Comment by tomp

1. and 2. make sense, thank you for your reply, especially given you've more important things to worry about!

regarding 3: I don't want to get into the "who's land it is" debate (I generally agree with your description from a historical perspective, but I also think that historical perspective is largely irrelevant).

But mostly a practical issue: why wasn't it (with the exception of Jerusalem and some other Jewish "holy" sites) treated more like Gaza (i.e. withdrawal, as opposed to building of more settlements)?

Obviously that wouldn't satisfy everyone everywhere (especially not the "open air prison" crowd) but I think it would have given Israel much more legitimacy - one of the crucial criticisms in the past few years was "taking Palestinian land to build Israeli settlements".

What I'm trying to understand, is why they did that? Probably not for the lack of land. Nationalist reasons? Maybe, but I don't see the potential massive gain there, to offset the (IMO) massive loss in internaional reputation from "occupying West Bank".

And in addition it would defuse at least a part of Hamas's justification for the Oct7 attack (the other, the Al Aqsa issue, obviously being fake, and of course that old "hate Jews" motivation wouldn't go away...).

Anyways I completely understand if you'd rather not have this discussion, I still hope you win soon!