Thanks for the ping. I was away this past week.
Hanson mentioned the Roman pullback to the defensible borders of the Rhine and Danube which is a good historical example of what we both are advocating.
An opposite historical example would be that of Alexander.
As I had written before, once a population is under your control as a result of military conquest, the options are: Extermination, Expulsion, Reformation, Assimilation, Perpetual Occupation or a Parting of the Ways.
Alexander did use Extermination at Tyre and, ironically in terms of this discussion, at Gaza when both cities refused to surrender. The male populations of both Tyre and Gaza were put to the sword and the marketable women and children were sold into slavery.
Rome also used Extermination at Carthage after the Third Punic War and at Corinth in the same year, 146 BC, with both cities razed to the ground and their populations put to the sword and/or enslaved.
That was certainly a solution that took particular problems off the table.
Extermination, however, had its limits even in the ancient world, and, in the modern world, it is simply not an option for a civilized nation although the radical Arabs obviously have no qualms about it. (A fact that puts Israel at a distinct disadvantage in any scenario that entails the Palestinian fanatics and the Israelis living on the same real estate.)
Once Extermination was taken as far as was practical, the different paths of Alexander and Rome show the consequences of paying attention to the problem of captured populations and simply putting the problem aside to worry about it some other day.
The Roman strategy was, above all, to find a way to secure their gains for the long term. This they did by having Assimilation as their ultimate goal.
Occupation, as with the Gauls in France, the Celt-Iberians in Spain and the Britons in Britain, was resorted to until the population could be Romanized. The Romans did such good job of it that, over two thousand years later, those of us who are descended from those former barbarians are still Romanized, whether we care to admit it or not. (For those who snicker that the Anglo-Saxons de-Romanized Britain, remember that the Normans re-Romanized it again. That is why we don't have Times New Runic as a Microsoft Word font.)
For those populations, such as the Jews in Judea, that resisted Romanization, Expulsion was resorted to thereby also solving the "problem" once and for all.
Assimilation and Expulsion, however, also have their limits. You can keep on going all the way to China without running out of populations to Assimilate or Expel.
There is only so much pig that the python can swallow before it dies of indigestion.
With Rome, that indigestion point was reach with reign of Trajan who expanded the Roman Empire to its greatest geographic extent....even to Mesopotamia of modern-day Iraq.
Trajan's successor, Hadrian, realized that the Roman Empires borders were expanded beyond a defensible point and Mesopotamia and Assyria were given back to the Parthians. Thus, Augustus' advice that Roman Empire not extend beyond its naturally defensible natural obstacles of the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates was heeded except for Trajans conquest of Dacia that was worthwhile keeping because of its gold mines. A similar choice was made with the Picts of Scotland who were not deemed worth the cost of conquest and Hadrian's Wall kept them neutralized on their side of the Wall.
Although many other factors contributed to its fall, the end for Rome came when Rhine froze solid in 406 AD and the floodgates of barbarian invasion were opened. Still, Rome had an extremely long run.
By contrast, Alexander, like the dog chasing the SUV, had very little idea what he would do once he caught it.
Although a tactical genius, Alexander either had no strategic vision or simply did not care what happened after he ran out of lands to conquer. Given unlimited time, men and resources, he would have tried to go all the way to China but got only as far as India before his soldiers decided that enough was enough.
After his death, Alexander's empire evaporated.
The Macedonians were so few in number in relation to the conquered populations that, instead of the Macedonians assimilation the conquered, the conquered assimilated the Macedonians. The Seleucid and Ptolemaic Kingdoms may have had Kings of Macedonian descent but the sheer demographics ensured that kingdoms were never Hellenized in the manner that Rome Romanized its conquests.
Since 1967, the Israelis have also faced a similar Hobson's Choice in regards to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Unlike Alexander, who was unrestrained by any moral or geopolitical considerations, an Extermination of the troublesome populations of Gaza and the West Bank is not an option that can be exercised by Israel.
Likewise, an Expulsion along the lines of the Roman expulsion of the Jews from Judea is also not a card on the late 20th and 21st Century geopolitical table.
Assimilation would be a wonderful option but you can't assimilate the radical Palestinians (who double their number every generation) into peaceful Israeli society anymore than you can have a rattlesnake for a son-in-law.
The Palestinians who can be assimilated have "voted with their feet" and have chosen to live on the Israeli side of the Israeli Wall.
Unless the possession of land is your ultimate goal in war and you are ready, willing and able to go the Full Monty on one of the choices in the Extermination-Expulsion-Reformation-Assimilation Route, a resource draining Perpetual Occupation of an ever-increasing, ever-hostile, non-reformable and nonassimilable population that you can't simply put to the sword, sell into slavery or totally expel like you could in the "Good Ole Days" of Rome turns your tactical victory into a long term strategic defeat that allows your conquered enemy to slowly bleed you to death.
That leaves Hadrian's choice and Sharon's choice:
A Parting of the Ways with as impregnable a barrier between the two populations as is physically possible by geography by military engineering and by military power.
That has now been completed in Gaza and I envision a similar scenario in regards to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
There will be heartfelt protests about abandoning land won at the price of Israeli blood just as some in the Roman Army protested the abandonment by Hadrian of Mesopotamian land won at the price of Roman blood.
However, the strategic victory won by Israel is that, after four different ass-kicking in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 the Arab nation-states that were chomping at the bit for Round Two, Round Three and even Round Four have been there and done that and want absolutely no part of another ass-kicking in Round Five. As discussed above, keeping the land turns a tactical and strategic victory into a strategic bleeding ulcer.
As for the Palestinians, they used to be like your visiting mother-in-law's chihuahua that was able to chew away at your ankle without you being able to take it to the dog pound to be put up for adoption or put to sleep.
Now, that chihuahua is being permanently locked out of your house and he becomes solely your mother-in-law's problem.
In the future, the West Bank will also be evacuated except for those strategic points that have been identified and are already enclosed or soon will be enclosed by the Israeli Wall.
For their part, the Palestinians will cry that the Israeli Wall is unilaterally annexing West Bank land. The Israelis will point to repeated attacks in the past, will point out that Russia still holds the Japanese Northern Islands and Germany's former East Prussia, will say that they have a right to defensible borders and will then totally ignore all protests over the matter.
The Palestinians and many Western liberals will also cry that a future Utopia with Arabs and Jews singing Kum-Ba-Yah arm in arm is not possible with the Israeli Wall.
Israelis will imagine the barbarians on the east side of the Rhine asking Rome to have its military engineers construct bridges over the Rhine, will have a good laugh and then concentrate on making the Wall even more impregnable and ways to make retaliatory strikes for rockets lobbed blindly over the Wall excruciatingly painful for the Palestinian Authority.
In the end, Israel's final ......and defensible.....borders will look like this (the region east of Carmel to the Dead Sea apparently not yet built at the time of this map):
