The Israeli paratroopers

Zion Karasenti, Yitzak Yifat and Haim Oshri

Born in Tiberias, Zion Karasenti, 64, fought at Ammunition Hill in the advance on East Jerusalem. He is a director and choreographer and lives in Afula

Everyone in the area had been called up and I felt left out. I was impatient to go. Eventually the truck came for me. My mother cried, but I felt I had to do something for my country.

At Ammunition Hill, all we could see was a hill surrounded by trenches and barbed wire. When we started to move, they threw everything they had at us. We got through one fence and found more wire. I threw myself on it and acted as a bridge for everyone else. I felt no pain. We got into the trenches, which were shallow and narrow. When someone was injured we passed them down the line over our bodies. The Jordanians couldn't get away, but they kept on fighting to the last man.

I was the first paratrooper to get to the Wailing Wall. I didn't know where I was, but I saw a female Israeli soldier, so I asked 'Where am I?' and she said: 'The Wailing Wall.' She gave me a postcard and told me to write to my parents before she disappeared. It might have been a dream, but then many years later I met the woman. She had been in the postal corps.

As more soldiers arrived, a photographer told us to stand like this and look in this direction. I just did it - I didn't even think about it.

When I think of all the soldiers that died to take Jerusalem, I wonder if they would have thought it was worth it. I think they would.

Yitzak Yifat, 64, is an obstetrics and gynaecology surgeon. He was 24, and living in Tel Aviv, when the war broke out. He was involved in the battle for Ammunition Hill and the conquest of East Jerusalem

I developed toothache when we arrived in Jerusalem and went into battle with my mouth still numb from the local anaesthetic. It was face-to-face fighting. I fought like a tiger. My friend was shot in the backside and he was about to be shot again by a Jordanian. I shot him. Another Jordanian saw I was out of bullets and he charged at me with a bayonet. I don't know how I did it, but I took his gun and shot him with it. It was brutal, and a sad victory. I lost many friends. After the fighting we built a memorial to our friends - and one to the Jordanians, in honour of their bravery.

Entering the Old City wasn't such a big deal to me as it was to some. I wonder now if it was all worth it: it seems so complicated and our leaders have no vision for the future. I am glad we liberated Jerusalem and it should remain united under our sovereignty, but everyone, from any religion, should be allowed to visit. I'm angry about what the religious [Orthodox] have done to the Western Wall, dividing it between the sexes and imposing their rules on it.

Once I was in New York, in 1986, and a woman came up to me. She had numbers tattooed on her wrist, so she'd survived the concentration camps, and she asked if I was the boy in the photograph at the Western Wall.

Born in Yemen in 1944, Haim Oshri emigrated to Israel in 1949 and finished military service in 1965. In the battle for Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill, his paratrooper regiment lost 37 out of 150 soldiers. An Orthodox Jew, he feels the conquest of Jerusalem had a religious significance and that the Old City should remain part of Israel in the event of a peace agreement

The battle for Ammunition Hill was the worst moment of the war. There wasn't a plan - we were just told to attack. The Jordanians were brave soldiers. Now it makes me angry to think of all the unnecessary casualties. If we had taken more time to plan, there would have been far fewer casualties.

As an Orthodox Jew it was special for me to be involved in the fight for Jerusalem. It doesn't matter if you're from Poland or Yemen, Jerusalem is our common bond. Every day we pray three times to Jerusalem, and I could never have imagined the magic of seeing the Kotel [Western Wall] for the first time.

Rubinger directed the picture. He told us to look up and he lay down while taking it. It was just good luck I was there at that historical time and that I was in the picture. It's a big honour.

The photographer

David Rubinger

Born in Vienna in 1924, David Rubinger emigrated to Palestine in 1939 and became a photographer. He fought in the Israeli army in 1948, but by 1967 he was working for Life magazine, covering Israel's invasion of the Sinai. When he realised Israel planned to attack Jerusalem he rushed back, arriving at the Western Wall in time to take the first photos of Israeli soldiers at Judaism's holiest site. His shot of three paratroopers staring at the wall is one of the best known in Israel's history

I served with the British army during the Second World War. In 1948 I was a platoon commander around Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, but I was normally in trenches or fortified positions. Life was more dangerous for my wife, who had to go out and queue for food and water.

