Blithering On

The history of Israel since its founding has been marked by recurring cycles of attack, provocation, and external pressure—often including proposals from U.S. administrations urging restraint or territorial concession. We recall, for example, the pressure applied by both the Obama and Bush administrations to halt Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, on the grounds that such activity was seen by the United States and the European Union as provocative toward the Palestinians. To understand how we arrived at this point, it’s useful to briefly revisit the history. In 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, declared the establishment of the State of Israel in accordance with the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan, which proposed dividing the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Almost immediately, neighboring Arab states—Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq—invaded. Israel repelled the attacks and, in t...