If for some it is a day to mourn, for others it is a day to celebrate. The majority of Israelis in the political center will primarily mark the outcome of the battle in which [Yossi Lieberman] died, the unification of Jerusalem under full Israeli sovereignty. That's the main theme of the official celebrations scheduled to be held this year on May 16, Jerusalem Day, the date on the Jewish calendar (Kaf Het Be'iyar) when east Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Temple Mount, was taken by the IDF from the Jordanian army on the war's second day.

The latter view is of course shared by the Palestinians and their supporters in the wider world beyond, and this will provide the conventional wisdom for much of the international media, which has never been (to say the least) particularly sympathetic, or even understanding, of any argument - political, historical or military - in favor of Israel maintaining control of any of the area it conquered in the Six Day War. Clearly then, what will be an occasion of celebration in Israel will most likely be another cause for condemnation of the Jewish state in much of the foreign media coverage in the days leading up to, and during, the war's 40th anniversary.

Afterward, that situation was dramatically changed. As Michael Oren notes in his definitive history Six Days of War, "The Arab focus had shifted from liberating Palestine to liberating those areas recently conquered - from 'erasing Israel'... to 'erasing traces of the aggression.'" This resulted in the empowering of the recently founded Palestine Liberation Organization, and the prospect of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza suddenly become a far more realistic prospect it had ever been when Jordan and Egypt controlled those areas.