If you look at the maps on the link I showed earlier, you will find that the "Jewish State" circa 1947 was a gerrymandered grouping of jigsaw puzzle parts, intermingling Jewish areas with Palestinian or Arab controlled ones. Now, first of all, who mandated this bizarre blueprint for a country? Apparently it was basically the British, who maintained Palestine as a protectorate at the time, although I'm sure that the rest of the Allies gave approval, patially as a means of assuaging their own guilt in the wake of the Holocaust. It should have been apparent to anyone that this non-contiguous patchwork could never function as a defensible entity, especially in an area where enemies would be found on all sides. And so we see the gradual expansion and connection of territory in Israel as much an act of self-preservation as anything else. In 1967, Israel reached its zenith in terms of occupied territory, but later was willing to barter the Sinai back to Egypt in exchange for diplomatic recognition and the cessation of hostilities. After all, was the Sinai vital to Israel as anything but a buffer against Egypt? It was certainly not prime settlement territory. But look again at the 67 map. The Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights are contiguous and habitable, as well as constituting buffers against Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. These areas, in the years since 67, have filled with Jewish settlers (many living in the homesteads abandoned by Palestinians now in exile) who have vowed not to be moved.