In May 1967, the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria - with backing from several other Arab countries - amassed on Israel’s borders in a bid to wipe out Israel. In response, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack and unexpectedly gained control over land including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israel later gave up about 90 percent of the territory it captured when, to make peace with Egypt, Israel evacuated the Sinai Peninsula.1
After numerous fruitless bids to find a partner for peace with the Palestinians, in August 2005 Israel will carry out its disengagement initiative. Israel will hand over all of Gaza and part of the West Bank to the Palestinians, making it the first country in modern history to give up land acquired in a defensive war.
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By Gerald A. Honigman
MichNews.com
Jul 28, 2005
I've spent too many nights thinking about this stuff. But these are indeed troubling times...
At press conferences and other public presentations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other State Department spokesmen increasingly emphasize the need for the emergence of a viable, contiguous Palestinian State. They do this with full knowledge that in order to accomplish this, the security of the sole, tiny state of the Jews must indeed be seriously compromised. And they do this also knowing full well that U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, passed in the aftermath of the June '67 War, promised that Israel's rump state status would at long last be addressed with the creation of secure and recognized borders to replace its vulnerable 1949 armistice lines.

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By David Dolan
As the Sharon government made final preparations to evacuate some 9,000 Jews from their homes in the embattled Gaza Strip and northern Samaria in mid-August, physical and verbal clashes sharply escalated between Israeli security forces and opponents of the controversial withdrawals.  This came as a majority of Knesset members reaffirmed their commitment to Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan, but only due to across the board backing from all far left and Arab legislators, and without the support of several key leaders of the ruling Likud party and some Orthodox coalition members. 

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From: Rebecca Sinderbrand
Subject: Looking Beyond the Gaza Withdrawal
Wednesday, July 20, 2005, at 3:31 AM PT   
JERUSALEM—To add to the general edginess of pre-disengagement Jerusalem, for the last few weeks the city has been gripped by successive heat waves of, well, biblical proportions. By noon, the stones of the Old City seem to radiate heat; winding through the alleyways of the Jewish Quarter is like taking a leisurely stroll through a slow-roast oven. Ten minutes in the midday sun and you feel a bit like you just ran a marathon. An hour outside feels more like getting hit by a bus.
The brutal temperatures have thinned out the crowds at the Western Wall, and the tourists are sparse today. But the faithful are still here. There are the Haredim, ultra-Orthodox Jews defiantly sporting fur hats and knee-length black coats in the summer sun. There are Israeli student groups and campers—wearing matching T-shirts and the orange wristbands of the anti-disengagement movement—chanting Zionist slogans from the courtyard in the back of the complex. And sitting just beside a phalanx of gun-toting soldiers, there's Earl Cox, Southern gentleman and longtime GOP stalwart.
So far this year, the government has handed evangelicals their own plot of land near the Sea of Galilee, started a special outreach program to shore up support for Israel in African-American churches, and planned the committee's first stateside conference for American sympathizers in Fort Worth this September.

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