Some perspective from Victor Davis Hanson:
The proposed solution to the crisis in the Middle East is predicated on one notion: the return of the West Bank and all the other lands occupied by Israel after June 10, 1967. As the current conventional wisdom goes, our diplomatic efforts should be directed toward that single goal. Israel must give back conquered land. In return its Arab neighbors will promise to recognize its existence, make peace, and normalize relations.
One way of determining whether such an agreement would lead to peace would be to imagine what really might happen should Israel give up all of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Fortunately, we need not be utopian about the future, but rather simply revisit the past before June 5, 1967. Then Israel possessed none of those territories. Yet there was no peace – but simply a series of pauses between wars not unlike the present predicament. A quick perusal of a number of general histories about the pre-1967 era – especially Michael Oren’s forthcoming magisterial work Six Days of War – reveals a chilling similarity with the present calamity.
Did the Arab states accept Israel’s right to exist between 1947 and 1967, when it remained within its U.N.-mandated (Resolution 181) borders? Hardly. Three wars were fought to destroy Israel itself, not to restore the West Bank for the Palestinians. We must remember that for all the talk of Palestinian grievances over the present occupation, Muslims are now allowed free access to their mosques in a manner Jews and Christians were not accorded for their own places of worship under Jordanian control. Desecration of religious shrines and cemeteries was a pre-1967, not a present, phenomenon.
Seriously- All they want are the pre-1967 borders. I’m chuckling at the transparency of this ‘peace’ plan.