Words of the Week: Francine Klagsbrun

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On this International Women’s Day, it seems fitting that I’m continuing my way through Francine Klagsbrun’s Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel.

Among the many attention-grabbing segments in this book, I’ve found myself rereading this segment. It’s quite a history lesson (or depending on your knowledge base, a reminder). Especially, as Klagsbrun notes, decades later.

Page 509 of the biography, which begins mid-paragraph with a reference to Golda's "kitchen" gatherings and closes with the infamous "no recognition, no negotiations, and no peace" declaration from Arab states at Khartoum. In between a full paragraph reads: "The most intense discussion in the kitchen cabinet and in the full cabinet, in the Knesset and at corner cafés, centered on what to do with the territories captured during the Six-Day War. The discussion had begun as soon as the war ended, when Israel found itself in control of more than a million Arabs and an area more than three times its original size. From the perspective of later decades, when every debate about peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors seems to hinge on the status of the occupied territories and Israeli settlements in them, it is hard to grasp the degree of uncertainty that existed about them after the war. Overwhelmed by the army’s staggering victory, Israeli leaders simply had no plan for how to handle its conquests. The government’s first impulse had been to pull back to prewar lines from most of the conquered areas in exchange for peace treaties with the Arab states. After fierce debates, the cabinet voted on June 19, 1967, to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria if those countries agreed to full peace and security arrangements. It made no commitment about the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had administered but never annexed, or the West Bank of the Jordan River—the heart of ancient Judaism—which Israeli forces took from Jordan. Jerusalem, most Israelis agreed, should be reunited as one city and their capital. Even so, as Golda had observed when Levi Eshkol and Israel Galili spoke of settlements in the Old City, doubt existed about whether, with international pressure, Israel would be able to keep control of the city’s contested areas."
Lioness, p. 509.
Page 509 of the biography, which begins mid-paragraph with a reference to Golda's "kitchen" gatherings and closes with the infamous "no recognition, no negotiations, and no peace" declaration from Arab states at Khartoum. In between a full paragraph reads: "The most intense discussion in the kitchen cabinet and in the full cabinet, in the Knesset and at corner cafés, centered on what to do with the territories captured during the Six-Day War. The discussion had begun as soon as the war ended, when Israel found itself in control of more than a million Arabs and an area more than three times its original size. From the perspective of later decades, when every debate about peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors seems to hinge on the status of the occupied territories and Israeli settlements in them, it is hard to grasp the degree of uncertainty that existed about them after the war. Overwhelmed by the army’s staggering victory, Israeli leaders simply had no plan for how to handle its conquests. The government’s first impulse had been to pull back to prewar lines from most of the conquered areas in exchange for peace treaties with the Arab states. After fierce debates, the cabinet voted on June 19, 1967, to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria if those countries agreed to full peace and security arrangements. It made no commitment about the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had administered but never annexed, or the West Bank of the Jordan River—the heart of ancient Judaism—which Israeli forces took from Jordan. Jerusalem, most Israelis agreed, should be reunited as one city and their capital. Even so, as Golda had observed when Levi Eshkol and Israel Galili spoke of settlements in the Old City, doubt existed about whether, with international pressure, Israel would be able to keep control of the city’s contested areas."