Israel conquers the West Bank in 1948-1949

[WolfBear]

What if Israel would have conquered the West Bank in 1948-1949? There appears to have been a plausible opportunity to do this near the end of Israel's War of Independence:

As Trump era begins, what does Israel actually want in the West Bank?

The settlements grow apace, peace remains stalled and Israel's intentions seem a genuine mystery in Western capitals. Yet the question has a surprisingly simple answer, one which hasn't changed since 1948

www.timesofisrael.com

In December 1948, during a lull in the fighting in Israel’s War of Independence, the cabinet ministers of the newly declared Jewish state gathered in Tel Aviv to consider a final military push to expel the Egyptian army from the country’s south and Iraqi troops from the northern West Bank cities of Qalqilya and Tulkarem, both of which lie scarcely nine miles from the Mediterranean coast and form Israel’s perilously narrow coastal waistline just north of Tel Aviv.

During the cabinet meeting, interior minister Yitzhak Gruenbaum phrased a question that has plagued Israelis ever since: Is it wise to take control of territories with large Palestinian populations? Israel’s expansions up to that point in the war were into areas that were either sparsely populated to begin with, or from which Arab populations had largely fled; or into places of such desperate strategic significance, such as Lod and Ramle, that Israeli forces simply expelled some of the Arab residents.

The historian Benny Morris described Gruenbaum’s concern as stemming from the understanding that Israel “could not hold territory packed with Arabs.”

The question returned even more forcefully a few months later, when Yigal Allon, the most successful field commander of the nascent IDF, urged prime minister David Ben-Gurion to order the conquest of the West Bank, an operation he thought could be concluded in a matter of days. This was particularly true after a February ceasefire with Egypt freed up a great deal of Israel’s over 100,000 troops to contend with a Jordanian fighting force in the West Bank of perhaps 12,000. Again Israel’s leaders demurred, and for the same reason: Could a Jewish nation state afford to extend its sovereignty over large non-Jewish populations?

In other words, the West Bank as it is defined today — a distinct territory that is neither Israel nor Jordan — was not, as is commonly believed, forged by Jordanian military success in holding the Israelis at bay in the 1948-49 war. It was created, rather, by the Israeli fear of the consequences that might flow from absorbing large numbers of Palestinians. That concern has not waned in 70 years. It is still the primary argument on both right and left against annexation of the West Bank and for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Anyway, let's say that Israel goes ahead with this operation and perhaps rather than aiming for a complete expulsion of the West Bank Arabs, decides to aim for a more piecemeal approach instead, such as expelling Arabs from some parts of the West Bank, such as Jericho near the Jordanian border, but not other parts of West Bank?

Anyway, what would happen afterwards?

 

[WolfBear]

@History Learner You're an Israel expert, right? Anyway, what do you think about this question of mine?

 

[History Learner]

@History Learner You're an Israel expert, right? Anyway, what do you think about this question of mine?

Honestly I'm not really qualified to call myself an expert in Israeli politics, beyond my general interest in it as a geopolitical issue.

 

[WolfBear]

Honestly I'm not really qualified to call myself an expert in Israeli politics, beyond my general interest in it as a geopolitical issue.

Well, in any case, would you be willing to try answering this question of mine?