Partial Arab victory

Often in alternate history scenarios involving the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel is totally defeated and occupied by the Arab states. For example, the novel "If Israel lost the War" is about a crushing Israeli defeat in the 6 day war, and the subsequent occupation and partition of the former Jewish state.

Instead of a total Arab victory, is it possible for there to be a partial one, in which Israel loses territory, but survives as a state? My understanding is an Arab victory was never very likely in any of the wars. What sort of PODs are needed?
 
In an Israel is losing in 1948 scenario, the UN would step in and protect borders around Tel Aviv and the Jezreel region.

Palestine still loses out, it's not likely the UN also steps in to prevent Arab powers from taking that land.
 
IMHO the only way you get a partial Arab victory, whether in 1948 or later, is if a great power or combination of powers step in and either make threats that are believed or physically intervene.
 
If Israel is losing a war after the develop nuclear weapons, they might well tell the Arab states something like, "It's time for a cease fire in place. If you keep advancing, we will use our nuclear weapons."

The would would likely ostracize them completely for using the bomb to roll back losses, but accept the threat if the nation's existence was about to end. I can even see the USA and/or the USSR saying, "If you use them to roll back the borders, you are toast, but we will (completely deniably!) not step in if you use them to force a cease fire in place.
 
I can't see the USA using military force on the Israelis if they threaten, or even use, nukes to restore status quo ante bellum. As far as the Soviets go, this is a stickier question.
 
Pre-WWII a second regiment is added to the Arab Legion as was suggested doubling its numbers, this gives then a stronger starting point so that during WWII and afterwards they're expanded to full infantry division size and organisation. In the run-up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war the arms shipments the British sent to Jordan aren't held up and then filched by the Egyptians, allowing the Legion and Independent / Garrison Companies to do rather better than in our timeline. The Jordanians end up holding a West Bank roughly the same as our timelines except for a bit of extra territory here and there along the borders but the major difference is their being able to capture Jerusalem and hold a line in the hills much further to the west of it. It's not technically Israel losing territory so much as their not gaining it, but in comparison to our timeline it's a loss.
 
Until after 1973 the position of the Arab/Muslim states was the total elimination of Israel, period. Since then some states have either reached peace agreements or have de facto accepted the existence of Israel, borders to be negotiated, but this is in no way universal in the Arab/Muslim world. Certainly prior to 1973 the only way you get a "partial" Arab victory is either a military stalemate or an external power stepping in forcefully enough to impose a cease fire. Given the lack of depth of Israel prior to 1967, and even less based on the initial partition lines, if the Arab militaries broke through, I doubt an external party could impose a cease fire quickly enough for there to be any Israel left. A state based on the initial partition lines is not viable, even if the Arabs would accept it - which they did not do in 1948. If when the cease fire happens all you have is several "blobs" of Jewish territory not connected, like chocolate chips in a cookie, there is no viability.
 
According to most Egyptian accounts of the 1973 war,it was a partial victory. They celebrate the crossing of the canal and ignore the counter crossing that took place afterwards. I don't see any great powers intervening in 1948 to prevent an Israeli loss. The UK and The US state department seemed to be hoping for an Israeli loss. The Russians would have seen the destruction of the zionist enterprise as fulfilling the twin goals of getting the Brits out of the mid east and eliminating the the only real competitor to communism/socialism among the Jews of the USSR.
 
Instead of a total Arab victory, is it possible for there to be a partial one, in which Israel loses territory, but survives as a state?

Do you mean their original pre-'67 war territory? If you mean occupied territory, it was possible. In 1973, Egypt and Syria could've held at least some of the land they initially retook (without losing any land they held prior to the war, as happened in '73). Had Syria not wasted its armor on red ridge, and had Egypt not wasted its reserves on the 14th, and had both arab states agreed to a ceasefire before Israel could figure out what to do, the result could've been a partial arab victory.
This might even have been possible in '67. I've blogged about that ("Best Egyptian Strategy 1967").
 
I can't see the USA using military force on the Israelis if they threaten, or even use, nukes to restore status quo ante bellum. As far as the Soviets go, this is a stickier question.

The US wouldn't use force itself but it could warn Israel that it wouldn't do anything if the Soviets took action.
 
