Israel's military conquests in June 1967 provided her with a unique opportunity to resolve the Arab-Zionist conflict by trading land for peace. From the start of the occupation, both King Hussein of Jordan and the West Bank Palestinian leadership communicated their wish to reach a peaceful settlement with Israel. But Israel was unwilling to pay the territorial price for peace. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol repeatedly said that in the war Israel had won a rich dowry of territory, but it came with a bride – the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – "whom we don’t want." Relying on newly declassified records from Israeli, American, British and UN archives, as well as privately-obtained papers, I argue that the Israeli government translated Eshkol's metaphor into a concrete policy that aimed to appropriate the "dowry" and divorce the "bride." Regarding the "dowry," Israel immediately annexed the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem, and the cabinet decided to retain the Gaza Strip. While avoiding a formal decision on the fate of the West Bank, Jewish settlement in the occupied territories – including the West Bank – was fostered. As for the unwelcome "bride," some twenty West Bank villages and towns were destroyed, completely or partially, in the wake of the fighting in June, and West Bankers were pushed to flee across the Jordan River; later, tens of thousands of the war refugees were denied return to their homes, and top-secret schemes to encourage Palestinian emigration were implemented. All the while, the United States pressured Israel to negotiate a peace settlement with King Hussein. Washington's position was that Israel should return to the pre-war lines with small, reciprocal modifications. Thus Israel resorted to a double game which meant to mislead the Americans into thinking that Israel was weighing its peace options. While attempting to create the semblance of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank, Israel held secret talks with Hussein. The former track was intended to lead to an Arab civil administration, run by local collaborators and devoid of power. The latter took the form of a show of seeking serious negotiations. Israel offered Jordan a peace plan – the Allon Plan – which it knew to be unacceptable. Its real goal, to keep the futile contacts going and maintain the territorial status quo, was successful. But by adopting a foreign policy of deception, Israel deliberately squandered a real opportunity for a peaceful settlement.

The Johnson administration’s Arab-Israeli policies in the aftermath of the 1967 War were based on the belief that Israel was the victim of Arab aggression and, therefore, entitled to retain Arab territories it conquered during the war until the Arab states renounced their state of belligerency against Israel. My paper will consider Johnson’s personal views on Israel and Egypt, and draw comparisons between Johnson’s opposition as a senator to President Eisenhower’s censure of Israel for its refusal to withdraw from Egyptian territories in the aftermath of its attack on Egypt in the Suez War of 1956, and Johnson’s support for Israel’s retention of Arab territories that it occupied in June 1967. I will incorporate recently-declassified archival material from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, State Department documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States series, oral history interviews, the newly-released “Israel tapes” in which Johnson relates his personal views on Israel, and my conversations with Johnson’s aides, Harold Saunders and Harry McPherson, in the examination of the Johnson administration’s support of Israel after the 1967 War. In the aftermath of the war and the passage of UN Resolution 242, Johnson became increasingly frustrated with Israeli inflexibility in its negotiations with the Arab states and Israel’s intransigent position on withdrawal from the captured territories, but Johnson’s fundamental personal support for Israel, the inertia created by America’s preceding commitments to Israeli security, and concerns about the Soviet Union’s decision to rearm Egypt and Syria after the war eclipsed Johnson’s disappointment in Israel’s positions. I will discuss the ideological and putative strategic logic underlying Johnson’s decision to sell Israel Phantom jets after the war, despite increasing tensions between the Johnson administration and Israeli officials regarding interpretations of UN Resolution 242 and the time frame for Israel’s withdrawal from the conquered territories, and Johnson’s failure to secure concessions from Israel in return for these arms sales, such as Israel’s termination of its nuclear weapons program. I will also analyze the manner in which domestic political pressures, resulting from Johnson’s unpopularity in the last years of his presidency because of his prosecution of the Vietnam War and from the policies advocated by candidates in the 1968 presidential election, induced Johnson to accede to Israeli positions after the 1967 War, despite the potentially damaging ramifications of those positions for long-term American and Israeli interests in the Middle East.

In June 1967, just six months after the cancellation of Israel’s 18 year-long military government over its 600,000 Palestinian Arab citizens, Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza and brought almost a million additional Palestinians under its control. Though these Palestinians were not made citizens like their brethren who had lived in Israel since 1948, their very presence and proximity impacted both the developing identity of the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the policy designed by the Israeli establishment to govern these citizens. “Arab affairs” officials, previously responsible for Israel's Arab citizens only, became officially or informally involved in Israel's administration over the Palestinian inhabitants of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Drawing on declassified documents from the Office of the Prime Minister's Advisor on Arab Affairs, the Interior Ministry, and the Israeli Police, I will argue that policymakers in Israel's third decade often perceived and governed Israel's Palestinian citizens as part of an enlarged Arab entity under Israel's control, rather than as a sector of Israel's citizenry. Administrative overlapping is reflected in practice as well as in discourse. Whereas before 1967 Israeli officials used the term “Arabs of Israel” only when talking about citizens, after 1967 they would use it to refer to both Palestinian citizens and non-citizens under control of the Jewish state. While behind closed doors Israeli officials sometimes referred to the residents of the West Bank and Gaza as 'Palestinians', they would never do so in public as the Israeli government vehemently denied the existence of any Palestinian national entity as the PLO successfully lobbied the world for recognition in the mid-1970s. Rhetoric aside, Israeli establishment figures feared that contact between Palestinians on opposite sides of the green line would expose Israel’s Arab citizens to Palestinian and Arab nationalist influences, and would give non-citizens unauthorized access to the state. Accordingly, Israeli police and security bodies monitored and restricted the Palestinians in Israel and in the Occupied Territories in the same operational framework, fearing Arab collaboration across the Green Line in opposition to Israeli control and occupation. Archival sources describing policies that pertained to Arab citizens of Israel exclusively, show how this conflicted subgroup of the Israeli state and Palestinian nation was monitored more closely, censored more harshly, and more vigorously encouraged to emigrate than were the Palestinians of the occupied territories in the immediate wake of the 1967 watershed.