Stephen Walt Confuses Me

Stephen Walt - sporting his new blog over at Foreign Policy - asks his readers to consider the following:

Imagine that Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had won the Six Day War, leading to a massive exodus of Jews from the territory of Israel. Imagine that the victorious Arab states had eventually decided to permit the Palestinians to establish a state of their own on the territory of the former Jewish state. (That's unlikely, of course, but this is a thought experiment). Imagine that a million or so Jews had ended up as stateless refugees confined to that narrow enclave known as the Gaza Strip. Then imagine that a group of hardline Orthodox Jews took over control of that territory and organized a resistance movement. They also steadfastly refused to recognize the new Palestinian state, arguing that its creation was illegal and that their expulsion from Israel was unjust. Imagine that they obtained backing from sympathizers around the world and that they began to smuggle weapons into the territory. Then imagine that they started firing at Palestinian towns and villages and refused to stop despite continued reprisals and civilian casualties.

Here's the question: would the United States be denouncing those Jews in Gaza as "terrorists" and encouraging the Palestinian state to use overwhelming force against them?

Here's another: would the United States have even allowed such a situation to arise and persist in the first place?

This hypothetical strikes me as a bit odd and simplistic. First off, we needn't start with an unrealistic mental experiment in 1967, since there had always been a group of "hardline Orthodox Jews" living in the Gaza Strip. This small, ancient group - which preceded the first Aliyah (major wave of Jewish immigration) by many, many years - didn't form large militias and kill innocent civilians (this is, of course, a cursory glance at the history, but we're already dealing with a rather unlikely and sweeping hypothetical anyway).

There's too much historical oversight to even begin considering Walt's questions. If the Palestinians were handed all of the land then they'd have been in violation of multiple UN edicts and mandates. Why would the international community even let it get to the point where a group of "hardline Orthodox Jews" were conducting acts of terror against the ruling state? Wouldn't said state be made illegitimate by the partition of 1947? Doesn't the UN seek a return to the '67 borders, thus acknowledging a sovereign Israeli state?

I'm at a loss, maybe Professor Walt can help me out here ...

UPDATE: Even Ezra Klein (kind of) agrees!