Israel owes its existence to the capacity of its military to first defeat a Palestinian rebellion, then hold off the feeble attacks of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Arab Legion (commanded by Brits). Clearly the UK and US by action or inaction permitted sufficient resources to reach Israel to build a war machine, but the borders were determined on the ground by military and political factors. The UN was in the business of organizing armistices that reflected compromises on each side, given the state of play on the ground. Stalin would have understood this.
BM says Israel could have destroyed the Egyptian army at one point when they had them encircled but was dissuaded by the UK and US. They could have conquered the West Bank, but a) they preferred not to strain relations with Jordan, which was the least unfriendly of their adversaries, and 2) then as now, there were too many Palestinians on the West Bank for a Jewish state to absorb.
My interpretation of BM is that the Arab states, rhetoric aside, had no intention of driving Jews into the sea. They knew it was not possible. They instead maneuvered to grab pieces of the mandate territory that would have been convenient for them to hold. They sat on their asses while the Haganah and Irgun destroyed the domestic Palestinian rebellion and generally wreaked carnage on Palestinian villages, they failed to build adequate forces, and they failed to fight with much energy (the exception apparently being the Arab Legion).
The survival of Israel could not be a greater rebuke to the rotten Arab elites, given their own political posturing on this issue. How in the world could countries with so many people and so much money fail to pose a greater threat to Israel for so long.
For this reason methinks the Saddam model -- tyranny to be sure, but also efforts at some kind of nation-building, including by the use of force, in contrast to the gross conspicuous consumption of the Saudi's, Kuwait, etc. -- has always been viewed as the greatest threat to Israel and to U.S. interests in the ME. Hence one of the reasons Israel is a strategic asset to the U.S.
mbs
Nathan Newman wrote:
> The "existence" of Israel derives from the military support of Britain and
> the United States, who reserved the right to draw the map of the Middle
> East. That's all....leaving Biblical myths aside.
>
> No- the existence of Israel derives from a vote of the United Nations, as
> part of the "mandate" system established at its founding. In that sense,
> Israel is one of the only countries whose existence is NOT derived from a
> specific military campaign, secession or unilateral carving out of
colonial
> empires.