Abbas-Stumbling Block to Peace Talks

Nadene Goldfoot
Arafat, the leader of Fatah terrorists, died and Mahmoud Abbas took over as Chairman of the Palestinian Authority..  Born ion March 26, 1935, he must be getting tired,as this PA leader's office expired in early 2009.  He will not hold new elections, saying that PA residents should vote for a new leader only after Hamas-led Gaza reunites with the Fatah leadership in Judea and Samaria.  That will be sooner than he thinks as Hamas is plotting a takeover and wants to oust Abbas once again, as they did when they ran him out of Gaza.

Abbas demands the impossible, while refusing  to discuss any peace plans with Netanyahu.  Instead he runs to confer with Hamas and countries supplying Gaza with arms. He demands conditions agreed to first before he sits down to talk.
1.  He demands a construction freeze including a ban on natural growth in Israeli towns previously assumed to be Israeli under a diplomatic agreement.  
2. He also requires that Israel free PA resident terrorists
3. Allow the PA to arm the police force more heavily
4. Agree in principle to his major territorial demands.  (He has wanted Israel to go back to 1967 lines.)
5. Abbas demands a complete building freeze east of the 1949 armistice line.

                    At the Same Time

1. Continue refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state
2 Belief in terrorism against Israel.
3.  He supports the "right of return" for millions of people descended from Arabs and more to Israel.

You don't have to be the wise King Solomon to see that these demands and unchangeable positions spell death for Israel, and that parties need to sit down and work out a peaceable solution.  Netanyahu has pleaded with Abbas, even at the UN in front of all the participants and TV cameras, but Abbas was unmovable.  Abbas has threatened to quit if negotiations do not resume with pre-conditions met first.  Now Lieberman said he anxiously awaits the official announcement from the Muqata regarding his retirement.  "There are many alternatives among the Palestinians with whom Israel can hold a diplomatic dialog."  Lieberman feels that it's Abbas remaining as the leader that will ultimately bring Hamas and other radicals to Judea and Samaria.

Avigdor Lieberman, ex foreign Minister of Israel said that Israel can't wait for Abbas to quit. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civil servants and security forces rely on the Palestinian Authority for their livelihood, and the Palestinian Authority is the keystone of a series of partial peace accords with Israel that benefit the Palestinian economy and influence other aspects of life. Abbas has threatened to disband the PA and place the area in Israel's hands.  Many believe this is just a threat.  

Hamas and Fatah have major differences, but have been holding rallies in each other's domains recently.  Still, it could only be Abbas's dream that they will get close to their political differences.  

Resource: Arutz Sheva news@israelnationalnews.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/abbas-israel-reduced-security-cooperation-18081253#.UN3qP-RLXqE
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/12/2012122813822228539.html
http://www.americantaskforce.org/daily_news_article/2012/12/17/hamas_and_fatah_no_closer_settling_their_differences_0

Occupation? Israel's Involvementa in Judea and Samaria Isn't This

Nadene Goldfoot
Looking at the facts may be hard as they are so flavored with political involvement that they are almost hard to decipher today.  The fact is that Israel was attacked by all the neighboring states in 1967 and won.  The many against the littlest on the block is what occurred.  It wasn't a fair fight nor was there even a logical reason to attack.  It was out of greed and misplaced  egotistic righteousness on the attackers' parts. In fact, it was downright coveting, that sin listed in the Ten Commandments that many think is out of date.

In winning, Israel took over the West Bank, a name given to Judea and Samaria by Jordan, who had occupied the area without any legal basis in 1948 when Israel was created a state legally through the UN.  Israel did not take land from a state called Palestine.  It was taken from Jordan who occupied it illegally in the first place from 1948 to 1967.  Actually that area had been supposed to be a part of the future Jewish state under the British Mandate, and they in turn had the Mandate because the Ottoman Empire had it and lost it at the close of the 1st World War, and they had lost it to the Allies because the Ottoman's had sided with Germany who was defeated, but then the only people noticing this little fact are a few Israelis and a smattering of other caring historians.