While the "realists" in Egypt and Jordan may have given up the idea of erasing Israel by 1973, NONE of the "Palestinian" organizations from the PLO down were willing to accept the two-state solution. Even now some of the organizations are willing to talk about a two-state solutions, others are only talking about the eventual elimination of Israel. Even Fatah, which discusses the two-state solution insists on the "right of return" which functionally means the end of Israel as those who left Israel in 1948, any who left the West Bank in 1967 and all their descendants who return to Israel and they, plus the resident citizen Arabs in Israel plus those on the West Bank would markedly outnumber the Jews in the Palestine of Israel, West Bank, and Gaza combined and even with a completely honest and above board election finis Israel - followed by dispossession of the Jews(1). Even those countries which have treaties today with Israel give at least lip service to the "right of return", thus tacitly endorsing the concept of the Jewish state going away. (2)

(1) The general policy of the Palestinian political groups is that Jews who came to Palestine after WWI, when it became a British Mandate, are illegtimate "colonialists" and the only Jews who have a legitimate place in Palestine are those who can trace their residency to pre-1918.
(2) The best estimate is that approximately 800,000 Arab inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine left the area that became the 1948 boundaries of Israel. Within 5-10 years after 1948 approximately 1 million Jews were expelled or "encouraged" to leave Arab/Muslim countries, generally with only a suitcase or two. Thus we had a population exchange (although not all Jews from Arab countries went to Israel). Compare this to the Muslim/Hindu population exchange at the same time between India and Pakistan, and the outright expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland, the Sudentenland, and various Baltic states in the wake of WWII (these are only the most obvious examples).
 
The US would have not blithely stood by if the Soviets took action in response to Israeli use of nuclear weapons.

If the Soviets had do so in that situation, welcome to Global Thermonuclear War. The game has already started.
 
While the "realists" in Egypt and Jordan may have given up the idea of erasing Israel by 1973, NONE of the "Palestinian" organizations from the PLO down were willing to accept the two-state solution. Even now some of the organizations are willing to talk about a two-state solutions, others are only talking about the eventual elimination of Israel. Even Fatah, which discusses the two-state solution insists on the "right of return" which functionally means the end of Israel as those who left Israel in 1948, any who left the West Bank in 1967 and all their descendants who return to Israel and they, plus the resident citizen Arabs in Israel plus those on the West Bank would markedly outnumber the Jews in the Palestine of Israel, West Bank, and Gaza combined and even with a completely honest and above board election finis Israel - followed by dispossession of the Jews(1). Even those countries which have treaties today with Israel give at least lip service to the "right of return", thus tacitly endorsing the concept of the Jewish state going away. (2)

(1) The general policy of the Palestinian political groups is that Jews who came to Palestine after WWI, when it became a British Mandate, are illegtimate "colonialists" and the only Jews who have a legitimate place in Palestine are those who can trace their residency to pre-1918.
(2) The best estimate is that approximately 800,000 Arab inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine left the area that became the 1948 boundaries of Israel. Within 5-10 years after 1948 approximately 1 million Jews were expelled or "encouraged" to leave Arab/Muslim countries, generally with only a suitcase or two. Thus we had a population exchange (although not all Jews from Arab countries went to Israel). Compare this to the Muslim/Hindu population exchange at the same time between India and Pakistan, and the outright expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland, the Sudentenland, and various Baltic states in the wake of WWII (these are only the most obvious examples).

800,000 Arab inhabitants were 'encouraged' to leave the area that became the 1948 boundaries of Israel. The illegitimate colonists they're talking about in the sixties were only the ones living in places where Jews were not a majority before the war, and some of those on land purchased illegally during the mandate, not all Jews who moved to the region. Before the Six-Day War, the argument was still over how the armistice lines would be moved by the peace process.

The sixties right to return still included the idea that these land thefts and displaced persons would be individually addressed, while a sixties 'two state solution' would mean actually negotiating a partition plan, and probably Israel being reduced to areas where Jews were a majority before the first war. Palestinian political action at the time was focused on accomplishing this, and not on gaining citizenship instead of refugee status.

The modern right to return is about quotas for Israeli citizenship, and reparations for those displaced and their descendants, and the modern two-state solution is based on ratifying the location of the armistice line, which, not for nothing, are terms that would be accepted immediately by Israel in the sixties, and the modern rhetoric is split between extremists who now want Israel to be removed entirely, not reduced to reasonable partition lines, and those who accept that it will never be reduced behind the armistice line, which are the majority. This is where modern Palestinian political action is focused, on becoming full citizens of wherever they are, which means different things in each country, and of remaining intact despite being in a diaspora, which means some freedom of movement across borders.
 
While the "realists" in Egypt and Jordan may have given up the idea of erasing Israel by 1973, NONE of the "Palestinian" organizations from the PLO down were willing to accept the two-state solution.

Yeah but they were a negligible factor in the balance of forces.
 
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