Avi Shlaim on how the Six-Day War transformed the IDF

Israeli generals speak about their operations in Gaza as "mowing the lawn."  This is a very grim metaphor and in any case a very curious way of bringing about peace with the Palestinians.  I served in the IDF in the mid-1960s and I served loyally and proudly because in my time the IDF was true to its name.  It was the Israel Defense Forces.  But as a result of the occupation, the IDF was transformed into the brutal police force of a brutal colonial power.

~ Professor Avi Shlaim, "Prof. Avi Shlaim - Hamas is Not a Greater Obstacle to Peace Than Israel," OxfordUnion, 8:40 mark, April 29, 2015

Avi Shlaim on the Israel-Palestine peace process under Benjamin Netanyahu

The peace process is a charade.  It's all process and no peace.  It's worse than a charade because it gives Israel just the cover that it needs to pursue its aggressive colonial project on the West Bank.  The present government is hellbent on settlement expansion and settlement expansion is theft.  Land grabbing and peace making don't go together.  It's one or the other.  And by its actions, if not by its words, this government has opted for land grabbing.

This government has accelerated Jewish settlement in and around occupied Arab East Jerusalem in defiance of international law.  This government continues to build the wall on the West Bank.  It calls it a security barrier and it claims that its purpose security.  But a much more important purpose of the wall is land grabbing.  The wall is illegal.  Maybe good fences make good neighbors, but not when the fence is built in the middle of the neighbor's garden.

So Netanyahu is like the man who pretends to be negotiating the division of the pizza while he keeps eating it.  There is no Palestinian leader, however moderate, who is prepared to make peace on these ludicrous terms.

~ Professor Avi Shlaim, "Prof. Avi Shlaim - Hamas is Not a Greater Obstacle to Peace Than Israel," OxfordUnion, 3:30 mark, April 29, 2015

Avi Shlaim: "Zionism lost its way" after the Six-Day War

[Although Shlaim agrees that it was a defensive war, he argues that – in the ease of the victory and in the national sense of joy – opportunities were lost, not least for a wider peace.]

Zionism lost its way in 1967, that’s the crucial thing.  The main aim of the Zionist movement before the war was the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine.  But by the eve of the war that objective had already been achieved.  The victory in 1967 reopened the old question of the territorial aims of Zionism. 

And the two trends that emerged cut across party lines... the big division after 1967 was between those who accepted the division of Palestine as a solution and those saying the West Bank was an integral part of the land of Israel.  And in an Israeli society split down the middle, the government resolved the dilemma by deciding not to decide.

~ Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall, an acclaimed study of Israel’s military policies

(As quoted in The Guardian, "The six-day war: why Israel is still divided over its legacy 50 years on," May 20, 2017.)

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