"Occupation" is often used as a political word.  The people who use it do not understand the general or legal meaning of the term.  By using "occupation" it reduces complex situations of competing claims and rights to Right and Wrong.  Today it's freely used when talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which implies that Israel bears ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinians and is used in an extreme derogatory manner.  This denies Israel's right to even defend itself against the continual Palestinian terror.  It takes away the Palestinian's responsibility for their own actions and the consequences thereof.  It's another assault on Israel's legitimacy, as if Israel didn't follow enough of the rules to be re-established after its 2,000 year hiatus.  It has nothing to do with Israel's status as an occupier under international law, which I'm sorry to say, is not being followed by the U.N. itself.

Israel maintains that Judea and Samaria are "disputed territories" under international law.  This does not stop them from developing and settling its own ancestral homeland.  What had become absolute untended and wild wasteland, left alone for Israel's absence of  2,000 years, was sacred land to the Jews, land of historic and valued meaning.  It was only when Jews had returned to their brothers who had never left the "Palestine" area-in reality Judah and Israel but renamed by the Romans to remove the stigma or fact that it had been the Jewish state, did the nomadic Arabs come around hoping to get jobs.  They had no interest in building another state themselves.  When Mark Twain visited in the 1860's it was an utter wasteland.  One should read his "The Innocents Abroad"  when he traveled to "Palestine" in 1867.  When he visited Jerusalem there were only 14,000 people living there: " Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of Protestants of which there were 100.  Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the cresecent-flag itself abound."   page 240.

Today we still hear the obligatory call of "OCCUPATION' from Judea and Samaria even though  they were placed under the Palestinian Authority (PA-meaning Fatah through Abbas) on September 28, 1995.  Israel had then withdrawn its military forces and today one cannot call it "occupied" by Israel.  The agreement did include the presence of Israeli troops in the area.  That was a part of the Agreement, but that this presence can not longer be looked upon as the O word-OCCUPATION.  Let's face it.  The Arab people living there are constantly fed a diet of hatred for the Israelis by their leaders, no less.  They have not ended their attempts and successes of killing Israelis.  Thus the need for this policing of terrorism.  If it didn't happen there would be no need.

The miracle of this all is that Judea and Samaria were originally to be a part of the Jewish Homeland, decided upon on November 2, 1917: England was in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.  It was given international ratification.  This was laid down in the preamble.  Therefore, the British Mandate was to carry this out, but everything got under the control and pressure of politics going on under the surface and once again the Jews were screwed.  They wound up settling for far less.  Another miracle came along under the guise of a slaughter of little Israel and who knew the little land of milk and honey could conquer all those armies?  Our rose garden in Eden is full of thorns, though, one of which is the UN who cannot bring themselves to accept Israel today.  Probably they never thought they'd last for 64 years in the first place.  But they have and in doing so are trying more than any other country would to be be fair to those that hate them and desire their blood.

Occupation?  Are the people locked up inside a ghetto as the Jews had been treated in Italy's  past?  No!  Since 1967 Israel had an Open Bridges policy allowing movement of people and goods between the administered areas and Arab countries.  People traveled overseas freely through Israel's airports and harbors.  Open bridges over the Jordan River permitted regular trade with the Arab countries and free movement of persons either way.  People had family reunions, work and study advantages.  In 1972 people in the administered areas visiting Arab states were over 100,000.  Every summer residents got permission for visitors from Arab states to stay with them for up to 4 months.  152,000 arrived, with some asking to remain and most went on to visit---yes---even Israel.  There were more than 40,000 Arabs joining their families by the end of 1971.  An arrangement with Egypt was an exchange of people, so that 3,1000 Palestinian Arabs had been brought back.  Any problems?  Only the ensuing terrorism against Israel that doesn't make any sense at all.

