If you want to be notified the next time I write something, sign up for FREE email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

History is full of “what ifs,” and responsible historians should not indulge in such speculation. But journalists may. What if Israel hadn’t taken East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the Six-Day War? Would the Palestinian situation have found some solution and Israel be living at least in relative peace with its neighbors? Would Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism have been avoided?
[...]

I belong to a generation of Israelis who slowly but surely came to believe in peace. We needed to believe in it… As a result more and more Israelis realize today that Israel gained absolutely nothing from the conquest of the Palestinian territories. Speculating again in hindsight — Israel may have been better off giving up the West Bank and East Jerusalem without peace than signing the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan while keeping these territories. Forty years of oppression and Palestinian terrorism, both extremely cruel, have undermined Israel’s Jewish and democratic foundations. With about 400,000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and with extreme Islamism as a driving force among the Palestinians, the conflict has become infinitely more difficult to solve.

Hence young Israelis have good reason to look at my generation and say, “You blew it.” I suppose we did. In contrast to my generation, these young people no longer presume to know what should be done to solve the conflict; indeed they often no longer believe in peace. Many resort to cynical skepticism and fatalistic pessimism.

Read full Op-Ed By Tom Segev here.

Enjoy this post? Get future updates sent to you for free! Join by email or RSS.