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How long can the Arabs hold out against negotiating a peace, and thus against the fact of Israel? Perhaps longer than most Westerners can imagine. Too much of Islam is an arrested culture that has never undergone a true political revolution or a religious reformation that could move it into the modern world. What divides the Arabs from Israel is not merely tradition or religion—for centuries past, Jews were far more tolerantly treated by Arabs than by Christians—but a culture gap. Israel, which in size constitutes less than .2% of the Arab lands, is hated by the Arabs in part because it is a successful, modern, Western state. It stands for all the things the Arabs resent, and yet want. If and when the Arabs manage to enter the Western-style 20th century, they may be able to defeat Israel; more significantly, they may then no longer feel the need to do so.
The sad persistence of the Arab attitude is perhaps the strongest argument for Israel's need to protect itself. Since the U.N. has shown its inability to protect them, Israelis argue that they can give up the real estate they deem essential to their security only if the Arabs agree to peace—and to reality, transported to Suez and released, to go home. Some also got food and water from the desert's Bedouins—if they were willing to pay their fellow Arabs for it.
Captured: Nine Generals. The human cost of the war reflected its unequal outcome. The military death toll was estimated by Jerusalem at 2,000 Syrians, 8,000 Jordanians, 10,000 Egyptians—and 679 Israelis. The Israelis captured 11,500 Arab soldiers (including nine generals), returned 6,000 of them, and offered to send back the rest in exchange for the 16 Israeli P.O.W.s, mostly downed pilots, held by the Arabs. In money terms, Israel estimated that the war cost it only $100 million, against $2 billion for the Arabs. The Israelis captured several times their own outlay's worth of Arab equipment. Included in the haul are two Soviet SAM missiles and their sites, more than 200 Russian tanks in mint condition, and uncounted thousands of weapons and vehicles—all abandoned by fleeing troops.