What is major about Israel’s recent negotiating tactic is that for the first time ever, Israel stopped playing defense when it comes to negotiating its own boundaries.
There have been times, through no choice of its own, where significant territory was bestowed upon Israel. This happened when Israel captured an area three times its size in the aftermath of the miraculous Six Day War. Immediately after his stunning victory, born out of an attempt to destroy the Jewish state, Israel felt that it need to defend itself for defending itself. Its response to the miraculous victory was self-doubt, apology and defensive negotiations.
The Jewish people are indeed a unique people. When victors typically win a war, they celebrate. When Israelis win a war, they negotiate.
It would serve Israel’s best interest to re-evaluate its policy on defaulting to a position of defense when it comes to its borders.
Since the time when nations were born, boundaries have consistently fluctuated, territories have changed hands and entire countries have appeared and disappeared from existence. War between countries has always been a fact of life, and in most cases the justification for war has not been purely a matter of self defense. Countries have gone to war and do go to war to acquire territories and enrich themselves.
The world superpowers have themselves engaged historically in offensive wars to gain new territories, and still engage in middle east wars for economic gains. At the same time, the mere thought of an offensive war is taboo in Israeli political discourse, since for the average Israeli, boundaries were created to be negotiated down, not to be expanded.
Israel’s enemies have no problem with the idea of expanding their boundaries into Israel. In fact, they aspire and actively plan towards that goal even as this article is being written. Iran openly threatens to destroy Israel on a weekly basis and is actively arming Lebanon and Syria to achieve this goal, with the silent acquiescence of the Western countries that are gushing to return to the JCPOA. READ MORE
