Tom Segev Interview (2007): Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Page 5 of 5

Consequences

It's impossible to go into all the consequences of this war but two things stood out in my mind, and one was the way you describe, in the aftermath of the war, how Israel dealt with the territories. The bottom line is [that] Israel couldn't decide, but by its actions it implicitly made decisions. At one point, you say the thinking was to establish facts with extreme haste, before it was too late, at times with an iron fist and eventually -- and even cruelly, the world was watching, so you had to display responsibility, good will, and occasional compassion. At the same time, Israel had taken the steps as early as '63 to establish an occupation authority. So, you're not saying there was a plan here. What you're saying is that things happen day by day and the result [is] the occupation ...

One success led to the other. "We have occupied that part, we can occupy the next town, we can occupy the next town," and nobody says stop, not everything you can take is worth taking. Maybe we can take it but we don't want to take it. So, no, they just roll on and take it and take it. Yes, the plans were there but it's not as if everybody was only waiting for the opportunity to occupy the West Bank. That's not the way it happens, just as it doesn't follow from the psychological crisis that it was the crisis that led to the war. No. The crisis prevented a different cause of action, maybe stronger leadership would have prevented it, but they move from one town to the other and they are elated. The important thing is that this elation contrasts the very, very low point of despair which marked their movement when the war started.

There are two very famous jokes about the mood -- the beginning at the end, and these were contemporary jokes, not later ones. The one tells you about the sign hanging at the exit gate at the airport, saying "Would the last Israeli to leave the country please put off the lights?" This is not funny, actually. You should ask what kind of society invents a joke like that, the last one to leave should take out the lights. And the next thing after the war, when they moved from this depth of despair to the heights of elation and felt that they had [experienced] salvation, then they had a joke about two Israeli generals talking to each other. One says, "What should we do today?" And he says, "You know what? Why don't we take Cairo today?" And the other says, "Well, that's a good idea but what shall we do in the afternoon?"

This is this kind of, "the sky's the limit, we did it, we are victorious Israelis," and all that. So, this is the atmosphere. It's all irrational. There was no rational justification for the despair that had taken them before the war, and none for the elation, the euphoria after the war. Both are unjustified, rationally.

You say, at one point that in the face of not being able to come up with the solution to the occupied territories and the new problems that arose, for political and other reasons, caution and so on, Israel's leaders decided to administer it, I believe ...

To do nothing. You know? You don't want to annex it, A) because the world would not stand by, and B) because you don't want a million Palestinians to become Israeli citizens. And so, you "administer" it, supposedly temporarily. But as soon as these territories had been taken, political forces in Israel said, "Let's settle it." This is, of course, when we miss the major chance which the war presented to us, which was not peace (I don't think that we actually missed a chance to make peace in 1967). What we did miss was a chance to ease the problem of the Palestinian refugees, primarily the ones in Gaza. It's very depressing to see how many plans [were] worked out, very detailed plans, and how many rich people all over the world, some of them Jews, some of them not Jews, were actually begging the Israeli government, "We want to help. We have millions and millions and it doesn't cost so much. Let's take Arabs out of Gaza and settle them on the West Bank." This wouldn't be such a dramatic transfer. They had been living in Gaza, it's an hour and a half, it's the same country, they would live on the West Bank.

Why wasn't this done? One of the reasons was people like Moshe Dayan, like Menachem Begin, they said no, the West Bank should be settled by Jews, not by Palestinians. This was a major opportunity [lost], because imagine where we'd be standing now if the problem of the Palestinian refugees would have been at least less pressing than it is today. That was a chance which they didn't take.

One of the reasons why they didn't take it was because they had such a hard time admitting to themselves that Israel shares in the responsibility for the creation of the problem. It's not the only one that is responsible for the problem, but we have some share of responsibility in this, something which the Israelis at that time could not admit, and many of them cannot admit it even today. This is one reason why it's so difficult to do something about the Palestinian refugees. But that would have been the time to do it, very quick, very comprehensive plan. The prime minister's office, the archives, are full of lots and lots of plans, how to settle and how much it would cost for every family -- how much they need, how much land, how much water, where they would live, and it wouldn't be so expensive. It's like $40 million for ten years. So, it's really nothing, even in those days. And the problem which we face today would've been easier.

You make reference to a speech that Rabin gave after the war, when he was given an honorary degree, praising the military and its role in Israeli society. Rabin in his speech said, "This is an army that comes from the people and returns to the people, a people that rises above itself in the hour of need and that when tested can defeat any enemy, thanks to its moral, spiritual, and emotional superiority." He was claiming a dominant moral role.

