Yonatan
Banned
No, I'm disagreeing with this because for instance occupying the West Bank carved the most densely populated and modernized sections of the Kingdom of Jordan from Jordan, while occupying both the Sinai *and* the Gaza Strip was carving a lot of territory off of Egypt. The threat might be overblown as Israel sees it, but from an Arab POV the two attempts to grab the Sinai and the grab of the West Bank *would* create a mentality of imminent existential threat regardless of the reality.
I agree that it's certainly an action that makes sense from an Israeli POV, and I believe that no state ever voluntarily self-terminates so it's hardly wise or just to blame Israel for not doing what no other state has ever done.
Thank you. I accept your reasoning about Jordan, but as for Egypt you are talking about a giant desert, not that much population (unless you count Palestinians as Egyptians) and no infrastructure of any kind (tho there was some oil which Israel payed back Egypt for when it gave the Sinai back as part of the peace process several years after the yom kippur war.)
would you agree however that no one in the middle east takes the option of Israel conquering entire nations seriusly? I mean, in the OP, the theoretical combined arab army isnt fighting to stop Israel from taking say, everything between itself and Morroco? Libya, Tunis, Qatar, the UAE, etc are not under threat and they know it. why would they send wave after wave of soldiers for months on end?
As for how long Israel can fight, I will give you an example:
In 2006, the IDF used 52 artillery batteries, or 312 guns. those include the "rider" and "galloper" classes of Mobile Artillery, along with some older units for the reservists. as far as the mobile artillery goes, they work in teams of 2 vehicls, the artillery unit and an ALPHA, which is a small tracked truck used to carrying ammo. the main vehicle hs 40 shells inside, while the ALPHA has 80 more. that gives them 120 shots before they need a refill. during the war, the IDF used ~100,000 shells, which means every gun was resupplied three times, total. that is the amount of ammo a regiment has for for 3-4 days of combat. it was dragged for over a month. no war depot was opened during the war, for fear Syria will join the fight.
the majority of forces operating in Lebanon was the regular army, not the reserves. about 30,000 reservists were sent into Lebanon in the last 2 days of the war, achieving nothing.
All those mistakes were organisational flaws of the IDF, many of those have since been corrected. the US was sending ammo and fuel because it could afford to, and because it wanted the IDF to succeed.
as for how long the IDF can remain at full mobilasation? several months, exact number I honestly dont think anyone can tell you, yet its long enough to fight throuh whatever it has to face.
For example, say Syria decideds to recruit every able bodied man and arm them as best they can. short of ASB's spawning tanks out of thin air, the majority will be light infantry.
the majority of Syrian artillery is located near the border, most of it is old, and require considrable time to relocate. due to their doctrine they are also extremly close together since their accuracy is rather abysmal. this results in an interesting standoff:
The Syrian arty significantly outnumbered Israeli arty, yet the Israeli arty is by far more accurate and tends to be more scattared (mobile arty will mostly fire a few shots before relocating, with hundreds of meters to several kilometers between units of the same battery). as both sides begin shooting, within minutes the first MLRS start hitting Syrian targets while Syrian arty is at its strongest, laying waste to as many Israeli bases, ammo depots, roads etc they can, using cluster munitions to create minefields etc.
within an hour, the majority of the Syrian artillery has ceased to exist as a functioning entity. they have very little arty units not located near the border, and most of their best units (who are in short supply) are consentrated around Damascus. (this is without taking into account recent turmoil in Syria, which has significantly decreased its military ability, along with repositioning most of their arty and armored forces to fight rebels, leaving the border lightly guarded. If Israel wanted to invade, it would do so weeks ago).
This leads to the situatuation that even if the Syrian arty has managed to utterly annihlate the Israeli arty at the Golan, those are only a fraction of the IDF's arty force, yet the Syrian artillery corpse has effectivly ceased to exist.
I dont care how long the war would last, you cannot magic up a new artillery corpse out of thin air. nor can you easily replace the chain of command who died or were captured.
Sure, Israeli forces moving into Syria will encounter heavy opposition due to the fact the best units are located closer to Damascus, but Syria cannot keep its forces in a coherent fighting phase for very long after its main defence lines have fallen. and they will not take months to fall.
In short, a long arab-Israeli war is ASB in its very nature. regardless of how long armies can remain moblized they will wear each other down to fast for fresh recruits having any influence on the outcome.