Things began to heat up in May 1967 and I went to join the Israeli forces in the Negev. A few days before war broke out everything seemed to go quiet. I had dinner in Tel Aviv with a colleague, Paul Schutzer from Life magazine. We bet a bottle of champagne on who would get the first cover photograph. The war broke out on the Monday and Paul was killed the same day.

I was with the Israeli forces that went into the Sinai. Just after the battle for El Arish, I overheard radio messages that something was going to happen in Jerusalem. A helicopter was taking away the wounded so I squeezed on. I didn't know where it was going, but it landed in Beersheva, where I'd parked my car.

I was exhausted. I never trust anyone to drive my car, but I picked up a soldier who was hitchhiking and got him to drive while I slept. We arrived at 6am in Jerusalem and I went straight to see my family. I found out that Jerusalem had been taken and I headed for the Old City.I didn't have any great feeling for Jerusalem, I just wanted to be the first with the photographs. There was still some sniping going on but the fighting was over. When I got there, it was very emotional. Everyone around me was crying.

I think there was such euphoria because in the weeks before the war there was a sense of doom. The national stadium was prepared for 40,000 graves and even if we thought we might win, it would be a costly victory. The humour before the war was very dark. 'Would the last person to leave please turn out the lights.'

We went from being doomed to having an empire. It was like a condemned man with the noose around his neck suddenly being told that not only was he going to live he was going to be the king. The nation went a little nuts. For the religious, the victory had to be God-given and that is how the whole Jewish messianic and settler movement was born.

I lay down to take the picture of the paratroopers because there was barely three metres between the Wailing Wall and the houses next to it. When I developed the film, I didn't think much of the picture. I gave it to the army. They passed it on to the government press office which then distributed it to everyone for virtually nothing. I still don't think it's a great picture, but often iconic pictures are created by the media and what people read into them.

The Palestinian schoolboy

Nazmi Al Jubeh

Nazmi Al Jubeh, 52, is director of a Ramallah-based organisation that conserves Palestinian heritage. He was 12 at the time of the Six-Day War and was infected by the optimism that Egypt's President Nasser was going to re-assert Arab pride by defeating Israel and enabling the refugees to return to their homes in Israel. The war led Al Jubeh to join left-wing Palestinian groups. He still believes in a Palestinian state on the land that Israel conquered in 1967

I was born in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, but we moved just outside the walls in 1966. I was the sixth of 11 children. My father's shop was in the middle of the Old City. I went to school next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and spent every day criss-crossing the Maghrebi Quarter. I still remember the faces, the smells of spicy food and the special clothes that came from North Africa.

The years 1965-67 saw the emergence of Nasserism. It was forbidden to listen to the Voice of Cairo radio station in Jordan so I acted as a lookout for my brothers to check the Jordanian police did not come near the house.

There were a lot of refugees in the Old City and they were in a very bad situation. They were ready to go back to their homes in West Jerusalem and other areas at any moment. They wanted to believe that Nasser would solve everything for them. If there was war there could only be one result.

We knew nothing of Israel. We couldn't even see it. I remember throwing stones over the barriers near the Damascus Gate and Israelis throwing stones back at us, but the enemy was faceless; it was seen as an inhuman force which threw people out of their homes.

No one expected war to happen so quickly. There were no rumours, no obvious preparation, even in the Jordanian military camp. It was not until the second day of the war that Jordan distributed guns to civilians in the Old City.

