Not true

Submitted by John W. McGinley (United States), Aug 9, 2009 at 12:34

The statement misattributed to Ya'alon, but now adopted by you, is simeply not true. In 1948 several Arab armies were forced into an armistice which led the the pre-1967 borders of Israel. In 1967 the armed forces of Syria, Eygpt, and Jordan were routed rendering large swaths of land previously occupied by those counttries as "disputed teritiories." East Jersualem (and some other parcels of land outside of Jeruslaem) were eventually annexed by Israel during the Begin years. The denuoement the Yom Kippur War eventually resulted in the return of the Sinai to Eygpt and a formal peace treaty between Eygpt and Israel. Jordan would later follow suit. The Gaza was evacuated by Israel.

It was really Yassir Arafat who more or less congealed the Arabs living in the disputed territories into "The Palestinian People." Led by Arafat there were two horrible waves of "Intifada" which were quelled by Israeli tactics and force. But hardly a "defeat." Germany was defeated. Japan was defeated. The Palestinians were only quelled. The dynamics of wolrd politics, still continuing till this day, have assured that not only were the Palestinians never defeated, but, in addition, a "two-state solution" is the stated objective of both Israel and the Palestinian leadership operative in the West Bank .

I myself beleive that in the long run the Natanyahu plan of making Palestinains economically viable (this can eventually even happen in the Gaza) will s;owly lead towards a two-state solution. But the Palestinians have not been at all defeated in the classical sense of that term. Further the United States and the World will not allow Israel to "defeat" the Palestinians in the classical meaning of that term.

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