Israel is not interested in peace, has never given up anything for it, and only understands force

The fuller answer

Nobody has to authorise you to make this one, and it is among the few arguments where you can lead instead of defend. The claim depends entirely on the listener not knowing what happened in 1979. Repair that, and the shape of the exchange changes.

Work from what is signed and what was handed over. Intentions can be denied. Treaties cannot.

Sinai, which is the whole argument

Israel took the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in June 1967. Egypt and Syria attacked on 6 October 1973 to take it back, and failed. Six years after that, Israel gave all of it away on paper.

The size is the part almost nobody knows, so lead with it. The World Encyclopedia puts the Sinai Peninsula at 58,714 square kilometres. The World Bank puts Israel’s total surface area at 22,070 square kilometres. Israel returned a piece of territory about two and a half times the size of the country returning it.

It was not empty desert either. Fourteen Israeli civilian communities had been built there, the largest being Yamit, and 1,400 settler families were removed. The evacuation of Yamit began on 23 April 1982. Soldiers were lowered onto roofs in cages to get people out, the buildings were then demolished, and there were no casualties.

Israel also had to rebuild two military airfields inside the Negev. The Washington Institute puts the total cost of the withdrawal at about 7.75 billion dollars. Of that, 77.6 per cent went on moving military facilities out of Sinai.

There was oil as well. Israel had developed fields in the Gulf of Suez and gave them up. The State Department’s own history records that the treaty closed only after the United States guaranteed Israel’s oil supply. A country does not need that guarantee unless it is handing over the wells.

What the Egyptian treaty says

Signed 26 March 1979. Four provisions are worth carrying in your head.

Article I ends the state of war and commits Israel to complete withdrawal within three years. An interim pull-back behind the El Arish to Ras Mohammed line was due within nine months. Article II makes the old boundary between Egypt and mandatory Palestine the permanent border, and the parties recognise it as inviolable. Article III establishes normal diplomatic, economic and cultural relations. Article V gives Israeli ships free passage through the Suez Canal and treats the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways.

That was 47 years ago. The treaty has survived the 1982 Lebanon war, the fall of Mubarak, a Muslim Brotherhood presidency and the war in Gaza. Egypt’s foreign minister reaffirmed Cairo’s commitment to it after October 2023. Security cooperation went the other way from the rhetoric. Israel has let Egypt put far more force into Sinai than the treaty limits allow, to fight jihadist groups there.

Jordan, 1994

Signed on 26 October 1994 at the Arava crossing. Article 3 fixes the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary by reference to the Mandate definition, with demarcation inside nine months. Article 9 records Israel’s recognition of Jordan’s special role in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem.

Article 6 and Annex II are the ones to quote, because water in a dry country is not symbolism. Israel pumps 12 million cubic metres a year from the Yarmouk in summer and 13 in winter, plus an agreed additional 20 in winter. In return it transfers 20 million cubic metres from the Jordan River to Jordan every summer, above the Deganya gates. Jordan also receives 10 million cubic metres of desalinated water a year. On top of that, the parties undertook to plan a further 50 million cubic metres a year of drinking-standard supply.

Thirty-two years on, that treaty holds, and it is cold. King Abdullah gave notice on the 25-year arrangements covering the Baqura and Ghamr enclaves. Jordanian sovereignty was restored in November 2019 when Israeli farmers left. The reporting at the time put that down to pressure from a public that still largely regards Israel as an enemy. Note what was not touched: the treaty, the border, the water.

The Abraham Accords, and what they are not

On 15 September 2020, in Washington, three documents were signed. A joint declaration with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, a full treaty with the UAE, and a declaration of peace with Bahrain. The UAE text establishes peace, diplomatic relations and full normalisation, with resident ambassadors exchanged. Sudan followed on 23 October 2020. Morocco followed on 10 December 2020.

Be careful here, because an advocate who calls these a second Egypt gets corrected. None of the four shared a border with Israel. None had lost territory to it, so none had territory returned.

And the inducements came from a third party. Washington recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, reversing its own long-standing position. It also took Sudan off the state sponsors of terrorism list. Sudan paid 335 million dollars into escrow for the victims of the embassy and USS Cole bombings.

What they did do is real and worth stating precisely. They broke the Khartoum rule, which held that recognition is a chip to be withheld until the conflict ends. And they produced ordinary traffic rather than an embassy and silence. The UAE economic partnership came into force on 1 April 2023, covering more than 96 per cent of tariff lines.

The pattern the reader can state

Where there has been a state with the authority and the will to sign, Israel has signed, and has paid in territory to do it. That sentence is the entry.

What cuts against us

Say these before somebody else does, because each one is coming.

The 1979 treaty followed a war Egypt began, and it was bought. Egypt has drawn roughly 1.3 billion dollars a year in American military aid ever since. The State Department’s own history is candid that Carter closed the deal with guarantees and money.

Camp David ran from 5 to 17 September 1978 and produced two frameworks, not one. The second was Palestinian self-government in Gaza and the West Bank, and it was never implemented. The talks on it collapsed.

The Jordanian peace is cold, and the Egyptian peace is colder than it was in 2013. Neither has ever been popular in the country that signed it.

The Accords did nothing for the Palestinians. The declaration does not mention them. The UAE treaty gestures at a solution to the conflict and commits nobody to anything. Israel suspended annexation of the West Bank, and suspending is not renouncing.

And the one our side tends to leave out. The Arab League summit in Beirut, on 28 March 2002, offered full normalisation with every Arab state. The price was withdrawal from the territories taken in 1967 and a refugee settlement. Israel did not take it up. Expect that back, and have the answer ready.

The answer is about the terms. It arrived as a finished package to be accepted, with recognition following withdrawal rather than negotiated alongside it, and no counterparty on the Palestinian side able to deliver the refugee half of it. That is a real argument about who ought to have moved first, and it is a different argument from this one. It concerns one offer nobody took up. It does not touch two treaties that were signed, and that were paid for in territory.

The honest limit, and where this backfires

None of this establishes anything about the Palestinian track. Deploy it as though it settles that question and the first person in the room who knows the difference will take you apart. Everything else you said goes with it. The Palestinian negotiations are argued out in the entry on the offers, and that is where to go if the conversation moves there.

What this entry establishes is narrower and still decisive. The claim that Israel will never trade land for peace is not an interpretation to be argued about. It is refuted, twice, in writing, by treaties you can read online tonight.

The lines

“Israel agreed to give Egypt the whole of Sinai in 1979 and finished pulling out in 1982. That’s about two and a half times the size of Israel. It’s the biggest land-for-peace deal anybody in this conflict has ever done.”

“They pulled fourteen towns out, bulldozed them, moved two air bases and handed over the oil fields. That isn’t a state that only understands force.”

“Two treaties, 1979 and 1994. Both still standing. Egypt kept its treaty through this war.”

“You’re right that the Accords didn’t do anything for the Palestinians, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Egypt and Jordan are the argument. Those cost land.”

“I’m not telling you this settles the Palestinian question. It doesn’t. It settles whether Israel will ever give territory up, and the answer to that is on paper.”

Four numbers and a Sunday

Write two lines with a real day in them.

Action. “On Sunday evening after dinner, I will put four things on a card: 58,714, 22,070, 26 March 1979, 26 October 1994.”

Coping. “If somebody says peace with states is easier than peace with the Palestinians, I will agree that it is a different problem, say so out loud, and then ask them what Israel would have to hand over before they would call it serious.”