From the garden of our home in Silwan, I could see the battle for Government House [the UN headquarters in no man's land]. There was shelling and bombing around our house, so our whole family went to my grandfather's house in the Jewish Quarter. My grandfather didn't allow anyone to leave, but from his roof I saw what we thought were Iraqi tanks driving down the Mount of Olives to our east. Soon after, we heard the troops in the street and my grandfather prepared a large urn of tea for them. He went out and came straight back. 'It's the Jews,' he said and dropped the urn. No one wanted to believe that they were not Iraqis, but when it became clear everyone began to cry.

For the older people it was very traumatic. They remembered 1948 and the refugees, and thought the same thing would happen again. After four days of curfew our family set off for home. We walked down the steps towards the Maghrebi Quarter [the community that abutted the Western Wall] and there was nothing there. Just piles of rubble and bulldozers at work with Israeli soldiers dancing on the ruins. I just wanted to know where all my friends had gone.

My grandfather was forced to leave his home in the Jewish Quarter. But at least he had another house to go to. Many neighbours left for Jordan, but my parents were determined to stay. Within a few years I was jailed for political activities. I was involved with the Communist party and other leftist groups. I have spent about five years of my life in jail. I once read that 70 per cent of my generation have been in jail at least once since 1967.

The Jordanian fighter pilot

Ihsan Shurdon

Ihsan Shurdon was trained as a fighter pilot by the RAF and became a lieutenant-general in the Royal Jordanian Air Force. After he retired he remained an adviser to King Hussein. As a pilot he faced the superior Israeli air force in a subsonic Hawker Hunter. After the war, he befriended some of his Israeli counterparts

The Jordanian air force was small but good. We knew that we would have to take on the Israelis, and we had great respect for them. In the event of war we planned to bomb six or seven key Israeli airfields, but when war approached, the Egyptians told us we would not be required. They would knock out the airfields and we would have a minor air-defence role, but I knew that in those days Migs [Soviet jets supplied to Egypt] could only fly as far as you could spit.

The first time I saw an Israeli jet it was attacking the runway. When the siren went I scrambled as fast as I could and joined the Israeli formation. The Hunter was a very agile jet and our aim was to drag the Israeli Mirage and Super Mystere jets into a low-level, low-speed fight in which their air-to-air missiles would be less effective. A friend and I shot down four and drove off the last fighter in the formation. But by then I had been hit by our own ground fire and our runway was out of action, so I flew to Amman. As soon as I landed, new Israeli jets arrived. They cut the airfield and destroyed the aircraft. They were hit by anti-aircraft fire, but they didn't go down.

Before the war, King Hussein was in a corner: Syria and Egypt accused him of being a collaborator and an agent of imperialism. He was also persuaded that Israel had aggressive intentions towards him. The king felt that the only way that he could get protection from Syria, Egypt and Israel was to join the Unified Arab Command. Jordan was meant to receive planes and troops, but they never came. It was a fiasco. When the war started we were told the Egyptians had destroyed 75 per cent of the Israeli air force, while the Syrians had destroyed double the number of Mirages that Israel actually had.

Although Jordan lost the West Bank and Jerusalem, it is not clear that Jordan would exist in the same form as it does now anyway - without the war, the king may not have been able to hold on to his throne. I feel the Israelis are sitting on their major threat to security, the Palestinians (not the Iranians). In spite of all the loss of life in recent years, Israel cannot say it has achieved total security for its citizens. The question of Palestine will not go away.

The Israeli paratrooper

Uri Geller

Uri Geller, 61, is world-famous for his spoon-bending and claimed psychic powers. He lives with his family in Berkshire, but he was born in Israel, and though he spent part of his youth in Cyprus he had returned to Tel Aviv barely a year before the 1967 war

I came back to Israel in my late teens and for a year or so worked in various jobs - as a courier, a construction worker... Then I got my call-up papers, and I volunteered for the paratroopers. I had basic training and had gone on to the officers' course at the time of the war. Not long before it broke out a close friend of mine died. I was very upset, and when I fell asleep on manoeuvres I was sent home.