Resource: http://emetnews.org/analysis/why-is-israels-presence-in-the-territories-st
http://emetnews.or/analysis/occupation-whose-occupation.php  by Moshe Sharon
Book: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, copyright 2009 by Seven Treasures Publications
Facts About Israel, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem by division of Information.  

My Trip Into Samaria or "My Gosh! It's Right Next Door!"

Nadene Goldfoot

On October 7, 1982 during my Succot vacation, my husband and I had the chance to visit Samaria.  We had been in Israel since September 1980 and had spent 10 months at Gordon Seminary in Haifa studying and taking final tests to continue our teaching profession and was then ready to teach English in Israel.  Danny and I had come from Oregon where I was born and raised in Portland.  Danny was a recent  implant from Brooklyn. We had found an apartment in Safed in the Galilee and were teaching there.   

"We had signed up for an ACI (Americans and Canadians in Israel) trip that was to go to Samaria and it became quite an eye opener for us. " This is a excerpt from my book, Letters From Israel page 221-222.

"What happened was that we drove on the highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv along the coast.  It is a lovely drive and turned left at Kvar Saba, went into that little teeny town and out of it, and we found ourselves in Samaria.  I was so shocked.  It's practically on the other side of the highway.  We stood at a plaque where Sharon and his men had fought not too recently and saw our highway and car.  It was unreal!

We drove deeper into Samaria and saw Arabs, sheep, a little Arab town outside Kvar Saba, and in the distance Ramalla, which was a larger Arab city.  I saw lots of land that looked somewhat like Eastern Oregon, and finally came some twenty-five minutes later to a Jewish settlement where we had lunch in their Succa.  We brought our own sack lunches with us.  This settlement is made up of mainly Israelis and a few Americans who are very dedicated and Zionistic.  One of their people is a non-Jew who is a Japanese man recently from Japan who has a paper factory there where he makes paper for computers.  He goes to services, and once got all dressed up in his Japanese robes and proceeded to take movies of the Friday night services until he was asked to please stop.  (This isn't done by anyone during services)  They are building beautiful homes but no apartments there, and are almost ready to move in.  The establishment is six years old.  You know that house in Ontario on the corner with the red tile roof and wood sides?  One house I  saw looked like that one.  The other houses had the same roof but were made of cement.  (Ontario, Oregon is in the Eastern side of the state which is semi-desert and similar to Israel.)

Anyway, the point is this.  The shape of Israel decided by the United Nations is really weird.  They gave us the seacoast from Haifa to Tel Aviv, and that's it.  The land adjacent to us is ancient Samaria and Judea.  How dumb!  We should have that land as well."

Resource: Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot-listed on http://amazon.com/ 2003.

Israel's Legal Claim on Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem

Nadene Goldfoot

The very cradle of Jewish civilization took place in the kingdom of Judea in the south, where the Jewish prophets orated. The kingdom of the north was Israel.  Samaria "Shomron" was the capital of the Northern kingdom of Israel and occupied 25 acres.  It's also the name of the entire northern region of the central highlands. Judea and Samaria  were called "West Bank" in 1951 by Jordan who had occupied it illegally in 1948.  The fight was on when Israel declared their statehood in the U.N. and the surrounding Arab states attacked.  Jews were killed and about 10,000 were expelled by the Jordanians from Judea and Samaria. 

In 1920 British held "The British Mandate which was the last "legal sovereign authority" for the Territories.  Jordan and Egypt illegally held them from 1948 to 1967 when Israel regained them in the Six Day War brought on by the surrounding Arab nations.  They are still part of the British Mandate as no government replaced the Mandate's jurisdiction.  Its guidelines called for Jews to settle the area.  The Balfour Declaration was the recognition of the British alliance and agreement with Dr. Chaim Weizmann and his group in the form of a letter written by the foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a Jewish financier on November 2, 1917.  Unknown to Weizmann's party, the British had made agreements with the Arabs as well.  However, the Balfour papers had stated, "His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this objective, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

"The Jews have the legal right to settle the land assured by treaty and  protected  by Article 80 of the U.N. charter.  The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equal to the right of the existing Palestinian populaton to live there."  Eugene Rostow, former U.S. Under Secretary of State. 1990. 

