Yuyutsu,

Your posting stated facts that I already know. History is compulsory at school and a favourite past time for Egyptians. I am aware that Israelis settlers paid for some parts of the land they control (anywhere from 6 to 15%).

Anyway I am not debating any of that, infact, I believe Arabs biggest mistake was not to accept the UN partition decision.

Back to my original question which you are either avoiding or have no answer to is why did you/ do you want to replace the total Palestinian state? Why Israel never accepted their borders within the ‘partition’ decision and defended it without that ‘alien land for peace/ settlers philosophy?

Fellow_human, I am not sure that I understand your question:

Israel DID accept the U.N. partition plan - when the U.N partition resolution was announced, everyone in Israel danced in the streets for joy. True that the new state was very fragmented - but the Jews accepted and were happy with what they got, and had they not been attacked, these would have remained Israel's permanent borders.

So I beg you to please clarify your question.

BTW, 12.5% is the percentage of land in Israel - including Jordan, that was held directly by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). I will need to dig out how much more land was privately owned by Jews.

Yuyutsu,

Ok let me clarify my question with an example:

We, usually rely on history to interpret strategies and trends. The founders of Israel after the UN partition decision and in face of aggression had one of two strategies to follow:

- First: would defend the land they were given by the UN partition decision, since you are capable of defending yourselves, until eventually your opponent (that generation or the one that follows) will accept the UN and moves on.
- Second: (what actually happened) to respond to every aggression by taking more land from the Palestinian state and others, creating a wider and longer conflicts with ‘occupied territories’ drama.

I would imagine that the first strategy would have resolved the Arab Israeli conflict probably with the death of Nasser. But history shows that the second strategy had no chance for achieving peace.
I wonder what was the compelling argument to follow the second strategy ‘land for peace’ when it have no historical precedent for success.

Do you understand my question now?

In my personal view, the creation of the Arab Israeli conflict was a success of the British foreign policy. I would have though Egyptians and Arabs should have sued the Britts for gazillion of dollars (or pounds). Then again, I am always told the arguments I come up with are 'unprecedented' or 'unheared of'. Too much philosophy and lateral thinking can damage the brain :-)

All the best,

Fellow_Human:

Your assumption that the Jews of Palestine were invincible and capable of defending themselves from any position, is incorrect.

The situation in 1948 was desperate: most Jews believed that they are about to die, because 600,000 with so little arms and ammunition, have no chance to survive against well-equipped 45,000,000, including tanks and fighter-planes, which Israel did not have. Israel was fragmented, with small and large parts isolated under siege.

Israel's first priority was to open the roads for supplies to the isolated parts. The next priority was to prevent sections of Israel from being cut again, and the next one was to move gunfire away as possible from Israel's civilian population. Taking more land was a side-effect rather than a goal by itself.

Even when cease-fire was declared, the threat was not over. The Arab intentions to wipe out Israel and throw the Jews to the sea have not changed. Israel was happy to negotiate, give land for peace, and even return refugees (Israel deliberately kept their homes unoccupied for several years), but the other side was not willing to talk or even recognise Israel's existence.

The same happened in 1956 and 1967: Israel took lands in order to remove canon fire and the threat of a quick invasion, away from its borders. For many years, the occupied territories were kept with the intention of returning them in a peace agreement. The settlers came later to complicate matters, which is indeed a sad story.

Have you noticed the news yesterday? Israel's newly elected Labour leader, announced that he will push forward a law providing financial motivation for settlers to leave. Rather than spectacular televised confrontations, he would like to see a low-key, gradual decline in settler population. Whether Labour is elected to carry out this plan, or whether Likud is re-elected, largely depends on the amount of trust of Israelis in the ability of Arab leadership to stop terrorism.

If the heart of the conflict was land - it would have been resolved ages ago. The only real issues are ACCEPTANCE and TRUST.

Hope this answers your question!

Thanks Yuyutsu,

Probably would have done the same if I was in your shoes for the first few years but not 56 onwards when you were part of a British french alliance and later developed your own WMD capabilities.

I guess the point I was trying to make that 'land grabbing' can backfire (ie there was no reason for the 73 war if you didn't grab the egyptian Sinai in 67).

Anyway, trust and acceptance are a real challenge for the future, I guess the most important thing is for sides to agree on what is it that needs to be accepted. Before doing that, extermists and hard liners on both sides should be pushed out.

Wish to see it solved in our life time, Sinai is my favourite holiday and meditation place.

Thanks for the discussion, it was informative.

ISRAEL 24th Nov
Israel’s northern border has been under attack all day by Hizbullah Terrorists. There has been 14 IDF soldiers injured and several Hizbullah terrorist killed as they crossed the border on motorbikes and scooters with the intent to kidnap IDF soldiers or Israeli civilians. They were confronted by IDF soldiers in hand to hand combat. In order to give the Hizbullah raiders support they shelled Jewish towns in the northern border, Metula and Snier causing the residence to spend the day and this night in bomb shelters as Hizbullah shelled them with Katyusha rockets. They have now started shelling the town of Kiryat Shmona as well.

Israeli warplanes and IDF artillery are hitting back at the Hizbullah bases in southern Lebanon we don’t know what damage that raids on their bases have caused to the Hizbullah at this time.

It is now being reported that bands of Palestinian fighters who were trained in Syria out of the refugee camps from Lebanon are headed toward the border to join the fight and try to filtrate Israel.

It is known that President Assad of Syria is ordering Hizbullah to attack in order to get the UN and US pressure off of him, this is what we all have expected this wild crazy man to do. How far he will go with it remains to be seen, but it could very easily escalate into a full regional war if it gets much worse.