Do you think this Likud Greater Israel view during the 70s and 80s trumped bargaining chip status and hindered the chances for peace during that period and beyond?
I think it did hurt chances for peace, but not because it muffed opportunities. There were opportunities - for instance, Carter and Sadat tried hard to work out something with the PLO in 1979 - but they were muffed by the Palestinian side. So I don't think any big "peace process" opportunities were missed. In fact, the Israelis did start out thinking of all the territories except East Jerusalem and the Golan as bargaining chips, and the biggest impulse to hold onto land came not from the settlers, tho they were noisiest, but from pragmatic hawks who wanted a defensible border, which the Green Line ain't.
The problem was that the whole bargaining chip line of thinking was flawed. The Arabs didn't accept land for peace because they didn't accept Israel. In their shoes, the Israelis would have cared about the status of the Palestinians, but the Arabs and the PLO couldn't give a damn. So they weren't interested.
So the territories went into limbo, and the Israelis bred a worse problem for themselves - Palestinian nationalism, bred in a population that got to see Israeli democracy but not partake of it, while watching priviledged settler communities being built in between their towns and villages. Then the geniuses of Oslo gave this territory to Al Capone to run, and things went from bad to worse. |
