Your second paragraph is so ludicrous, I hardly know what to say. How was Israel to "create" a PLO, when legitimacy flowed from the struggle with Israel? Israel accepted Arafat because it had to, not because it wanted to.
As for the other, you apparently know little about Zionism. Labor Zionism was not expansionist, the Likud was. The issue was openly debated in Israeli politics. However, Labor dominated Israeli politics for years, and there were no designs on Arab territory beyond some security zones. Remember, Israel did not annex the West Bank. When the Likud came to power, the demographic problem of a sea of Arabs surrounding Israel had taken precedence over the desire to annex the West Bank, and the Likud floated an "autonomy plus" solution for the Territories: Something more than autonomy, but a little less than full sovereignty, insofar as foreign relations and defense were concerned. The possibility of stopping the settler movement was held out as a carrot. However, it did not go over, though it may have influenced discussion leading to the Oslo accord. Anyway, the main point is that Israel did not annex land it might have, and that it has basically accepted, both of the Left and the Right, the land for peace formula since at least the reconciliation with Egypt in the mid- 70s....... |
