A redefinition of the Middle East conflict occurred last week when Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations called Israel’s occupation of lands acquired in the 1967 Six Day War ”illegal.” A new and provocative label of ”illegality” is now out of the chute and running loose, ready to wreak damage. The worst prospect is that Palestinians will dig in with a new feeling of righteousness and believe that the international community will force Israel to withdraw from its ”illegal occupation.”

In Middle Eastern politics, memory enables each side to nurture its grievances but there is little collective memory that might facilitate negotiations on the basis of shared assumptions. Few seem to care anymore that the 1967 war was a war of self-defense for Israel or that United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 referred to withdrawal from ”territories” rather than from ”the territories” — a crucial distinction that shows that the resolution does not necessarily require withdrawal from all of the land occupied in 1967. In this time of crisis and forgetfulness, using the term ”illegal” is destructive and dangerous. For the uninformed, the discussion will start with the secretary general’s labeling of the occupation as a violation of law.