I agree with Scham that the 1967 war was really a mixed bag for Israel: It taught Arab states to worry about future wars, making them more likely than ever before to negotiate with Israel; but it also so discredited the Arab states and Arab regimes, that non-state actors began emerging who viewed 1967 as a defining moment for Arab inconsequence that needed to be transcended. Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians since that time have been, in my view, disastrous if the objective of Israeli leaders is to arrive at true normalization with the region.

But there are two points that I’m more skeptical about. Scham writes: “While the caricature of the [Arab Peace Initiative] solving all the Mideast’s problems is just that, settlement of the [Palestinian-Israeli] conflict is in fact a precondition to solving virtually any of them.”

I’m not sure. Scham’s argument speaks to the centrality of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the minds of Arab populations. That’s partly true of course, but we need to examine more closely the causes of this. This attitude goes beyond a sense of the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians; the centrality of the Palestinians’ fate is also, and I would say mainly, the result of the Arabs’ alienation from their own leaderships and from domestic politics in general. In backing the Palestinians, they also make a strong statement against those governing them. That is why I feel that at the heart of the Arabs’ sense of anomie is the abject failure of the Arab state. That’s the essence of the problem, and while attitudes toward Palestine are often the most public manifestations of that disgust, they are not necessarily indicators of where the solution really lies.

The problem is that Arab citizens are the prisoners and victims of despotic regimes that neither respect them nor afford them even the barest essentials of a political life. Citizens are permitted only to be indifferent, only to express themselves in favor of the tyrannical fathers ruling over them. In that context, I am not sure that Palestine is in and of itself at the core of the Middle East’s conflicts. Certainly Arab regimes have long used Palestine to justify suffocating security establishments and to deflect their population’s anger away from their own shortcomings. But I also believe that if Arab societies become more open, if states engage in democratic reform, Palestine will recede as prime shaper of Arab attitudes.

Indeed, I don’t feel confident that if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were resolved, with Arab despotisms left in place, we would see deep change in the nature of Arab societies. I don’t imagine that peace would lead fewer young men to join militant Islamist groups (probably the contrary would happen), nor that Arab citizens would be able to voice their opinions more easily. No one can doubt the importance of Palestine, but as the Iraqis showed in the aftermath of the 2003 war, just as the Kuwaitis did in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war, Arab societies will turn against the Palestinians, often very unjustly, when they feel they have paid a heavy domestic price for having shown sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

A second point I’m skeptical about is whether we can legitimately stick to the template of the 1990s when discussing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—or more broadly the post-1967 period. Scham writes: “It is only by readjusting [borders and the Israeli occupation] to include the reality of full Palestinian independence that the entire region can start to move on.”

Again, I really do wonder. We still speak of the conflict as if the post-Oslo context were somehow relevant. It may be in some distant, intellectual way, but all the evidence suggests that Palestinian-Israeli dynamics are changing very rapidly. On both sides of the divide those unwilling to make the required concessions for peace can veto any final settlement. The current signs are that Israel, even with a center-left government, is politically incapable of making peace with the present Palestinian partner; and nothing suggests that by February, when Israelis vote once again, things will become any easier. By the same token, Hamas has no interest in peace, believing the armed struggle can deliver much more, while the Palestinian Authority is incapable of imposing a settlement on all the Palestinian factions. Things will get worse next January, when the PLO and Hamas fight over whether Mahmoud Abbas is still president.

The more relevant questions are: What borders will Hamas accept and the Israelis agree to? Or, what borders will Hamas accept from a Likud-led government, and Israel agree to offer a Hamas-led Palestinian leadership? Indeed, as Hamas gains power over Palestinian society, if in fact it does, what international legitimacy will the Palestinians retain as a people meriting a return of at least a part of their ancestral land? These are all legitimate questions that need to be answered before we can adopt Scham’s hopeful phrase as fact. Yet no answers are forthcoming.

To borrow from another phrase made popular in the 1980s by Israeli geographer Meron Benvenisti: We may already be past midnight on a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, at least a solution familiar to us. In that event, should we continue to stubbornly assume that such a solution is the precondition to unlocking the Middle East’s problems? Or should we begin to resolve those other problems independently, particularly the problem of the illegitimate Arab state, and not hold them hostage to a conflict bound to go on and on, whatever optimists say?

