Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan & Syria: Bought-off, coaxed, beaten or... simply, happy to oblige!

"... The long view is that prior to 1947, Israel’s founding generation squabbled over whether to claim all of the territory that today comprises Israel, the West Bank including all of Jerusalem and Transjordan; claimed everything west of the Jordan River; settled for as much as it could get and since then . . .

Israel is the only state in the region that has gotten larger. Considered as an institution, Israel has spent sixty-plus years adding and consolidating its control over the territory it wanted in the first place. Forget personalities and political factions for a minute. There were certainly people who were sincere about “land for peace,” just as there were certainly always people opposed to it. There are Israeli liberals even today, and G-d Bless ‘Em.

But as a system, Israeli history is expansion into the territory the Founding generation considered part of Israel and incorporating it into Israel proper......

Viewed institutionally and leaving moral questions aside, it counts as a triumph of grand strategy. Israel bought off Egypt with Egypt’s own territory. It convinced Jordan to bow out, and plain beat Syria like a rodeo clown. Lebanon could be broken any time and was, and the Lebanese were always falling all over themselves to help. At this point, Israel has also destroyed the ability of the Palestinians to mount any consequential resistance of their own. Just as Hezbollah couldn’t occupy a single Israeli exurb in a trial of a thousand years, no Palestinian organization can stop Israel from planting its flag on any particular spot of the West Bank for so much as a week.

For all practical purposes, Israel has its original goal, formal control of all of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan, within its grasp. Because it’s not completely insensible to global political reality, it can’t just annex the West Bank and be done with it, but it can plainly add any given piece of the West Bank to itself at any time. Roughly ten percent of Israel’s Jewish population lives in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. They’re not moving back. Israel does have to finesse the public-relations of the process, but the public relations are subordinate to the process. And Israel has to deal with the demographic issue: there are all these darn Palestinians. Everyone thinks that eventually Israel has to make nice with them somehow. Israeli actions suggest that Israel thinks it just needs them cowed and poor. And while a visible expulsion would look bad for the cameras, there’s always “encouraging” Palestinians to emigrate over time. Israeli nationalists simply do not believe in an inevitable demographic doom..."