It was the crowning moment of Israel's greatest military victory. On July 7th, 1967, a tank and infantry column rolled along the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem, and engaged the last Jordanian snipers around the Haram alSharif, the Temple Mount.
After just a few minutes' gunfire, the Israelis had established complete control. The Western Wall, the most sacred site in Judaism, was in Jewish hands.
Now, 30 years on, a respected Israeli academic says the Wall is not in Jewish hands at all.
Dr Shmuel Berkowitz has published exhaustive research suggesting that, having secured control militarily, the Israeli government neglected to formally annexe the Wall.
An expert on sites holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam in Jerusalem, Dr Berkowitz says in his new study that Israel's 1968 annexation of territory captured from Jordan in the course of the 1967 Six-Day War did extend to the area immediately adjacent to the Wall, where houses were levelled to free up space for today's extensive Western Wall Plaza area, but did not include the Wall itself.
Officially, therefore, concludes Dr Berkowitz, the Wall remains the property of the Waqf, or Muslim Trust, in accordance with a decision on Muslim ownership of the site handed down by a 1930 League of Nations Commission.
The Western Wall was part of a massive stone retaining wall constructed in the 1st century by King Herod around the outer courtyard of the second Jewish Temple. As the only remnant of that temple, which was destroyed in AD70, it is regarded as the most holy site for Jews.
A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, made no attempt yesterday to dispute Dr Berkowitz's findings, but said they had little relevance.
"It appears to have been a bureaucratic oversight," said the spokesman, Mr David Bar-Illan.
Equally, the senior Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, the mufti, Sheikh Ikrema Sabri, said he would not recognise Israeli control even if the Wall had been expropriated.
Mr Netanyahu yesterday insisted his coalition was "completely stable", despite a mini-rebellion by some members of his own Likud Party.
He also said he was upgrading security in the Old City, following the death of one Jewish student and the wounding of another on Wednesday night in a shooting attack.