The next day I woke up hearing sirens all over Tel Aviv. I turned on the radio and the announcer was screaming: 'Israeli air force jets have destroyed the Egyptian air force.' I jumped on my scooter and drove like mad to join my unit. My captain put me in charge of eight soldiers in two command cars. Our orders were to take this hill in Ramallah that was heavily fortified with Jordanian Patton tanks. King Hussein had started to build his summer villa there.

The battle started. All my friends were being shot. My commander was shot. A shell went straight into his light-armoured vehicle and he died in front of me. Then I suddenly noticed a Jordanian soldier from behind me. He looked into my eyes and was about to shoot me. It was an amazing moment: we were staring at each other for what seemed an eternity. I saw my whole life, a film version, flash through my mind. Then suddenly I snapped out of this trance - it must have been a millisecond - and I realised that whoever pulled the trigger first was going to survive. I guess I was faster. I shot him. Shells were exploding all around. Israeli jets were diving on to the hill. My first reaction was very strange: I did what I'd seen in American war films - I removed his military ID tag.

About 20 minutes later I was hit in my right arm. Then I was hit in my left arm, which shattered my elbow - even today I can't fully stretch it out. And then something hit me over my left eye and I passed out. I woke up in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

I'd seen my friends die. One of them died in my arms. The driver of the light-armoured command vehicle lost his leg. I had to drag him out. It's something that you never, ever forget. Killing another human being face to face tapped into a kind of hidden spirituality in me. You want to know - you want to believe, deeply - that someday you will meet that person. And to this day, I think of that Jordanian soldier as my brother. It's almost like he is embedded in my soul. I've always been religious, and I know that I will meet him some day, in the afterlife.

After the war I became a vegetarian and I became obsessed with guns: in New York, I had a licence to own seven handguns. Success came to me, as well as bulimia, panic attacks, anxiety. And I think all of this somehow started with the war.

Over the centuries, for thousands of years, we have been fighting the same war - for a safe Jewish existence. The only change, I think, is that we are using more sophisticated weapons. The hatred between Arabs and Israelis is so deep, so vicious that it will take generations to eradicate. Little kids are being taught to hate the Jewish race, and particularly Israel.

The Palestinian student

Sari Nusseibeh

The 58-year-old president of Al-Quds university in Jerusalem, Sari Nusseibeh is descended from one of the major families in Palestinian politics. His late father, Anwar, was wounded in the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, then became involved in abortive efforts to set up a Palestinian government in exile and finally returned to Jerusalem, holding ministerial posts in the Jordanian government. Sari Nusseibeh was the Jerusalem representative of Arafat's Palestine National Authority, but quit in 2002 to focus on peace efforts. Along with ex-Israeli navy chief Ami Ayalon, he set up 'The People's Voice' in favour of a 'historic compromise' to end the conflict. He was 18 during the Six-Day War

I was in London when the war started, at high school. There were a lot [of Palestinians and other Arabs] studying in London. We tried to contact our parents, but for several days there was no answer and we were very worried. My father was in Jerusalem and so were my mother and brothers. The rest of the family was in different places. But my parents had taken my brothers and other people in the neighbourhood to an underground shelter.

I went home that summer, after the war. My elder brother went back first. He flew to Jordan. The borders were still fairly open - not in the sense that the Israelis were allowing people to go through, but there wasn't sufficient surveillance, so a lot of people smuggled themselves in. So my brother came back across the Jordan River to Jerusalem. But I got permission from the Israeli authorities, so I flew in from the west, through Tel Aviv. It was very peculiar coming into Jerusalem from the west. I'd never done it before in my life. We landed at the airport and it looked like a madhouse to me. I didn't understand the language, or the people.

For all my life, geographically, Palestine had been divided - the state of Israel on the coast, and the West Bank ruled by Jordan, with Jerusalem itself also divided. Driving back home from the airport, I could see a countryside that in the past 19 years had been a kind of dream. It's a peculiar thing about the 1967 war that while the Arabs lost, and the West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli occupation, for the first time in 20 years Palestine was physically reunited.

