Egypt’s President Abdelfattah al-Sisi and Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid agreed Sunday in a telephone call that Israeli authorities will conduct a “full and transparent” investigation into information concerning “historical events” that occurred during the Six-Day War, a conflict that directly influenced the reshaping of the borders of the Middle East.
Lapid stressed that the Israeli side will deal with this matter in a positive and transparent manner and will coordinate with the Egyptian authorities on the events in order to reach the truth, Egyptian Presidency spokesman Basam Radi said in the statement, as reported by ‘Al Ahram’.
The Israeli press reported on Friday the existence of people involved in the burial of dozens of Egyptian soldiers during the war in an unmarked mass grave in west Jerusalem.
In this regard, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ajmed Jafez explained in a statement Sunday that the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv will be in contact with the Israeli authorities to “clarify what is circulating in the media, request an investigation to verify the credibility of this information, and urgently inform the Egyptian authorities of the relevant details.”
Between June 5 and June 10, 1967 Israel faced the Arab coalition of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, which suffered a clear and humiliating defeat against a much numerically inferior opponent.
The repercussions of the conflict still reverberate. For many the Six-Day War, or the June War of 1967, as the Arabs call it, never really ended.
For the Israelis, victory resulted in the conquest of territory on all three fronts: it took the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, part of the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank from Jordan. For Israel the end of the war was an undisputed triumph. For the Arabs, it was a humiliating defeat. Along with the territories, thousands of people, mostly Palestinians, came under Israeli control.
The human, political and territorial consequences of that conflict were extremely important from the very beginning and have not yet been overcome.