According to Eugene Rostow, a former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration, Resolution 242 gives Israel a legal right to be in the West Bank. The resolution “allows Israel to administer the territories” it won in 1967 “until 'a just and lasting peace in the Middle East' is achieved,” Rostow wrote in The New Republic (10/21/91). During the debate on the resolution, he added, “speaker after speaker made it clear that Israel was not to be forced back to the 'fragile' and 'vulnerable' [1949] Armistice Demarcation Lines.”  Rostow was the Dean of Law of Yale University. 

The Arabs had ignored the 1948 proclamation in the UN of Israel's creation as well as the Balfour Doctrine giving Jews the right to settle in their section of Palestine.  Israel came into existence by legal land development and not by conquest.  To the surprise of its enemies, it won in 1948 and the Arab nations refused to join it in peace negotiations. 

1967 found Israel attacked by the many surrounding Arabs and she won in 6 days.  From 1967 to 1977, 76 Jewish communities were built in the Territories of Judea/Samaria on undeveloped land with most of them built for security reasons.  Survivors of  Gush Etzion returned to rebuild Jewish communities that Arab forces had captured and destroyed in the 1948 War. 

Arabs were using the Territories as places to launch attacks against Israel.  The UN Resolution 242 called for bilateral negotiations to give Israel more secure borders and create better stability.  The PLO called for a Palestinian state to REPLACE  Israel up to 1988.  They were not calling for a separate state to exist next door.  Their maps still do not show Israel, only a land named "Palestine." 

After 1977, 74 more communities were built in the Territories on unallocated government land.  By 2005, the 150 communitites included about 200,000 Israelis living on less than 2% of Judea/Samaria's land.  80% of the people live in communitites close to the GREEN LINE.  This consists of the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  This pre-1967 boundary is not an internationally recognized border.  It is an armistice line that marks positions held by Israeli and Arab troops when the final truce was called at the end of the 1948 War.  It remained an armistice line because the Arab leaders refused to negotiate to set final border lines.

The Oslo Accords called for Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate for a final border between the State of Israel and a future Palestinian state.  As yet these negotiations have not only not resolved outstanding issues to the satisfaction of both parties, but that the Arabs have refused to come to the table to talk, even as they plan on marching to the UN to demand their state. 

The Arabs continue to attack Israel with rockets and missles fired into the southern area.  Israel's security needs are more urgent than ever.  Their Hamas-led Palestinian government continues to call for Israel's destruction.  Lebanon also is a place from which attacks come from.  Hamas has close ties with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah and forged ties with Al Qaeda.  They all call for Israel's destruction.  The vulnerability of Israel from the Judea/Samaria areas is obvious.  Granting the Arabs their state now would be deadly  for Israel. There would be no difference from the attacks from Gaza or Judea/Samaria then. 

Israel had been the victim of Arab aggression  in the Six Day War.

International law is very clear.  Being the victim of aggression, Israel's legal position is that they have the right to live in Judea and Samaria.  Otherwise its occupation of Judea/Samaria and the Gaza Strip would have been illegal.  Legal disposition of territories conquered in a defensive war can be determined only by a peace treaty between the belligerents.  With an absent peace treaty, continued sovereignty and economic activities of the victim of aggression over its newly won territories is completely legal as long as such activity does not unfavorably prejudice the indegenous people.

As a matter of fact, Israel being in Judea and Samaria was beneficial until their administration was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Agreements. 

