

Israel responds to an ominous build-up of Arab forces along
its borders by launching simultaneous attacks against Egypt and Syria.
Jordan subsequently entered the fray, but the Arab coalition was no
match for Israel's proficient armed forces. In six days of fighting,
Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the
Golan Heights of Syria, and the West Bank and Arab sector of East
Jerusalem, both previously under Jordanian rule. By the time the United
Nations cease-fire took effect on June 11, Israel had more than doubled
its size. The true fruits of victory came in claiming the Old City of
Jerusalem from Jordan. Many wept while bent in prayer at the Western
Wall of the Second Temple.




The U.N. Security Council called for a
withdrawal from all the occupied regions, but Israel declined,
permanently annexing East Jerusalem and setting up military
administrations in the occupied territories. Israel let it be known that
Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai would be returned
in exchange for Arab recognition of the right of Israel to exist and
guarantees against future attack. Arab leaders, stinging from their
defeat, met in August to discuss the future of the Middle East. They
decided upon a policy of no peace, no negotiations, and no recognition
of Israel, and made plans to defend zealously the rights of Palestinian
Arabs in the occupied territories.

Egypt, however, would
eventually negotiate and make peace with Israel, and in 1982 the Sinai
Peninsula was returned to Egypt in exchange for full diplomatic
recognition of Israel. Egypt and Jordan later gave up their respective
claims to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to the Palestinians, who
opened "land for peace" talks with Israel beginning in the 1990s. A
permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement remains elusive, as does
an agreement with Syria to return the Golan Heights.
================
Jun 5, 1870: Constantinople burns



A huge section of the city of Constantinople, Turkey, is set
ablaze on this day in 1870. When the smoke finally cleared, 3,000 homes
were destroyed and 900 people were dead.
The fire began at a
home in the Armenian section of the Valide Tchesme district. A young
girl was carrying a hot piece of charcoal to her family's kitchen in an
iron pan when she tripped, sending the charcoal out the window and onto
the roof of an adjacent home. The fire quickly spread down Feridje
Street, one of Constantinople's main thoroughfares.
The Christian area of the city was quickly engulfed. There was a
high degree of cooperation among the various ethnic groups who called
the city home, but even this was no match for the high winds that drove
the rapidly spreading fire. An entire square mile of the city near the
Bosporus Strait was devastated. Only stone structures, mostly churches
and hospitals, survived the conflagration.


In 1887, Edmondo de Amicis published perhaps the best account of this disaster in a book called
Constantinople.
Taken from:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ [05.06.2012]
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