Dayan, Allon, Peres, Rabin

The Six Day War was no doubt a significant event in the history of Jewish-Arab relations. However, precisely because of it, the prevalent tendency is to take this war as a 'zero year', namely whatever happened before is less or non-relevant. One of the outcomes is the creation of the superficial dichotomy between Israeli 'left' and 'right', or between Israelis 'peace camp' and 'national camp'. This superficial view is both non-historical in essence and politically misleading and harmful. This book seeks to situate the events of June 1967 on a historical sequence dating back to 1957. This renewed look at the decade before this dramatic war allows for a better understanding of the decade that followed the war: 1967-1977. Such a view shows that the mentioned dichotomy has no historical basis, and that the proper distinction needed to understand Israel's political history is between the status-quo school and the momentum school. As this book tries to suggest, this division is not only part of the past, but also of the present.