After the 67 War, Israel offered to return conquered territory in exchange for a formal peace.  Arab nations refused the offer as they have done previously.  Israel could have legally annexed all the newly won territories but chose not to because they expected the Arabs would want their land back and Israel could return land in exchange for a peace agreement.  This happened with Egypt when Israel returned all of Sinai at the Camp David I accords in 1979.  At that time Sadat didn't want Gaza back.  Jordan had a peace treaty with Israel in1994 and King Hussein also didn't want Judea or Samaria and he conceded that he had no legal claim to the area or its Arab popuation. 

East Jerusalem was reunified in June 1967 with West Jerusalem.  The 1972 figures showed that almost a million Arabs lived in the administered area with 640,600 in Judea and Samaria which covers 2,270 square miles of land.  388,600 were living in the Gaza Strip on 140 square miles and North Sinai and 8,000 on the Golan Heights on 500 square miles.  The smaller Christian communities of Greek Orthodox and Latins are mainly in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Beit Jala.  The Druze live in the Golan Heights. 

Israel assumed that should an area in question revert to Arab sovereignty under a treaty of peace, Jewish communitites should be allowed to continue to live in it, just as Arab communitites live in Israel.   It is impossible to disregard the Jewish attachment to holy shrines in areas beyond the bounds of pre-1967 Israel.  The number of Israelis who settled in the administered areas since 1967, including the Nahal military settlements for security was 4,200 as of 1972.  Israel's policy has been to pursue peaceful co-existence with the Arabs in these administered areas. 

Although Alan Dershowitz, famous lawyer,  is personally against Jews living in Judea and Samaria, he sees "no good reason why ancient Jewish cities like Hebron should be Judenrein."  Jews were forced out of  these cities through massacres.  The return of a few thousand Jews to Hebron would not affect the demographics of that Arab populated area.  If Palestinians claiming refugee status returned to Israel it would be turned into a 3rd Palestiniann state.  Jews living in Judea and Samaria are not a barrier to peace.  The barrier has been the unwillingness of many Palestinians and their terrorist groups and nations to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.  Sharon had decided to do everything to reach a settlement with the Arabs back in April 2003. 

If the Arab leaders had been in agreement with peace with Israel, there could have been a state of Palestine in 1937 or 1947 or 1949 and there never would have been any refugees.  If the leaders took the offer of their state in 1967 or 2000 there would not have been the sovereignty by Israel in Judea and Samaria.  These were missed opportunities over and over because of the Arabs refusal of peace with Israel. 

As Dershowitz puts it: " When the Jewish nation is the only one criticized for faults that are far worse among other nations, such criticism crosses the line from fair to foul, from acceptable to anti-Semitic."  It stands "accused with charges including being a criminal state, the prime violator of human rights, the mirror-image of Nazism, and the most intransigent barrier to peace in the Middle East.  Throughout the world Israel is singled out for condemnation, divestment, boycott and demonization with its leaders being threatened with prosecution as war criminals.   How the UN ignores its basic right to exist and to protect its citizens from terrorism and to defend its borders from hostile enemies is beyond reason. " The slap in the face is the number of UN countries who are ready to recognize a belligerent group as a state called Palestine without any peaceful intent towards Israel. 

Definition:  Judea and Samaria:  The Territories or "West Bank" 

Resource:  The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia by Dr. Geoffrey Wigoder,D.Phil., Editor-in-Chief

Textbook:  Middle East Past & Present by Yahya Armajani, Thomas M. Ricks

Big Lies:  Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel by David Meir-Levi

Israel 101 by StandWithUs

Facts About Israel by division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/settlements.html

The Case For Israel, Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Rostow Dean at Yale Law School

History of Our Cousins, the Arabs and of Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot

The Arabs themselves trace their origins to Ishmael, who was Abraham's first son by his wife Sarah's Egyptian maid,  Hagar.  Later,  Sarah bore Isaac who was the proginator of the Jewish people.  Arabs are a Semitic people and would then be half-cousins of the Jews, inhabiting the Arabian peninsula and other nearby regions.  When Islam was created by Mohammed they moved out of their homeland and conquered the greater part of the then civilized world including Palestine.  Arabic is a cognate to Hebrew and is one of the branches of Semitic languages.   A big split divided the two groups when the Jews would not convert to Islam but remained faithful to their own religion, Judaism.  Most Arabs live in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.  Most Arabs are Muslims but there are also Arab Christians and Druses, who are an offshoot of  Ismaelism which is a monotheistic Persian belief of the eternity of the soul and of reincarnation started in the 11th Century CE.  . 

