re: #1 Romantic Heretic

But, by keeping the land they took Israel changed an act of self defence to an act of theft. There were good military reasons for keeping that land but it’s illegal under international law.

It’s more complicated than that. Israel also took the Sinai peninsula, which was under the sovereignty—and this is the key word—the sovereignty of Egypt. Egypt never relinquished sovereignty over the Sinai, and because of that, Israel was able to return the Sinai to Egypt. However, the West Bank was under the sovereignty of Jordan. Jordan relinquished sovereignty over this area, making it essentially a legal no-man’s land. Even if Israel wanted to give the land back to Jordan, it couldn’t because Jordan wouldn’t take it.

Israel was then faced with a quandary. First, as you note, Israel needed to defend itself from nations wanting to push the Jews into the sea, as Nasser put it. The nine mile width at the waist, so to speak, of Israel therefore needed to be expanded to avoid further vulnerability. Second, the group eventually taking charge of the West Bank was a terrorist organization, and a successful one at that—meaning that they did indeed murder Israeli civilians, quite a few. And Fatah still hasn’t given up on this goal. The sovereignty question is not solved, nor are legalities so cut and dried.

And you’d have to do some research on how Fatah, or the PLO, came to be the legal representatives, in place of Jordan, for the people in the West Bank.

Presently, the only land that Israel is keeping would be called Area C, which they aren’t keeping, but rather, Israelis are allowed to live there, according to the Oslo Accords.