ABSTRACT
The June War dramatically altered Israel’s strategic situation, and had a profound long-term impact upon the evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well. The June War had an equally profound, albeit very different, impact upon Israel. Arab and Palestinian rejectionists quickly perceived that the growing Arab fixation on the territories might, in due course, have a normalizing impact upon the Arab-Israeli conflict. Traditional security considerations, reinforced by Israel’s special perspective, memory and internal political dynamics produced the policy of strengthening the Israeli hold over the territories. Domestic political pressures and the overall Israeli attitude toward the Arabs were of primary importance. Successive Labor-led governments between 1967 and 1977 failed to take either symbolic or substantive steps which would have been reconcilable with Israeli security and did not require territorial concessions. Labor Party governments placed increasing emphasis on the Rafah Approaches area in the 1970’s.