My father's family is Jerusalemite, going back generations. My mother's family is from a place inside Palestine, now Israel, now called Netziona. Her father had been expelled from the country, first to the Seychelles. He made his way to Cairo, but was prevented from coming back for a few more years, before finally managing to return and settle in Ramleh until the [1948] war broke out. He passed away just before the war and so my mother, her family, had to leave. My own father by then had been shot. He was in hospital, and his leg had been amputated. My mother, with the older kids, went to Damascus, where I was born.

The days after the 1967 war were a period of discovery. I had to reassess my entire knowledge of politics. I went to Oxford, then London University. I was running out of money, so I found a job in the Gulf. I got married, and my wife and I then continued our studies at Harvard. In 1978, we came back and started teaching at Bir Zeit on the West Bank.

I think the lesson of the 1967 war is that things don't work out the way you plan. I don't think either side has achieved their purpose. The Jewish people set out to set up a Jewish state, and the Arab national movement set out to set up a Palestinian Arab national state. Nothing is impossible, but neither side now looks in a position to do that.

The Egyptian activist

Islah Jad

Islah Jad was 16 and living in Cairo when the Six-Day War broke out. She and her family were devoted to Nasser. During protests in the Seventies, she met her Palestinian husband and now lives in Ramallah, where she is a lecturer

I was a member of a youth group connected to the ruling party, the National Union. We had a camp which was supposed to prepare us to take our role in society and the party. It was semi-military and I wore a blue uniform which was similar to the clothes worn by the Vietnamese Communists. We used to listen to the news in the evenings and when we heard Egypt had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli vessels everyone was very enthusiastic. We wanted to stop Israel's expansion in our land and we felt this was a vital battle to re-dress all the wrongs that had been done to the Palestinians.

We had a blackout, so we used to listen to the national station in darkness. We believed the Israelis were losing and ignored the stations that said otherwise. They were, we thought, linked to the enemy. Everything else was normal. There was food and services, so there was no sense of crisis.

But slowly it became clear things were not right. A neighbour had two sons in the army and had heard the Egyptian army was being slaughtered. Nasser's resignation that night, though, was the shock of my life. We left the apartment to join the crowds demanding that he should not go. Nasser was loved because he did so much for poor people. My education was full of sports, culture and holidays. Healthcare was free and we were able to buy Egyptian-made fridges and cars. We were the leaders of the Arab world.

My doubts began in 1968 when I went to university. I became critical of the lies of the war, the power of the army and the lack of liberty. When Nasser died, nobody liked Anwar Sadat, his successor. We hated him.

The legacy of 1967 remains strong in Egypt. The war caused many internal problems. The need to increase the military budget damaged economic development, which affected education, health and increased social gaps. Egypt's peace with Israel meant it broke ranks with the rest of the Arab world and lost its role as leader. The growing influence of the US led to the rise of Islamic militants, which has led to violence and forced the government to become more religious to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Palestinian refugee

Mahmoud Abdullah

Mahmoud Abdullah was three when he first became a refugee in 1948. His Palestinian family left West Jerusalem for the safety of the Old City, but could not return. When the war broke out, Abdullah was studying public health in Beirut. He became a refugee again in Jordan and did not see his parents in Jerusalem until 1972. He has spent most of his life managing refugee camps in Jordan for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), set up in 1948 to look after Palestinian refugees

We left West Jerusalem on a cart with a few belongings and our cat. We were told that we would be able to go back in a few days or weeks. We settled in a small room in the Jewish Quarter and were moved out to a new refugee camp in Jerusalem in 1966. It was hard, but I was able to get an education and go to Beirut to study.

It was a time of optimism before the war. We were all fascinated by Nasser and we believed if the Arabs were united they could defeat anyone. We were glued to the radio in the dormitories and the cafeteria and were happy when we heard that the Israeli air force had been destroyed. It meant that all of us from Jaffa, Jerusalem or the Galilee could go home.

