Whoa! Obama’s deal gave Iran a whole nation? Which one? Dunno about Obama, but that nation sure got the shit end of the deal!
And it’s “a nation who makes no bones about funding terrorism even worse,” too - whatever that means, but it sure sounds scary.
Yeah…I had the same trouble parsing that sentence. I eventually figured out what he was trying to say but someone needs to teach Silver lining about a wonderful piece of conventional technology called the “comma”.
There is one nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and it is also the only one with boarders that are expanding.
Israel’s borders haven’t expanded in over 50 years.
I thought 1 was assumed and was a large part behind why we kept Ernie Moniz’ flowing locks so busy while he was DOE S1.
Not the official ones.
De jure, perhaps.
*De *anything, really.
When I was in 1st grade, the map on my classroom wall went from the Suez Canal to the Jordan River. Ramallah, Gaza and Nablus were all de facto Israeli cities. Since then, for almost my entire life, my country has done nothing but shrink. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing - I think the settlements were a mistake, and I still support a two-state solution, although I admit that I mostly do so because I believe that it’s what’s best for Israel. But don’t tell me my country has been expanding when I’ve seen nothing but the opposite with my own eyes.
Shit.
I just turned this thread into every other Israel thread, didn’t I? Sorry.
The funny part is that the exact reverse is true. 
Israel has in fact shrunk, repeatedly, continually shedding territory since its high point in 1967 - the same time it (allegedly, but an open secret now) began production of nuclear weapons.
First, it shed the entire Sinai - off to Egypt, part of the price of its peace deal with them.
Then, it shed Gaza - pulling out unilaterally, without any peace deal.
In fact, possession of nuclear weapons has been inversely proportional to Israel’s territorial acquisitions from its neighbors: when it lacked nukes, it took land from them; when it had nukes, it gave land away.
There is sound reason for this, of course (and not one of any comfort to those of us, meaning all of us, not comfortable with nuclear proliferation), and it is this: nukes are an insurance against truly existential threat posed by neighboring states (though of course quite useless against threats posed by terrorism, insurrection, etc.). Without nukes, Israel felt it needed a buffer of land around it, purely for strategic reasons - hence control of the Sinai. The Sinai has some value, there are mines there, but its main value is strategic - a defense against Egypt. Nukes allowed Israel to give that up.
For non-proliferation, the example of Ukraine was a warning in the opposite direction: it gave up nukes in return for a guarantee nukes would not be used against them … only to face dismemberment by Russia.
Utter bullshit.
Well, no. Alessan is technically correct – the best kind of correct? – that Israel hasn’t annexed the West Bank. But it kind of reminds me of the late Senator Ted Stevens, who was indicted and tried (and found innocent of) charges that he took gifts from a lobbyist, which included a fancy massage chair. Stevens maintained that the massage chair wasn’t actually a gift. It was just a loan of a chair… which he kept in his house… and used for himself… and had no plans to return. But a loan nonetheless.
Heh, everyone is well aware of the existence of settlers and settlements.
They pale in scale, though, to the amount of lands Israel has shed over the same length of time - the Sinai alone is larger than Israel proper.
Since 1967, Israel has shrunk, considerably, in the lands it controls. The Sinai alone is around 60,000 square km, while Israel itself is only around 21,000 square km.
The entire West Bank is around 5,600 square km. The settlers are “setting” on bits of that.
In terms of size, it’s piddly compared with what Israel has already handed over.
Interesting to learn that the Sinai was part of Israel.
The *best *kind is not only technically accurate, but contextually complete and non-misleading.
I think that we’re talking about different definitions of “control”.
To you, it’s exclusively a matter of who’s living on what land. That’s it.
To me, it’s a matter of sovereignty. Real estate is a peripheral issue: the question is whose troops are stations there, whose tax collectors gather taxes, whose courts rule on disputes. That’s what borders determine, not who owns a parcel of farmland. And by MY definition, Israel has been ceding sovereignty for decades. 25 years ago, there was one law between the Jordan and the sea, one army - one government. Now there are at least three, in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Gaza City. How could that be, if Israel were growing?
