Six-day War: View From Retired Israeli Army Colonel

In the summer of 1967, Shimon Cahaner was already an experienced combat soldier.

He had joined the military as a young man, and was seriously wounded as a commando in Ariel Sharon's infamous Unit 101, which led raids on Palestinian villages. He later became a cattle farmer, but remained in the army reserves: a paratroop company commander in Battalion 28 of the Israel Defense Force (IDF). Then came the six-day war. His battalion trained for a drop into a town in Sinai; but on the evening of the first day of the war, they were sent into Jerusalem for an entirely different operation - a ground assault to capture the eastern, Jordanian-held, part of the city.

"We knew we couldn't prepare ourselves enough. So I told my soldiers, 'Your weapons are your values, and your love for the country. Your weapon is your solidarity. This is what you have, and with this you will win.' And that's what happened."

For the IDF, the six-day war was an extraordinary victory, an audacious display of force for the fledgling state. It was only in later years that some in Israel began to question the effect the occupation was having on the military, and began to ask how a rapid, bold war could turn into a military occupation dragging on for 40 years.

Cahaner's battalion was one of several paratroop units that fought their way through the night across to the east against fiercely held dug-in Jordanian positions.

By dawn they had control, though at a cost: his battalion of 350 lost 24 killed and more than 100 wounded.

Within hours they were sent up to the Golan Heights, on the Syrian border, to reinforce Israeli positions. Two days later, Cahaner and his men were back in Jerusalem. They walked into the Old City in the newly captured east, and up to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. It was the first time he had seen the wall since a brief visit as a boy.

"On one side, we had opened up places that were closed to our people for many years; but on the other side, I had lost so many friends who were soldiers. The feelings mixed together, and it took time to put everything in its place."

He has since met some of the Jordanian officers who fought against him, and said he regards them with respect ("they didn't run away, but fought almost until the last bullet"). They are, he says, very different from the armed groups fighting against Israel today. "An army is an army, but terror is terror, and it's not the same. It's not the same today at all."

The capture of east Jerusalem was for him a crucial victory, and the city remains central to his fierce loyalty to Israel and its history.

"Though I am not religious, in Jerusalem I feel I am stepping on the history of my people going back 3,000 years," he said. "We don't ask for more, and we don't need more. Give us a way to live here, a quiet life in peace with the countries around us. Unfortunately I think part of the Islamic mentality is they can't live with other cultures or nations among them ...

"We don't look to take something that doesn't belong to us. We are strong enough to protect ourselves. We are such strong believers that this is our place, and that it belongs to us, and we will never give it up."

He is reluctant to be drawn on the merits of the continued Israeli occupation of territories captured in 1967. "Everyone will give up something for peace. We are ready for it. But peace without a nation has no interest for me."

After the war, he went back to his farm in north Israel, where he has 600 cattle and calls himself an "Israeli cowboy".

The son of Russian immigrants, Cahaner was born on a farm, later lived on a kibbutz and always believed farming was vital to the survival of the state of Israel: "If you don't hold the land in your hands you will lose."