The Idaho Daily Statesman · 16 June 1967

CP-1967-020

Victory Brings Israel Peacetime Problem of Occupying New Territory

By Lawrence Malkin, Associated Press, Jerusalem

Transcribed from the clipping

“JERUSALEM (AP) — For the Jews of Israel, victory has brought peace but more peacetime problems. The exhilaration of swift triumph over the Arabs in the six-day war is beginning to fade away. Now the Israelis face tasks of reoganization not even imagined before the war erupted on June 5. Israel, a nation of 2.6 million, has swallowed, at least temporarily, about a million Arabs in the Gaza Strip and on the west bank of the Jordan River. Toward the Jews of Israel, they have only implacable hatred. It is believed now that rather than cutting down on military expenses after victory, Israel will be obliged to increase its army to man occupation forces. House-to-house searches for arms have been ordered. Retreating Jordanians left weapons in the hands of people thirsting for vengeance… One Israeli bank official has estimated that the annual cost of maintaining captured areas would be about $50 million. ‘We can handle that, if we have to,’ he said. ‘I am confident we can stay in the territories for a long time if the Arabs refuse to talk. If this goes on long enough, perhaps we shall develop the occupied areas ourselves.’ As of now, the chief value of the occupied areas appears to be as bargaining pawns, if and when the Arabs decide to talk. As Israel takes stock of the results of the brief war, it can consider that the battle was not without its spoils… The Israeli harvest of captured military equipment was enormous. On the drive through Jordan, for example, Israeli forces captured scores of trucks in new condition, all bearing the clasped-hands insignia of the U.S. Agency for International Development program… If the Israelis keep the west bank of the Jordan, they will have land rich in phosphates and with plenty of surplus space to make the desert bloom with fruits and vegetables for export to Europe.”

Context added by this archive

Eleven days after the war, occupying is in the headline and occupied is in the copy three times, none of it in quotation marks. A million Arabs are swallowed in the fourth sentence, the occupied areas are bargaining pawns in the eighth, and the last column is about phosphates and export markets. “reoganization” is the paper’s.

Cite this item

"Victory Brings Israel Peacetime Problem of Occupying New Territory," The Idaho Daily Statesman, 16 June 1967. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-020. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-020

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• The Endlessly Embattled Land Of PalestineCalgary Herald · 14 June 1967 · the same year