Quote Originally Posted by Hax View Post
I'm keeping this quote here so I can respond to it later. For the Arab side, I think it was largely a matter of principle: any surrender of Arab land was unacceptable. It's not that strange a position to take, really.
Agreed. It is completely justified Islamic, if not Arabic, et al, moral code to recover "lost" land. It's not too different from anyone else's views, really.

On Israel's value to the U.S.: Israel is our closest ideological partner and most stable country in that corner of the planet. We give them significant amounts of money and technology and put up with a lot of their b.s., but they give us access to a great deal of stuff that no other country in the region can. You don't ditch partners just because they come with baggage.