I am not sure whether this thread belongs here or not. Mods please move as appropriate.
The only reason I post it here is because I wish to confirm what I have learnt, that since 1947 when the state of Israel was created, off an on it has annexed aubstantial amount of land by the use of military force. Is that correct? If the answer to that is “yes” then it begets the question why did they do that?
The nest question that follows is, why should the state of Israel not be asked to give up all that the land it has annexed after the 1947 partition?
I assume that the thread will be more suited to GD if the answer ro the first question turns out to be a “yes”.
The answer is very simple; Yes. What is now “Israel proper” is much larger than the 1947 plan. The plan called for much of northern Israel, northeast of Haifa, to be part of Palestine, and Arab territory extended west of Jerusalem, although the city itself was to be international.
I’m sorry, I failed to answer your second question.
The 1947 partition plan was never put into effect in any meaningful way. The day after Israel declared independence, the Arab states invaded it, intending to destroy it and its population.
After the war ended in 1948, the area occupied by Israel encompassed essentially what we think of today as “Israel,” while Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. This was, in essence, the creation of Israel; the war, not the failed partition plan, is what created the State of Israel and prevented the state of Palestine from coming into being.
In my humble opinion - that being the forum we’re in - Israel giving back land reserved for the Arabs under the 1947 plan would simply be silly. Those lands are, today, overwhelmingly Jewish, occupied by people who very much wish to be Israeli. It would be immoral and unethical for Israel to give those people away, just as it would be immoral and unethical for the United States to give Minnesota to Canada without the permission of Minnesotans.
You call it invasion. Why can’t it be called resistance or a popular uprising, supported by other Arab nations, to the decision by a group of countries arbitrarily carving a state for people who had immigrated and usurped land that legitimately belonged to the former?
In any case after the war ended, why didn’t Israel take the same initiative it had exhibited earlier and give back the land annexed in the war. AFAIK, the Palestinians suffered much more than the Israelis in that war.
Israel again expanded its borders in 1967 and has till now not given that back either. Why?
If Minnesota had been overwhelmingly Canadian for 1200 years, and the US had then sent its people to drive out the Canadians and occupy it for themselves, I am sorry but it does make moral and ethical sense to give Minnesota back to Canada.
It’s a two way street. Israel is certainly occupying land beyond the borders that were set in 1947. But other countries in the region have refused to recognize Israeli ownership of any land, including the land within the 1947 borders. So the general Israeli position has been “why should we recognize the 1947 borders if nobody else is?”
All lands annexed beyond the 1947 borders were conquered in defensive wars fought by Israel after it was threatened. Why should Israel give back what it legitimately won in 1967?
Not only that, but most of the territory claimed by Israel in those defensive wars was claimed for security purposes, after it became clear that Israel could not defend itself well against the constant attacks so long as that territory was held by the enemy. For instance, Syria used to shell Israel from the Golan Heights. With Egypt in Gaza and Jordan in the West Bank, Israel was in danger of being cut in half through a fairly narrow corridor. That sort of thing.
Frankly, if Israel behaved like its neighbors, it could simply have occupied the West Bank and Gaza, ethnically cleansed the Palestinians out of it either through genocide or deportation, and made it all one big happy Jewish state. It could have done the same thing with southern Lebanon.
Well, we can credit the American occupation of Iraq for one thing - it made the Arab-Israeli conflict drop to the second place on the list of Middle Eastern thread topics most likely to degenerate into an online shouting match.
Not true. in 1947, the entire Arab world was lined up against Israel. Today, Egypt and Jordan have climbed down and except for Syria and Iran, no other Arab country is belligerent in any manner.
Israel has been using this ploy of perceived aggression as a means of expanding its boundaries.
Israel’s history does not appear to be that of an honorable defender of its land.
Maybe this will help in clearing some misperceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I haven’t seen any compelling reason for them to do so, except that it would be a cracking nice thing to do, and make it more difficult to defend themselves. As Golda Meir once said:
“Invasion” is a perfectly legitimate military term. The war was almost entirely fought, on the Arabic side, by the armies of other nations entering Israel/Palestine. It was not a war of “resistance” in any sense that that means anything; it was a straight up conventional war that began when Egyptian, Syrian et al. forces entered the former mandate territory.
Because they were quite afraid of their neighbours, you see. For good reason, but there it is.
I agree wholeheartedly. Palestinians have gotten a raw deal from everyone - not just Israel. After all, you’ll notice Jordan did not give them their land, they just occupied it for 19 years and if any Palestinians didn’t like it, they shot them.
Er, you’re a bit behind the times. Of course they’ve SOME of that back; surely you’d heard of the Camp David Accords? As to what they haven’t given back the West Bank, well, there’s a lot of reasons, but that’s not the question you asked in your OP.
There’s basically two reasons for that:
Because, again, they’re terrified of their neighbours. Israel is under virtually ceaseless attack, after all, and always has been, irrespective of what it does or doesn’t do. They’re attacked when they expand, and attacked when they retreat. Note that the current Lebanon brouhaha happened in large part because Israel continued to be attacked after the 2000 peace treaty, when they withdrew from Lebanon in exchange for a guarantee for peace. That guarantee wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, as it turned out. As you can tell from a map, complete surrender of the West Bank would be a significant security problem, and they have every reason to believe it would be exploited.
And as to what’s Israel’s fault, because of the goddamned settlers - mostly Jewish religious zealots who’re convinced that God wants them to take it over and kick the Arabs out because their particular book of fairy tales says so. Don’t think I don’t assign some blame to Israel. The settlement problem presents Israel with a political problem it does not seem to know how to solve.
All that said, it’s mighty easy for us to call the shots from our comfortable positions; I’m not a member of a minority that has been persecuted and slaughtered by the millions for generations. If the Israelis are a little worried about their security, you’d have to be an ignoramous not to understand why.
As Sam points out, if Israel was run the same way Syria or Jordan were, they’d have slaughtered or driven out everyone in the West Bank long ago. Jordan could have set up Palestine as a state in 1949; they chose not to, instead treating the Palestinians with a brutality that has never taken place in Israel. I’m not suggesting Israel is perfect or run by saints, but it’s the Arab states who call for the massacre of Jews and teach their schoolchildren that Jews drain the blood from Arab children to make bread. (Yes, that is taught in Arabic schools.) I’ve never heard Israel call for the extermination of the Arab race. If you can’t see why Israel’s just a bit nervous, you need to be a little less dogmatic in your thinking.
So Iran and Syria are the only two countries still hostile towards Israel? Really? Saudi Arabia has diplomatically recognized the State of Israel? And Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Chad, Guinea, Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, the UAE, and Yemen all did too? Wow, you think that would have been mentioned in the paper or something.
Yeah, I’ve seen that, including the subsequent retraction, in snopes. I was looking for some evidence that RickJay has of an Arab curriculum that teaches that.