User:Ykantor/Sandbox/Israel- not expansionist

= 26 September 1948 "Sorrow for generations" at the Cabinet meeting=

"(p. 155) A great satisfaction with the armistice borders…(p. 157) area intended to pass into Israeli…statements reveal the ambiguity over this subject…(p. 160) if BG had been fully convinced that the IDF should have fought more aggressively for Jerusalem and the surrounding area, then Sharet's opposition would not have stood in the way of government consent".Shalom2002p155

"(p. 406) Nothing of this sort appears in the diary he kept at the time or in the minutes of the Cabinet meeting from which he is ostensibly quoting.... Ben Gurion once more raised the idea of conquering Latrun in the cabinet. Ben Gurion was in fact reacting to what he had been told by by a delegation from Jerusalem. (p 407) The "everlasting shame" view is unsubstantiated in both Ben Gurion's diary and in the Cabinet protocol. Tal2004p406

"the plan place by BG before the government call not for an all-out offensive, but rather for a limited action aimed at the conquest of Latrun…more than 13 years later .. claim that his proposal had been far more comprehensive".Bar-Joseph2013p115

= March 1949, just before the signing of the Israel-Jordan armistice agreement= Ben Gurion did not flinch from provoking the United Nations by breaking the truce agreement. But the limit of his fearlessness was a clash with a Western power. Vainly, the right and Mapam accused him of defeatism. He did not flinch from confronting them but chose to maintain good relations with the United States, ... and also not to provoke the British lion.... At the end of the war, when General Yigal Allon, ... demanded the conquest of the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state, Ben-Gurion refused. He recognized that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest, but he believed that the young state should not bite off more than it had already chewed. There was a limit to what the world was prepared to accept. Furthermore, the armistice borders—which later became known as the Green Line—were better than those he had dreamed of at the beginning of the war. In Ben-Gurion's opinion, in terms of territory Israel was satisfied. It was time to send the troops home and start work on building the new nation". Shapira2014p173

=Notes=