Coping with Victory

Now that the war is over, the trouble begins.

-- General Moshe Dayan

As the lights went on again from Dan to Elath, Israel began to cope with the enormous problems of victory. One was what to do with all the newly conquered territory -- what to keep for reasons of security or sentiment, what to trade off for reasons of economics or politics. Though the Israelis have no intention of budging now, and certainly would be hard to dislodge by any means, no sober Israeli believed that it would be good for his nation to hold all the new lands over the long run.

Fattening the Waistline. Sinai is a worthless desert, Gaza an economic sinkhole. To try to integrate the 1,330,000 Arabs in all the occupied lands would be costly and perhaps dangerous.* What then did Israel want? For simple security, it wanted at least a buffer strip on the rocky heights of Syria and a slice of West Jordan to fatten out its own narrow waistline. It also wanted free passage through Aqaba, perhaps guaranteed by an Israeli garrison at Sharm el Shiekh.

Then there was Jerusalem. For reasons deeper than strategy or security, Jerusalem is the one Israeli prize that is not negotiable. Any government that returned Old Jerusalem to Jordan would surely collapse. Already the Israelis have razed the bunkers and blockhouses dividing the city's two sectors, and bulldozers have leveled Arab huts to open a broad square before the Wailing Wall --all that remains of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. Last week, for the festival of Shavouth, which commemorates the handing down of the Law to Moses, the Old City was opened for the first time in 19 years to ordinary Israelis. By day's end, 200,000 thronged to see the Wall and pray at it.

Feeding the Poor. Israel's most crucial immediate problem was to feed, find jobs for and govern the Arabs in the occupied territories. The problem was least difficult where people were fewest--in the wastes of Sinai and the heights of Syria. Two-thirds of the inhabitants had trekked from Syria's captured sectors to the safety of Damascus. The city of El Quneitra (pop. 10,000) was a ghost town, its shops shuttered, its deserted streets patrolled by Israelis on house-to-house searches for caches of arms and ammunition. The hills echoed/with explosions as Israeli sappers systematically destroyed the miniature Maginot line from which the Syrians had shelled kibbutzim across the Sea of Galilee. On the other side, kibbutz children slept in their own beds instead of underground shelters for the first time in a week.

By contrast, Gaza and West Jordan teemed with Arabs, and the conquerors hastily set up military governments headed by Israeli brigadier generals. In the war, the Israelis had surrounded Gaza so quickly that few soldiers or civilians had a chance to escape. General Moshe Goren and his military-government staff first had to disband all enemy units and ferret out potential terrorists, sending the most dangerous ones to the Athlit P.O.W. camp south of Haifa. Then he turned to the task of supplying food and water to the abysmally poor people--mostly jobless Palestinian refugees who had been living on the U.N. food dole of 1,500 calories a day. Last week the U.N. resumed feeding them, and Goren made Gaza's Egyptian pound exchangeable for Israeli currency to encourage Arab shopkeepers to reopen. At his behest, many town mayors agreed to return to their desks to handle the basic of civil administration. Arab police, stripped of their arms and Egyptian insignia, soon took over some of the civil patrolling from Israeli soldiers.

No Pogroms. Much the same kind of progress was made in the captured Jordanian territory, where Brigadier General Chaim Herzog ruled as military governor from the office that King Hussein had used when he visited Old Jerusalem. Uniformed Jordanian police went back on duty, and the water and electricity systems opened up again. The U.N. agreed to resume the feeding, housing, education and medical care of some 400,000 Palestinian refugees in the area.

For the time being at least, most of the Arabs passively accepted Israeli rule. In some places such as Bethlehem, where the population is 80% Christian, the Israelis were openly welcomed. The occupation troops scrupulously tried to avoid incidents. Any soldier caught looting faced life imprisonment. Observed one Israeli Cabinet minister: "We Jews do not mount pogroms."

Many Jordanians wished to leave the occupation zone--and the Israelis were happy to see them go, even provided free buses to the Jordan River. About 100,000 crossed on rickety bridges or swam over to King Hussein's side. The King urged these new refugees to return, and by week's end some began the reverse trickle westward.

Less fortunate were several thousand Egyptian soldiers still in Sinai. Trying to make their way home, they wandered in ragtag bands, thirsting and starving in the choking wastes, often lost, wounded and without shoes. Israeli loudspeaker trucks roamed the Sinai urging them to surrender. When they did, they were given food and drink.

*On the other hand, Israel's 325,000 Arab citizens performed with surprising energy and loyalty in the brief war, knocking down government fears that they might constitute a fifth column.

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