It was one of the swiftest victories in military history. On the morning of June 5, 1967, Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Israeli fighters swooped over Arab air bases and destroyed more than 400 planes. The land battles continued for another five days but in essence the six-day war, as it became known, was won on the first day. Without air cover the Arab armies crumpled. Israel captured the Sinai desert, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem.

Forty years later Israel, the Arab world and we are still paying the price: Israel is paying because, delirious with victory, it claimed a divine right over the remaining sliver of mandate Palestine. The Arab world is paying because the febrile dictatorships and decaying monarchies that ruled – and rule – most of the Middle East refused to accept reality and make peace.

Dazed and humiliated they instead proclaimed the “three nos” at the Khartoum conference two months later: no peace, no negotiations and no recognition. Far better, they decided, to let the Palestinians live in squalid refugee camps and deny them citizenship, for without that cause to unite around, their own citizens might question why they, too, must live in poverty and suffer torture and oppression.

We are paying the price because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still poisons relations between the West and the Arab and Muslim world. Israel is now at peace with Egypt and Jordan, but faces new threats. President Ahmadinejad of Iran has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and may be developing a nuclear weapon. There is unfinished business with Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the past few weeks Hamas militants have fired almost 270 Kassam rockets into Sderot from Gaza. The BBC persists in calling the Kassams “homemade”, but they still killed Chai Shalom, a 13-year-old suffering from cerebral palsy, when one landed by a bus that was transporting him and other disabled children.

‘No, no, no’: why Israel is still at war

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the six-day war, stances taken back then still loom over the Middle East peace process

BACKGROUND

• How the six-day war was reported

• Stolen Iraqi jet helped Israel win six-day war

• Conflict still on peak of anguish

• West Bank proves explosive legacy of Israeli victory

• Islam seeks unity against Israel

Related Internet Links

• 40th anniversary Six Day War section

The history of the past 40 years is one of serial missed opportunities by both sides. The Palestinians refused to accept the 1947 United Nations partition plan; the Israelis refused to allow a Palestinian state in 1967; the Arab states kept the Palestinians incarcerated in squalid refugee camps; the Palestinians dispatched suicide bombers just when most Israelis accepted the idea of a Palestinian state; the Israelis made probably their best offer at the 2000 Camp David meeting brokered by President Clinton, but Yasser Arafat refused it as inadequate; creeping Israeli settlements and the path of the security fence further atomise what is left of the Palestinian economy and society.

The “three nos” of Khartoum still echo across the Middle East. Now, on the anniversary of the six-day war, it is time to break the pattern and start saying yes. The answer in 2007 is the same as 1947: partition. Paradoxically, thanks to Iran, this is now more likely. Ahmadinejad may present himself as the scourge of Zionism, but he is actually one of Israel’s greatest de facto allies.

Fearful of the rise of a “Shi’te crescent” and a resurgent Hezbollah, the Arab League has renewed its offer to make peace with Israel in exchange for a withdrawal from the territories captured in 1967, the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a resolution to the refugee issue. These proposals, broadly similar to the 2000 Camp David propositions, will probably form the basis of any future peace.

Israel will need a government with the courage to give up the West Bank, to evacuate many settlements, to share Jerusalem and to let a symbolic number of Palestinians return. The Palestinians will need a government that recognises Israel’s right to live in peace and security and one ready to tell the harshest truth of all to those mired in refugee camps: there is no right of return because their houses no longer exist, but they can come home to a new Palestine.

The majority of Israelis know that the Palestinians deserve a viable, contiguous state. Most Palestinians would rather live in peace with Israel, work, study and do business there than fire rockets at it. Neither people is going anywhere. The only answer is to move forward together.

City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa by Adam LeBor is published by Bloomsbury

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