This is interesting because it reflects the need of the Zionist movement in general, and of Israelis in particular, to be not only strong but also to be just, morally just. This is a genuine need; this is not simple propaganda. I'm sure that Rabin actually believed it. You really cannot understand the Zionist project, and you cannot understand Israel, without recognizing that it was a genuine need not to do injustice to the Palestinians. It's always we who are the victim. It's the need to feel that we are not only the victim but we are also the morally superior victim. This is a very basic element of the Israeli identity, and this is what Rabin expresses here in this very, very emotional speech on top of Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, which had just been taken, or "liberated," as they said in those days. This is definitely part of the euphoria.

In a way, many Israelis were actually afraid of the magnitude of the victory. They were afraid of what it means: we are too strong, and the world looks at us as if we were the new Prussians of the Middle East. So, the need to say, "We don't really want the war, we hate war, we hate fighting, we want peace. All we want to do is to live in peace with the Arabs," this is genuine. Of course, it takes a price, and the price was high, which Israel was willing to pay, but it wasn't high enough for the Arabs to take.

The major problem is always Jerusalem. It was not about communication. Israel and the Arabs talked to each other. In fact, Israel talked to King Hussein all the time. Hussein said, "Without Jerusalem I can't make peace," which is kind of ironic because eventually, many, many years later, before he died, he actually gave up all the territories and Jerusalem and made peace anyway with Israel. We should have told him, just as we should have told the Egyptians, "You want peace? You take the West Bank back. You want peace? You take Gaza back." Because we were stuck with the Palestinians, territories heavily populated by the Palestinians, and we were stuck with the problem. Many people think that this is an asset, many people think that this makes us stronger. It actually makes us weaker, and it actually puts us today before a very, very difficult choice.

In those days, even then, it was called the "demographic problem." What it really means is that Israel has to decide between remaining a Jewish and democratic state or continuing the oppression of the Palestinians without being a Jewish majority. This would be a Jewish minority that oppresses a Palestinian majority -- can't last. Can't last forever. So, this is a very painful choice, and it becomes more painful from year to year.

In the brief time that's remaining I want to have you talk briefly about the U.S., because the picture that you're painting here is President Johnson and an American administration reluctant about Israel going to war, but having as part of his political base a group of Jewish Americans who were passing messages from the Israeli government and trying to modulate his response and to convey Israel's desperation. Talk a little about that. What does it tell us about where we were in that relationship, at the time?

There were a number of Jews in the White House and in the immediate environment of President Johnson, not necessarily Jews who would do what Israel tells them to do but people who were very aware of the danger that Israel might disappear or be destroyed. Israel had very, very good contacts in the White House. It's very accessible, more than the Israeli embassy in Washington. They are really very, very well connected in the White House, better than other embassies, and they practically know almost every minute what President Johnson thinks about Israel. Now the key, of course, is Johnson himself, and there, this is where the Jewish thing comes in, because -- and I spent a lot of time trying to understand this, and my conclusion is that for Johnson, Israel, the Middle East, Jews, funds for the Democratic Party, and Vietnam are all part of the same thing. He doesn't really distinguish. He talks to a group of Jewish leaders and he says, "I gave you so many planes," and they said, "But you didn't give them to us, you gave them to Israel."

"Yes, but why are you against the war in Vietnam?"
"We are against the war in Vietnam because we are American citizens."
"But it's not good for Israel."

So, they say, "Well, it's too bad."

So, for him, it's all one thing, and it's really very interesting. Israel, Jews, Democratic funding, support, Vietnam -- it's all one thing for him, and this is interesting because it had always been like that. He grew into politics as a very outspoken friend of Israel and supporter of Israel. But he was against the [1967] war, he tried to prevent the war. Eventually he was told, actually by the CIA, "Israel is going to do it anyway, and so all they want you to say is that you don't object. They don't want your support. Don't send the U.S. Army, don't send the Navy. They will do it on their own. They only need us to say okay."

Therefore, until today, there is an argument between historians, did Israel get a green light, or did Israel get a yellow light from America to go to that war? I think it was green enough. For the Israeli Prime Minister Eshkol it was very green, because if he hadn't thought that it is very green he wouldn't go for it.

So, this is really a point where America could have prevented the war, just as America could have prevented the annexation of East Jerusalem, the continued occupation of the West Bank, and it didn't. Never did America put really pressure on Israel. So, it's always to the limits of what America lets us do. That's what we did.

One final question, a very brief answer. Does a book of history like this help us only in understanding how we got where we are, or does it inform us also about what we should do about the future?

I think it does inform us what we should do about the future. The present is very much part of 1967, so unfortunately, we are still in the same year.

Tom, on that note, and I'm going to show your book, which now everybody has to fill out that last answer by buying and reading the book. I want to thank you very much for coming back to Berkeley and for writing the book.

Thank you very much.

And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.

© Copyright 2007, Regents of the University of California

To the Conversations page

To the Globetrotter Research Galleries: Journalists and their Work; The Search for Peace in the Middle East; and Foreign Policy

To the 2004 interview with Tom Segev: Israeli National Identity