Certainly. However, the Sinai may not be filled with people, but it was a strategic buffer zone between Israel and the only nation in the region to pose a significant existential threat to Israel (and against whom it has fought several major wars). Giving it up was a pretty major leap of faith in future Egyptian goodwill; now the tanks were a lot closer to the border of Israel proper.
In contrast, the Palestinians pose little actual existential military threat to the Israelis.
Naturally, that cuts both ways; posing little existential threat gives them little bargaining power; and what they have is undermined by the fact that they do not speak with one voice and there is little reason to believe that making a 'leap of faith" as in giving up the Sinai will pay off in the form of a secure and lasting commitment on their part.
The major experiment for the latter proposition was Gaza. That did not work well. The Israelis are not keen on replicating the Gaza situation on the WB. Can’t say as I blame them.
Have you ever been to Israel? Are you aware that Israel has exactly ONE airport? And that every single economic transaction ever done in Israel is dependent on salesman and products that arrive thru that airport?* The survival of Israel depends on a strip of concrete runway 100 yards wide .
A Palestinian state would turn Israel’s airport into a duck shoot.
As soon as they got the opportunity after Israel pulled out, the Palestinians in Gaza rained artillery and rockets onto Israel, bombing everything within range for years. Do you think the West Bank will be different?Even liberal Israelis who once believed in peace learned to face reality and stop believing in fairy tales…
*yes, I know there are fax machines, email, etc. And ports with big ships full of merchandise, too. But somebody has to make the business deals, drink a martini and sign the contracts before the mechandise moves. And whether the Israeli salesman travels to Europe, or the European company sends its sales rep to Israel—they have to move through the airport.
To answer your question - yes, I’ve been to Israel. I worked there for a season, on an archaeological dig (at a place called Tel Dor).
You snipped my next paragraph, which read:
To my mind an “existential threat” is one which threatens the actual, physical existance of the nation as a whole - for example, in 1948, the new nation of Israel faced an existential threat from the invading armies of its neighbours: had they won that war, Israel would not exist as a nation.
Harrasing attacks, in contrast, are not an existential threat. If the WB turns out like Gaza (and I’m not saying Israelis are wrong to be concerned about this - on the contrary!), Israelis may indeed expect cross-border attacks. The WB attackers, however, have no hope of dislodging Israel as a nation.
Sure, but it would kill a lot of Israeli civilians and turn this (fairly awesome) country into a craphole. Neither are things the Israeli public is willing to accept.
People here seem to be implying that if it’s not an existential threat, it’s no big deal. But that isn’t true, and it isn’t true for you. either. The U.S. isn’t under an existential threat - hasn’t been under an existential threat since arguably 1812 - and yet you’ve fought dozens of wars and killed millions of people. Hell, you’ve killed more Muslims in the past 10 years than we have in the past 100.
You had one terrorist attack almost ten years ago, and since then you’ve become obsessed with security. Al Qaeda does not pose an existential threat to the U.S., and never did. Would the American public approve of a leader who said that they were no big deal, that the you should all simply accept the occasional bombing or hijacking fgor the sake of “peace”? How long would HE remain in office?
How about this - you guys stop clearing airport terminals after some shmo skipped a line, and *then *you can start telling us that we should compromise our security.
It’s always easier for people to be dispassionate about others problems than it is about their own. This has been a recurring theme in these kinds of threads…posters who simply can’t (or won’t) put themselves in the Israeli’s shoes, and can’t (or won’t) understand that Israel IS a democracy, and that, as such, no politician or government would survive if they decided to just tell the general public ‘don’t worry, be happy…it’s only the occasional rocket attack or terrorist suicide bomber in a mall. Really, such deaths, while sad, are the price we pay for peace with our heroic neighbors’. Not…gonna…happen.
Until and unless the Palestinians are willing to seriously crack down on the paramilitary groups operating from within their territory, until they are ready to ensure that NO further such attacks happen (and pay the price for preventing them now and in the future), and until they are ready to come to grips with the reality that Israel is here to stay…until those things happen, then I’d have to say that any negotiations that Israel embarks on is going to have themselves with a royal flush while the Palestinians are going to be luck to have a pair of 3’s…
Small country, both geographically and population-wise. Two probably wouldn’t make economic sense. It’s not like they could put one way far away for Tel Aviv where it would be “safe”.
Because they only need one. Why do you only have two legs. If I blow one of them off, should I blame you for not having three. One spare in case your neighbor needed to blow one of them off?
2 international airports and a bunch of domestic airports. Israel’s also maybe building a third international airport in Megiddo, which doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s moot, because construction is being tied up by environmental issues.
I think it’s just Haifa being jealous of Tel Aviv.
It’s just the same old same old. “ZOMG! Israel is unrelentingly hostile and their leaders have the audacity to take strong negotiating positions which allow compromise further down the road and satisfy their electorate that they won’t repeat the disastrous mistakes their government made during the late 20th century! Israel has no right to ask for security in its negotiations, and what’s the worst that could possibly happen if Hamas was within rocket distance of every single Israeli citizen and had totally open boarders? Why are the Israelis such unrepentant aggressors? Let’s debate this!”
Meh[sup]2[/sup].
If this debate was a cow there wouldn’t be enough meat on its bones to feed a vicious housefly.
Also, a bit of blatantly obvious reasoning that some will miss: *whatever solution is accepted, it will have to involve some sort of security guarantee, and most likely a phased withdrawal. Anything short of that, unless there is already a strong PA that will clamp down on terrorism with an iron grip, will simply lead to the same exact thing we saw in Gaza with Hamas, or southern Lebanon with Hezbollah, etc, etc, etc. Those who speak most about peace should realize that **security is an ineluctable prerequisite of any lasting peace, by tautological definition. ***
There’s already a domestic airport there. Besides, the Megiddo hangup is mostly a Christian one. In Israel, Megiddo’s mostly known for a kibbutz and an archeological dig.
Two words: Suez Canal. National pride was certainly a major issue, but keep in mind that nothing transited the Suez from 1967-75. About 7.5% of world sea trade is carried via the canal today. In 2008, a total of 21,415 vessels passed through the canal and the receipts from the canal totaled $5.381 billion. The economic value to Egypt of the Suez and the strategic value to Israel of the Suez as a major water crossing obstacle and of the Sinai as a buffer were also quite important. Enough so that Egypt launched the War of Attrition for 3 years over it, Israel spent a considerable amount of money building the Bar Lev Line to defend it, the 1973 Yom Kippur War was largely fought over it, Egypt was willing to be expelled from the Arab League as a result for making peace with Israel for it, and Sadat was assassinated for it.
