[gvitaly]

Originally Posted by Thor

What this map forgets to mention are the wars! The thing with wars though is that whoever wins gets to write the history after... Anyways inside the spoiler tag are the reasons for the territory changes, once you see them with some context it does help.

Spoiler!

In 1948 after the declaration of independence Israel was invaded(was not the initiator) by a combined army of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It was a very bloody war on both sides, but after Israel won its territory increased.

The second big increase is in 1967, a war again this time initiated by Israel. However I do want to point out that both Israeli and Arab forces were gradually building along the borders toward war. Israel did strike a very effective first punch and the war was over within 6 days.

The exact opposite (yes war again) happened in 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked first. Causing a loss of Israeli territory on the Egyptian side, and a gain on the Syrian.

An interesting exercise would be to look at Germany(or the entire landscape in europe) before and after world war 2, or the way borders in europe changed during the last century due to wars. However, those borders stayed in place for many of those countries.

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Israel doesn't want peace

Israel signed peace treaties with both Egypt, and Jordan. The treaty with Egypt in particular involved the return of much of the 'conquered' territory. Israel does want peace, it is just that during the treaties the demands from the other side keep to increase. Its easy for us to talk about just giving away more land in return for peace, but we need to remember how small Israel is(in fact Canada is 481 times bigger!).

Instead of a military assault, Netanyahu could have responded with an aggressive peace offensive, offering the Palestinians an end to the occupation and their own state.

How much more serious could he be?! for each of the previous peace talks(in the last round) he had to release prisoners as a gesture... Which he did, until it was obvious those talks were just stalling, and the main issues remain the same. The biggest being that Israel won't give a part of Jerusalem away.

“there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

This quote was actually used out of context there. What the PM said was that Israel would still need to supervise the border between Jordan and Palestine. Why? Because even with a signed piece of paper war can start, and too many weapons in the west bank would seriously endanger Israel(If/When a militant group decides they weren't a part of the treaty).

Aside: The main reason that Israel wants to remain a jewish state is a fear from what happened during WW2. They want to have a chance to defend themselves if it repeats itself. Is it feasible in today's world? I am not so certain.