Israel’s surprising and decisive victory in 1967, writes Hussein Ibish, was traumatic for Arabs across the Middle East, with lasting effects:
It’s difficult for Westerners to grasp the Arab certainty of victory [in 1967]. Across the Middle East, most people looked at the raw numbers of soldiers and materials and drew simplistic and erroneous conclusions about the outcome. Defeat was unimaginable to all but a few. The worst that most Arabs could imagine was a painful, drawn-out struggle, for which they thought they were prepared.
Recognizing these facile assumptions is indispensable to comprehending the largely still-unresolved trauma of the scope, totality, and speed of the defeat in 1967, [which] overturned Arab perceptions of external reality. . . .
From the 1940s until 1967, as many countries in the region won independence from colonizers, the essential Arab attitude was one of optimism, determination, international engagement, and hope. Afterward, the biggest single missing element, in many cases still unrecovered, is self-confidence. The collective deflation is hard to communicate. But since then, most of the Arab world has continually lacked a fundamental belief in itself. This collective deflation has been, and to some extent remains, a significant obstacle to peace, because confidence is essential to making concessions.
Read more on Forward: http://forward.com/opinion/israel/370385/can-arab-world-recover-from-the-six-day-war/