Don: You are very largely right in all you say. But do recall that it was not the new state of Israel that rejected the 1948 borders, which they were perfectly willing to accept and establish themselves within; it was their Arab neighbours ~~ 5 countries ~~ who refused to allow them any of the land but tried to take it all by conquest, with 5 full fighting forces coming in from 5 different directions. They were repelled by a smaller but more dedicated force; and Israel then settled in the land it had thus gained. What would you have had them do? Go back after all that to the 1948 UN Resolution borders and then sit and wait for all their nice new neighbours to have another go? Oh, come on!...

The present situation derives from the Arab nations' intransigence then; their refusal to accept a decision voted for overwhelmingly [ie by all except the Muslim bloc] by the international body of which they were all members (apart from Transjordan) and whose decisions they were accordingly pledged to abide by.. The Israelis are still insecure as the result of that trauma; which doesn't excuse the way they go on nowadays, for which, as you know I have absolutely no sympathy; but might, to anyone with an iota of empathy, go at least some way to explain it.

It is obvious that you retrospectively disapprove of that UN resolution, & probably think the Jews settled there should have been allowed nothing. But it really is a bit late for that, even if there might conceivably be some virtue in such a view, which would be, to put it at its highest, highly debatable.

~M~