Michael Young is a member of MESH.

Kerr had lamented in 1971 that “[s]ince June, 1967, Arab politics have ceased to be fun.” Kramer quite rightly takes him to task, pointing out that the raging instability of the Arab world between 1948 and 1967 was anything but “fun,” but then posits, contrariwise, that the elements of stability that have been present since at least 1973 (the last Israeli-Arab state war) reflect a stabilizing dynamic introduced by Israel’s conquests in 1967. Consequently, he warns, attempts to undo 1967 by an Arab generation that remembers not Dayan, Rabin and Co. would likely destabilize the “implicit understanding that underpins order.” Translation: Tamper with the 1967 borders at your peril.

Even though it’s clear that Kerr used “fun” with a huge measure of irony, he was making a point that Kramer rightly picked up on. For Arabists of his generation, the serial coups, counter-coups and radical ideologies from 1948-67 did seem like the Middle East that they loved, albeit writ on the larger canvas of independence and developing oil wealth. They could recognize that the many of the traditional dynamics and elites still held sway, along with a somewhat traditional (and for them attractive) way of life. Of course, for Palestinians it was in no way “fun,” and Israelis never participated in the game at all. But it is clear that Kerr was thinking of neither in his flip remark.

However, Kramer’s view is similarly narrow. The fact that state-to-state war between Arab states and Israel has been virtually eliminated (though one could quibble about confrontations such as with Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 and with Syria in 1982 as well) means primarily that Middle Eastern states are increasingly irrelevant to their populations as an expression of their ideology and deepest feelings. Rather, I would argue that the generally accepted view of increasing instability is correct, and that the relative stability of Israeli borders since 1967 is to a considerable degree a cause of that Arab and Muslim instability.

Of course the huge losses of life of 1967 (among Arabs) and 1973 (on both sides) have been avoided. And it is true that after 1973 the immense humiliation of 1967 was partially redeemed. However, the perception that the Arab leadership is perfectly willing to virtually forget about the Palestinians has not been accepted by their populations. That is why peace with Israel by the rest of the Arab League can only happen when a settlement bearing some resemblance to the Arab League Peace Initiative (API) takes place. Arab heads of government know that their populations will not stand for less.

While the caricature of the API solving all the Mideast’s problems is just that, settlement of the conflict is in fact a precondition to solving virtually any of them. This is not because of the obduracy of Arab states; rather, it is because their leaders recognize that their countries may be ungovernable if the Palestinians appear to have had an unjust settlement forced on them.

Kramer worries about the fate of the Middle East entrusted to those who remember not 1967. In fact, that is irrelevant. The children of the ruling classes now ascending to leadership want peace with Israel for their own good reasons. Most of them have moved on from the conflict. But they know their populations haven’t. It is the Islamist leaders who are calling for Israel’s destruction who remember 1967, as do their followers, both the absolutely committed and the much larger groups of hangers-on.

And it is the hangers-on who are most important, since how they swing will determine whether moderation or radicalism will be dominant in the next generation. Contrary to what Kramer implies, the former is not a precondition for Israeli-Palestinian peace; rather, it can only be a (hoped-for, but by no means certain) consequence. The latter will continue to feed on the consequences of 1967, since that is indirectly the single most important source of destabilization and radicalism today, adding fuel to the others.

There is a growing school of thought in Israel today, primarily on the left, which views the Six-Day War as, in retrospect, a nearly unmitigated disaster. In my view, that is simplistic. The shock to the Arab states was, in retrospect at least, largely salutary. It took the Yom Kippur War for Israel to learn that the Egyptians, at least, had absorbed that lesson, and that led to Egyptian-Israeli peace. And the peace has held, despite the return to the 1967 border.

Gradually, the same lesson was absorbed by the rest of the Arab states, and the API is the clearest manifestation of it. The good that could be wrung out of 1967 has already become part of the regional fabric. Only the evil remains, i.e., the borders and the occupation. It is only by readjusting them to include the reality of full Palestinian independence that the entire region can start to move on. While Arab politics will never revert to the “fun…good old days” which Kerr remembered, the memories of 1967 may eventually fade away. And that, pace Kramer, will be to the good.

Paul L. Scham is executive director of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland at College Park and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington.