israel’s longest war—our current struggle with Hamas. These wars are unique historical events whose critical distinctions are not well served by analogies. But they share at least one truth: a war that begins with the justifiable motive of self-preservation may very well end with the untenable outcome of occupation.

The Six Day War broke out on June 5, 1967, when Israel preemptively struck Egypt’s Air Force out of fear of a multi-front war that could threaten its survival. Egypt’s provocations had been grave and credible: it had mobilized tens of thousands of troops along the Israeli border, entered mutual defense pacts with Jordan and Syria, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and demanded a withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping force that had been stationed in the Sinai Peninsula for a decade.

By the war’s end five days later, the picture was entirely different: Israel had captured Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. These territorial gains—viewed by some Israelis as strategic assets or religious signs, and by others as temporary holdings for future land-for-peace deals—changed the regional map and had lasting political, strategic, and ideological consequences.

Fast-forward to the Israel-Hamas War. We entered this war after October 7, 2023, when 6,000 Gazans breached our southern border in 119 locations, and we feared—justifiably, it was later established—that Hezbollah would carry out a similar invasion of our northern border, and Israeli Arabs might attack from within. As in 1967, we faced an existential threat.

But unlike the lightning-quick Six Day War, the Israel-Hamas War has dragged on without the defeat of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza, or the rescue of the remaining 58 hostages needed to draw it to a conclusive end. Now—a staggering 600 days in—we are in the midst of another, massive ground offensive aimed at defeating Hamas’ military wing and civil rule, and at destroying its infrastructure.

But this offensive, more than those before it, is also a territorial conquest. The IDF currently holds about 40% of Gaza’s territory; according to IDF officials, in two months’ time, it will have captured 75%. While our prime minister denies plans for a permanent occupation, the army’s actions point to a long-term military and administrative presence in Gaza—a de facto occupation.

Israel’s far right has been jonesing for this since the beginning of the war or as far back as 2005, when it fiercely opposed our evacuation of all 21 Israeli settlements and withdrawal of military forces from Gaza. In the name of security, the moderate right supports the continuation of the war until “total victory,” even though victory will come—if it comes at all—with the price of occupation.

For the rest of us, even those who believe there is no other choice, the occupation of Gaza is an unwanted and fraught consequence of this war. Though it will improve border control and enable the creation of a crucial buffer zone, it will also cause (need I say?) more displacement, if not expulsion, and subjugation of the people of Gaza. Unless a technocratic Palestinian government or an Arab or Gulf state steps forward and is given authority to take over, our occupation will become long-term, unsustainable, and physically and morally indefensible. Like our 58-year occupation of the West Bank, a byproduct of the Six Day War, it will turn this Six Hundred+ Day War, in part, into a pretext for the next Who Knows How Many Days War.