In its 1948 war of independence, Israel expanded well beyond the borders set by the UN. Exploiting blunders by Egypt’s Nasser and the UN’s U Thant in 1967, Israel seized the Syrian Golan Heights, Arab East Jerusalem, the Old City, Gaza, and the West Bank, and occupied all of Sinai to the Suez Canal in six days. In 1982, Israel drove to the suburbs of Beirut and expelled the PLO. But the retreat of Eretz Israel had already begun. In 1973, the Egyptians recrossed the canal and took back western Sinai. Five years later, the entire peninsula was restored to Egypt. In the 1980s and 1990s, Islamic
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