Once there was the kingdom of Judah and the larger kingdom of Israel, both Jewish states.  Israel was in the north and Judah was in the south. 

The Jews had created Judah in the south  with 20 kings reigning from Rehoboam in 933-917 BCE to Zedekiah in 597- 586 BCE with the city of Samaria as its capital in about 890 BCE , Samaria was in the center and Galilee was in the North.  Under Kings David and Solomon, Israel was a very large territory including most of Syria and covered about 58,000 sq. m. It had had 19 kings from Jeroboam in 933-912 BCE to Hoshea in 730-72 BCE.   It became known as Palestine after the Roman conquest in 70 CE. Israel ran from the Western Mediterranean Sea to the East with the Syrian Desert to the South with the Brook of Egypt as far as the Valley of Zoar south of the Dead Sea and in Transfordan from the river Arnon to Mt. Hermon and to the Valley of Iyon.

When Rome conquered, they named Judah "Judea" and it remained a vassal kingdom.  It later became a province in what they called Palestine when they started ruling in 63 BCE.   The Romans renamed it "Palaestina "(Prima and Secunda) in 135 CE.  .The southern part of the country remained Judea to distinguish it from Samaria in the center and Galilee in the north.   

The Romans came up with the term, Palestina" as that originally denoted the land of the Philistines, used to describe their hinterland by the Greeks.  Palestine was first used to denote Palestinian Syria.  The Romans renamed Judah to Judea and then as Palestine to erase its association with Jews.  Palestine had never been a country, just a name of a land that wasn't even occupied by the people who controlled it.    It lay waste except for the occasional nomad with a camel who traveled across it to get to the other side.  It became either swampland or  a desert.  Only a few Arabs managed to buy land from the Ottoman Empire and settle down.  Jews never had left the land though they became fewer in number as so many had been carted off and sold into slavery or had been slaughtered.  No one was interested in building up such tired and useless land. 

The Muslim Arabs were defeated in Palestine in 1250 CE by Muslims who were not Arabs but were Mamelukes.  They in turn were defeated by other non-Arab Muslims, the Ottoman Turks, who held onto the ownership until they lost it in 1917 in the WWI as they were on the German side of the war.  Arabs  had controlled Palestine for about 700 years while other Muslims had held onto it as well. 

The land was originally called Eretz Canaan (the land of Canaan)  in Hebrew.  Later by 1948 Jews were able to call their homeland Eretz Israel.  It's only been in recent years that Arabs have identified themselves as "Palestinians."  They had come into the land looking for work from neighboring countries in the 1800's to work for the Jews who were building there.  Five different periods of times called Alliyot brought Jews from Europe into the land.   Before 1948 all people living in "Palestine" were called Palestinians.    The Jewish interest in Palestine lay in their history of having been led there by G-d.  This wasteland had meaning to a people who had been bouncing around from country to country for over 2,000 years in search of someplace that would accept them for what they were.  After almost becoming extinct in the slaughter of the Pogroms in Russia and in the Holocaust, they finally braved the elements and returned to their homeland. 

Resource: A Young Person's History of Israel 2nd Edition by David Bamberger
The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze

Israel's Villages, Towns, Cities of Judea and Samaria Legal

Nadene Goldfoot
Do you really think that Israel, a land of much respect for law and of not doing to others that which you would not wish them to do unto you,  would break a law purposefully in living on land  that they did not have a legal right to be on?

