Those advocating return to the 1967 borders forget why Israeli tanks crossed the borders. Palestinian state bordering Jerusalem means a continuing terror in Jewish capital. Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria reduces strategic depth of the Jewish state to 8 miles (yes, that's the Road Map). In the south, Palestinian state spells the end to Israeli Dead Sea tourism: tourists will go through Jordan or Palestine (cheaper, too) rather than driving 140 miles from Jerusalem. Palestinian robber barons will join Israeli oligarchs and Jordanian Bedouins in plundering the Dead Sea resources and inflicting ecological catastrophe. The pre-1967 borders would give Kineret to Syria and most of Jordan River – to Palestinians, making Israeli water supply suicidally vulnerable.
The 1967 borders are of little import to the Palestinians: the southern bulge of their state impedes Jewish use of the Dead Sea, but that desert region is useless to the Palestinians. About 60% of Judea and Samaria is not settled by Arabs, nor could it be, given their primitive skills in agriculture.
Looking at figures, Israel in the 1956 borders remains much larger than the Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza – but most of that Israel is the Negev desert, a place so useless that Egypt readily ceded it to Israel. Global warming desertifies Israel, moving the border of habitation north. Northern Israel can be disregarded as well due to its swelling Arab presence; Arabs already form majority in many parts of the Galilee. The habitable relatively Jewish Israel in the pre-1967 borders is a beach strip 8-30 miles wide.
Arabs couldn't help but keep attacking that Israel before 1967. Disengagement from Judea and Samaria will leave Jewish beachhead a similarly tempting target.
Indeed, a weak target draws more fire.
But, as Shimon Peres once said, in this day and age strategic depth means nothing.
Jews can live in massive floating cities, stop the enemy land forces with invisi-tanks - Weapons so advanced in design that only the three wisest men in Asia can see them, and defuse nuclear devices in the pre-detonation phase by using a special energy field, which is composed of good intentions and rainbows.
So, as you can clearly see, Obadiah worries over nothing.
Israel could be a thousand miles away, and it would not be safe. Eight miles, eighty. Get some B-52's, build the end of the runway to the fence and do some wheel down bombing.
Egypt never did anything "readily" with Israel except to allow this week some highly-trained terror experts into Gaza.
What was the Egyptian opposition to Israeli takeover of the Negev?
A few wars, support for an army of "Palestine" integrated into the Egyptian army, bases for the fedayun, Nasser in the Faluja Pocket, establishing the PLO under Shukeiry, all sorts of things.
Ah, that's not really an opposition. When Egypt wanted Sinai back, it started the full-scale war. No war because of the Negev.