The Israelis just cannot get it through their heads that trying to “be nice” in disputes it has with the Arabs makes things *worse*.
The world is wired for competition, not cooperation, except when cooperation is mutually desired by two reasonable groups. If one of the two is not reasonable, in this case the Arabs, trying to cooperate with them is mindless and self defeating.
Trying to do this for decade after decade has finally annoyed the rest of the world who more than anything else want to ignore the region, but keep being dragged back in because of Israel’s endless half-measures and unwillingness to force peace.
Had the Israelis just driven out all of the Arabs in the 1948 war, or the Reprisal Operations of the 1950’s-’60’s, or the Suez Crisis of 1956, or the Six-Day War of 1967, or the War of Attrition 1967-70, or the Yom Kippur War of 1973, or the other half dozen conflicts, there would finally be some peace in the region.
But no, the Israelis just *refused* to do the one thing that would separate themselves from their enemies.
And enough already!
It is about bad enough for Israel to be invaded by a foreign army *just* to drive the Arabs out for them despite their protestations, then to erect a wall around the rest of Israel so that they could not invite more Arabs to come back in to fight with them again.
Which they probably would. The Israelis would fret day and night that there were no Arabs around to hate them and fight with them. At least judging from the way they behave today.
It's important to remember that the majority of the wars between the arabs and Israelis were actually proxy wars between the US & USSR. As an example, with the Yom Kippur war, Israel, which had crossed the Suez across into Egypt proper, having surrounded the Egyptian military, and was about 50 miles from Damascus, Syria, with NOTHING to stop them (militarily), the war came to an abrupt end when the US pressured Israel to withdraw their forces because the USSR stated that if Israel did not withdraw, the USSR would directly join the war against Israel.
I have no doubt that years ago, the Israeli military would have LOVED to completely vanquish their enemies. However, since these were proxy wars, they had very stringent limitations placed on them.
And today? Well, I believe that the Israeli political class has "gotten used to" a constant low level state of war, and given the worlds' media's hatred of Israel, they're afraid to be portrayed as being "mean" to the "nice" murderers and terrorists.
Mark