Israel was reborn in 1948.  From 1949 to 1967 they were forbidden to live in Judea and Samaria, their old homeland.  Originally they were to have much more than the piece they were allotted through dealings with England and had to settle for much less.  During this time the Arabs refused to make peace with the new Israel. 

The surrounding nations of Israel attacked her in 1967 hoping to put an end to her, and they lost.  Israel won the battle in 6 days, much to the Arab's dismay.  From 1967 to  1977 the Labor Party of Israel established only a few residential places in what is commonly called "The Territories", meaning Judea and Samaria.  Still, the Arabs refused to make peace with Israel. 

In 1977, after the Likud government went along with more residential communities established in Judea and Samaria, the Egyptian President Sadat went to Jerusalem and we had peace with Egypt.  One year later Israel froze these communities in their growth.  They were hoping that in doing this, other Arabs would join the Camp David peace process, but none would do so.  Israel was reaching out to them showing that they were seious about making peace with the Arabs. 

No matter what Israel was ready to do to attain peace with their neighbors, no one was willing to do so except Egypt. Because of that, we gave back the Sinai to Egypt.   Arabic writings have been found that make references to the Crusades and how it might take time to expell the Zionists like they did the Crusaders.  For example, in the Syrian President Hafez Assad's office is a portrait on his wall of Saladin defeating the Crusaders.  His point is that Christian sovereignty in Palestine was temporary, and that Jews will be temporary, also, so they are merely waiting and biding their time. 

Actually seeing building going on in Jewish communities may make the Arabs realize that they don't have all the time in the world, and that they should come together for talks of peace.  That may be why they are hurrying  to the UN to create their own state of Palestine without ever talking and settling the many peace issues with Israel. 

As long as the Arabs refuse to talk of peace and continually send rockets, missile, and mortars into the tiny country of Israel, Israel mut be on guard to defend their population.  International legal scholar Stephen Schwebel says that "a country acting in self-defense may seize and occupy territory when necessary to protect itself.  The state may require, as a condition for its withdrawal, security measures designed to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory." 

Eugene Rostow, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration, says that Resolution 242 gives Israel a legal right to be in Judea and Samaria.  It allows Israel to administer the territories it won in 1967 until a just and lasting peace in the Middle East is achieved.  Israel is not to be forced back to the fragile and vulnerable 1949 Armistice Demarcation Lines. "

Both Judea and Samaria had been held by Jordan up to 1967 illegally, so Israel's claim is superior to Jordan's claim, stated Rostow.    Jordan was there because of their aggression in 1948 against Israel.  Israel's came about because of their legitimate right of self-defense.  The lesson here is not to make war on your enemies.  There is no guarantee you will win and if you lose, you lose territory.  There has to be a penalty for being an aggressor and taking lives, so that is what has happened to the Arabs.  I'm afraid they are very sore losers. 

Israel has every right to live in communities in Judea and Samaria.  Most all the communities happen to be populated by observant orthodox Jews who have a reverence and love of the their ancient land and of their history.  So many of the important events in the Bible happened in these places.  They have a very legal claim to be there that is galling the Arabs who are tying to convince people that it is not.  Being there is not the obstacle to peace.  The Arabs are aggravated about it because they see what  they have lost in attacking Israel in the first place.  They have refused for 63 years to make peace with Israel, and Israel continues to be healthy and grow despite the fact. 

Any stipulation that Israel has to back up to the 67 line before they won the war or even the 1948 lines is an insult to all democracies who are trying to live in peace.  Giving such leeway to an aggresive Arab group who shows their determination to destroy Israel is a threat to all democracies everywhere, not just to Israel.  Let the Palestinians sit down and talk seriously about being a good neighbor and how much they want peace.  Israel has been giving into acts of peaceful overtures all along.  It's their turn, now.  Israel left all of Gaza.  What have the Palestinians done but bomb Israel? 

Reference: Myths and Facts a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict  by Mitchell G. Bard PhD,  Joel Himelfarb, p. 268-269