Echoes of Joshua’s Spies, by Israel Harel (Haaretz)
“The government did not assert, as it should have, the national rights of the Jewish people over its liberated homeland. It did not even treat them in this way, as it should have from a historical perspective. ‘Bargaining chips,’ it called them.”
“By relying on this status, relating to areas of the homeland as bargaining chips, for 40 years most of our troubles and evils have come to us: the Yom Kippur War, the intifada, the terror war of September 2000, the deep rift among the people and the distancing of most of the world from identifying with Israel.”


