The six-day war, then & now: fifty years after the 1967 war that redrew the Middle East map, here's what you need to know about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Author: Berger, Joseph
• Position: TIMES PAST 1967

Soon after his election, President Trump declared himself ready to solve the Middle East puzzle that's frustrated so many occupants of the White House.

"I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians," he said.

To Trump's supporters, it may not seem such a far-fetched ambition; after all, the real estate mogul wrote the best-selling book Trump: The Art of the Deal. But every American president who's tried to forge a lasting peace has run up against sharply competing claims by Israel and the Palestinians. Many of those claims stem from a war that erupted 50 years ago this June. As its name makes clear, the Six-Day War lasted less than a week. But the consequences--Israel's occupation of Arab lands, the Palestinian clamor for statehood, and the destabilization of much of the Middle East--still resonate today.

Here's what you need to know to understand the conflict--and the challenges "frump will face if he does get involved.

1. Why have Israelis and Arabs been fighting all these years?

   It's really a fight over land. Jews trace their Biblical roots there; Palestinians, who've lived there for many centuries, say it now belongs to them.

   At the time of Israel's founding in 1948, Jews had been vulnerable exiles without a country of their own since they were expelled from their ancient homeland by the Romans in the first and second centuries a.d. (A small community of Jews, however, remained in the area continuously since ancient times.) At the end of the 19th century, as Jews became the victims of violent pogroms across Russia, Jews known as Zionists began arguing that their people needed a state of their own. After the end of World War II (1939-45), when 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the idea gained wider support.

   The problem was that over the previous 2,000 years, their homeland hadn't remained empty. In the early 20th century, when large numbers of Jews began moving to the area then known as Palestine, tensions erupted with Palestinians and other Arabs who lived nearby.

   Complicating matters, during World War I (1914-18), Britain made separate and conflicting promises for statehood to both Jews and Arabs.

   With claims for the land still unresolved, the United Nations in 1947 voted to partition Palestine. Jews accepted the plan and the following year founded Israel. But Palestinians, who considered the deal unfair, rejected it. In 1948, Israel's Arab neighbors attacked. Israel survived, and even gained some territory. Palestinians, on the other hand, remained stateless, with 700,000 people displaced, That set the stage for an even bigger showdown two decades later, in 1967.

2. What was the Six-Day War, and what were the consequences?

   The stated goal of Arab nations in the 1967 war was to destroy Israel, but it backfired: By the end of the conflict, which lasted less than a week, Israel had more than doubled the territory under its control.

   Tensions escalated in May 1967, when Egypt took actions that Israel considered hostile. Egypt expelled United Nations peacekeepers, mobilized forces in the Sinai Peninsula on A Israel's border, and blockaded the Straits of Tiran, Israel's economic life-line to the Red Sea (see maps).

   Israel feared an invasion and staged a preemptive strike on June 5. Flying low to avoid radar, 200 Israeli jets wiped out virtually the entire Egyptian air force within hours, and soldiers conquered Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.* Syria dispatched tanks and jets, but again Israel's superior air power gave it the upper hand and it gained control of the strategic Golan Heights. Jordan entered the fray, losing its territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

   Israel also captured eastern Jerusalem from Jordan, including the Old City, which has sites that are holy to Jews, Muslims, and Christians.** When they reached the Western Wall--a relic of the Second Temple, Judaism's most sacred site--Israeli soldiers shed tears of joy. But with those new territories came a whole population of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Today, 2.9 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, where Israel continues to build settlements.

   "We are stuck with a very deep hangover from 1967 that's never been fully healed," says Anthony Wanis-St. John of American University in Washington, D.C.

3. What is the two-state solution, and why hasn't it happened?

   Most people think that the best chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is to create an independent Palestinian state--consisting of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip--alongside Israel. But translating that concept into reality has proved extremely difficult.

   One of the main sticking points has been the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as their future capital...