You Americans - to you, everything is about property rights, isn’t it?
Sinai was completely under Israeli control. Indeed, the deal with Egypt saw Israel hand over settlements, such as Yamit.
The hand-over of such settlements (and the later dismantling of settlements in Gaza) was expressly seen as the prototype for the possible hand-over of similar settlements on the West Bank, should that ever occur.
It seems to me absurd to make some sort of argument that implies the establishment of settlements on the WB is an example of “Israeli borders expanding”, while at the same time stating that the dismantling of settlements in (say) Sinai and Gaza are not examples of “Israeli borders shrinking”. Both are examples of exactly the same phenomenon - Israel attempting to take possession of lands they took control of in war, by planting settlements on them.
Either neither “count”, or they both do; take your pick. If they both “count” (to my mind the sensible choice) then Israel has steadily shrunk since 1967, as the amount of land given up far exceeds the amount seized, as the area of the Sinai plus Gaza and bits of the WB is far, far greater than the area currently controlled by WB settlements; if neither “count”, then Israel has not grown.
Fair enough, except: There was never a political or religious movement in Israel that made Sinai a rightful, God-given part of Eretz Israel, and never a movement that denied any prospect of withdrawal from it and placed any and all blame for anything on the Egyptians who lived in Sinai, with strong racial implications.
You correctly stated earlier that the peace with Egypt was made possible by withdrawing from Egyptian land it occupied militarily, back behind its own borders. If there’s a serious desire for peace with Palestine, what else is there to conclude must be done? If there’s no willingness to withdraw, what else is there to conclude about Israel’s desire for peace there?
They’ve grudgingly given back part of what they took from others, yes. That it deserves credit for doing so, not nearly so much.
You claim Israel to have a justified sovereignty outside the borders you claim have not changed. How do you get sovereignty rights over property that isn’t yours?
To follow up: Even using your own definition, isn’t calling what Israel does in Palestine to be *sovereignty *rather than *occupation *the same as declaring it to be part of Israel?
BTW, no, respect for property rights and for other nations’ sovereignties is *not *just an American thing. Disdain for them when inconvenient, and excuse-making when challenged, however, are things Israel shares with some pretty distasteful company.
I’m interested in a completely different issue though, for the purposes of this particular thread: namely, the impact of nuclear weapons on policy.
This is why the question of whether Israel has expanded or contracted is significant (obviously the issue of peace with Palestinians is very important, but it is tangential to why this fact was raised).
An Israel with nuclear weapons that has continually expanded has one implication for policy when addressing the concerns raised by the Iranian nuclear situation; and Israel that has continually shrunk has another … obviously, nuclear weapons are completely irrelevant to the Palestinian situation directly, they are only of concern indirectly, in how their presence (or absence) impacts on the diplomatic situation of Israel vs. its non-Palestinian neighbors.
Ironically, in the past, possession of nukes has made it more likely, rather than less likely, that Israel would be willing to give up land (all things being equal, and leaving aside for the moment the trajectory of Israeli domestic policy).
The reason: aside from mere acquisitiveness, one very significant reason Israel holds on to territories is strategic. Israel is a very small nation, so there is an urge to take control of buffer zones to blunt possible invasions. Having nukes makes that possibility - invasion - all the less likely, so the value of land as a buffer decreased.
Unfortunately, there are obvious limits to this: in the modern world, the enemy is likely to be, not an invading army, by a raiding militia. Nukes are of course useless against that. So while having nukes may have been a major factor in Israeli willingness to give up the Sinai, it will likely not be a factor in (say) its desire to ‘round out’ the area immediately around Jerusalem, by seizing control of bits of the WB. What they fear there is not an invasion by Palestinian armies, but raiding or sniping by Palestinian militia.
To return to the Iranian situation, it is similarly necessary to look to see what Iran legitimately fears, and what it wants (and can reasonably achieve) by having nukes.