The Israel State Archives has authorized the release of thousands of documents, recordings, and testimonies from events during the Six Day Middle East War of 1967, which indicates that Israel’s security cabinet agreed after the war to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for full peace, but that Jerusalem would not be re-partitioned under any circumstance.
Even though Israel, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, decided to disengage from the Gaza Strip, the documents reveal that the Security Cabinet following the 1967 war decided to keep the Palestinian enclave under Israeli control due to security reasons.
The documents, which have been classified until now, reveal that ministers led by Yigal Alon demanded to occupy the Old City of Jerusalem quickly, on the second day of the war, after which it was proposed to immediately exert full sovereignty over the Old City. Among other revelations, the documents indicated that the security cabinet decided four days after the war that the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s old city, must be restored, and that for that purpose, Arabs living there had to be evicted and moved to vacant homes in Jerusalem.