Alas, O Zion... - Israel Dismantled?

Nevermore

Hey all, thinking of the recent conflicts that've been going on between the Israeli army and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, I've begun to wonder: would it've been somehow possible that any Arab nations surrounding her could have invaded and effectively either annexed chunks of it, or made it dissolve completely? What would it take for this to effectively happen to the area? This is perhaps ASB, and if it is, I apologize, but I was simply rather curious on the issue.

This obviously doesn't take into effect, of course, what such a 'victory' would have upon the surviving Israelis...or the other Middle Eastern nations surrounding her. What might such a situation look like today? The U.S.'s foreign policy here look like, if that were to happen?
 

83gemini

Depends when. A *1967 is perhaps vaguely plausible (the PoD may have to be some time back so the war happens at a totally different time). A *1948 seems quite plausible. A *1973, less so, though I suppose one might quibble.

Each of those situations leads to different outcomes of course, both for the region and broader geopolitics. There was a book, If Israel Lost the War that looks at *1967.
 

Typo

Banned
I think 1948 was possible, other than that, probably not, it's far far harder to wipe a state from a map on a non-temporary basis than most people think.
 

I Guangxu

1948 and 1967 are really the best possibilities. In 1948 the Israeli military was still pretty ragtag and shoestring (really making the fact that they won at all all the more spectacular). In 1967 the Israeli military was much more adept, but faced a serious challenge from Egypt, and had it not been for the preemptive strike against Egypt's air force, which assured Israel's continued supremacy in the sky, things might have gone differently.

Post-1967 Israel likely isn't going anywhere. One possibility that exists is a scenario I have pondered on a couple of occasions in which Gerald Ford wins the 1976 election. Ford's relative lack of enthusiasm for the peace process vis-a-vis Carter, coupled with Kissinger's ruthless realpolitik, makes it somewhat likely that the Camp David Accords are never signed. Without this closure of a peace between Israel and Egypt, it is possible that another conflict could erupt sometime in the 1980's. Such a conflict would be influenced by geopolitical factors such as the Lebanese Civil War and a potential reluctance from the U.S. to aid Israel in order to avoid alienating its relatively new allies in Egypt, fearing to drive them back into the arms of the Soviets. While I think it is still unlikely that such a conflict would succeed in destroying Israel at this late stage, it is possible that territories might be occupied.

When some friends and I played out this afforementioned scenario in a wargame specifically designed to realistically replicate the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars, accounting for certain plausible deviations created by our scenario, the result was significant and somewhat surprising Arab gains in the first few days of the war, followed by a powerful Israeli counterattack that reversed many of those gains and forced the conflict to a stalemate. At the end, the borders remained relatively unchanged save for a Syrian occupation of Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
 
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