Slowly the truth began to emerge. We could not believe that the Egyptians had been so weak after their years of bragging. We cried like children. We were lost; we were outside our homes and we had nowhere to go. My friends and I began to feel that the defeat was as much about the betrayal by the Arab leaders as it was about the strength of Israel. I began to trust the Israelis more than the Arab leaders. Looking back, we have suffered more at the hands of the Arab leaders than at the hands of the Israelis, although the Israelis have made up for lost time since the Nineties.

What the Arabs are offering Israel now, recognition in return for a Palestinian state, they could have offered years ago. They knew they were too weak to make war, but they didn't want to make peace.

While I was studying we had planned to do field work in Gaza, but that was no longer possible. We were sent to Jordan instead, where we helped set up the refugee camps. I distributed tents, hot meals and anything else that was needed. But then the Israelis started raiding the Jordan Valley, so the camps were moved. I lived in tents for the first few years, but we were fortunate because UNRWA was very experienced at dealing with refugees, so they built food centres and schools very quickly. And some of the new refugees were doctors and teachers.

I only left the camps in 1985, when I moved to Amman. I still don't feel accepted here. There is so much discrimination against the Palestinians in Jordan. We built 90 per cent of this country, but we still have no access to many jobs. I have to pay for my children's education, while Jordanians can always get scholarships.

There is no way that the rights of 4.25m refugees can be ignored. There will never be peace when there is no justice. We need to have three states, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, with open borders. We all need to live together - there's no point in putting walls between us.

The Egyptian journalist

Yael Dayan

In June 1967 Yael Dayan was already an acclaimed writer, but she was best known as the daughter of Moshe Dayan, Israel's defence minister. As a military journalist she was attached to Ariel Sharon's division, which invaded the Sinai peninsula on 5 June and within four days reached the Suez Canal. After the war she became a leading left-wing politician and was highly critical of Israel's military policies and its settlement of the West Bank and Gaza. In 1992 she entered the Knesset as a member of the Labour party, but later joined the more left-wing Meretz party. She is now the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv

War was in the air and it was just a question of who would start it. There was a genuine fear for the future in Israel. We were a small population, the army was everybody, it wasn't an abstract concept. We knew our brothers, cousins and friends, and we knew they were undefeatable. Since then all our wars have been avoidable, yet as a people we have become swamped and indoctrinated by false fears.

As I drove south to join the army, though, I was young enough to think in adventurous terms. I wasn't crazy: my passion was for writing not killing, but I was going to join people I knew very well, like a family. Once there, the waiting seemed to last forever. Sharon kept everyone at a high state of readiness.

I met my husband just before the beginning of the war. He was a liaison between Sharon and the central and southern command. Romance was rare because I was the only woman most of the time. I was treated well and I certainly didn't play the feminist. When they wanted someone to help the cook do something wonderful with the rations, I was happy to help.

In the week before the war, we moved from neutral into first gear. Sharon was remarkable, he always kept his humour and his cool. At the time there were no political differences, so we talked and joked. Sharon, Rabin [the chief of staff and later prime minister] and my father were all from the same background; they were all secular and patriotic. There was much less religion in the army then. The only voice of God people heard was the voice of their commander.

When the war came it was exciting. I was with Sharon the whole time in his jeep. We first came under attack in a fortified wadi. There was a battle with all the noise and smoke, but it did not really register. When your enemy is a distant target, then war makes unfortunate sense. But when you see the enemy eye to eye as humans it's much more difficult. The prisoners crowded around us begging for mercy. Some ran away, but we didn't shoot them because there was nowhere to run to.

I never felt scared apart from a time when our jets attacked. They began their dive and we knew they were not Egyptians, but the pilots realised who we were before it was too late. Eventually we got to the Suez Canal. I was glad to see the water, but I did not feel the excitement of victory in conquering Sinai. I was excited at having achieved a level of protection for our people. There was no sense that we had come to these places (Sinai, Golan, the West Bank and Gaza) to stay. What changed? We became possessive of our new acquisitions and inflamed with a religious zeal. Our victory was a poisoned chalice.