For a country unwilling to sacrifice even its creature comforts, the U.S. is certainly quick to advise to Israel about the risks it should take in return for a chance of peace with the Palestinians.

In a major speech on May 19, President Obama said that a new Palestinian state should be based on return of the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 War (with the exception of minor adjustments to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority). Although the White House denies this represents a new position, it is, in fact, a radical departure from what America has been saying, at least publicly.

This advice comes unbidden from a nation where, according to a recent poll, the majority still believes it’s unnecessary to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits to keep these programs solvent, congressional Republicans insist a trillion-dollar-a-year budget hole doesn’t justify tax increases, and consumers bellyache about $4-a-gallon gasoline, half the cost at the pump in Europe.

When Pres. Obama suddenly pronounced that Israel should completely surrender a narrow strip of land that may spell the difference between life and death for many Israelis, he was not suggesting a concession that was in Israel’s best interests but in the best interests of the U.S.

The long unresolved question of how to establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank is a thorn in America’s side. It has helped keep the Middle East in a chronic state of simmering conflict. It provides a great propaganda tool for El Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamic terrorist groups. And it gives hostile Iran and Syria a convenient excuse to extend their influence into Lebanon and Gaza.

In the wake of the “Arab Spring,” which has quickly toppled authoritarian governments in Tunisia and Egypt and threatened the grip of others in Libya, Syria and Yemen, Obama clearly saw a golden statesmanlike opportunity to bring long-term peace, stability and democracy to the entire Middle East. He wanted to coax Israel into facilitating that dramatic development.

Israel was less than obliging. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly lectured the president that “while Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace it cannot go back to the 1967 lines, because these lines are indefensible.”

Though I’m no fan of Netanyahu or of the extreme right-wing elements in Israeli politics he represents, he’s correct on this point. Israel’s pre-1967 eastern boundary (west of the Jordan River) was as jagged as a jig-saw puzzle. The distance from the border to Israel’s Mediterranean coast at the narrowest point was only 9 miles, and to Tel Aviv, the country’s most populous city, only 11 miles. From Israeli Independence in 1948 through the Six Day War in 1967, the Jordanians launched repeated raids across this border.

Even in the absence of manned penetration, mortars and other mobile artillery could easily target heavily populated areas of Israel from the pre-1967 borders, as has repeatedly happened in recent years, when Hamas and Hezbollah have shelled Israeli settlements from Gaza and Lebanon. Think how dangerous it would be for the people of Lewiston-Auburn, if Lisbon Falls could be used as a staging area for raids and artillery shelling by bands of armed guerillas. (No offense to Lisbon Falls).

When PLO leader Yassar Arafat headed the Palestinian Authority, such terrorist raids were not only allowed but abetted. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, seems more serious about maintaining peaceful relations with Israel but has not been able to exercise full control over extremist elements operating in his jurisdiction. Now that the rift between his party, Fatah, and Hamas, Gaza’s de facto ruler and Israel’s sworn enemy, has been patched up, who knows whether peaceful negotiations or violence will prevail as the policy of the Palestinian Authority?

Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon saw the solution to this security dilemma as the construction of new Jewish settlements on the West Bank, particularly the strategic high ground of the Judean Hills. As part of a permanent peace agreement, he envisioned these settlements, together with a permanent military presence along the Jordan River, forming a buffer against Palestinian terrorist incursions.

With some interruptions due primarily to U.S. pressure, this policy has been pursued by Israeli leaders ever since.

To be sure, Israel’s long military occupation of Arab sections of the West Bank has been bad for everyone. Not only has it isolated millions of Palestinians in squalid ghettoes, restricted their ability to travel and work, and generated reservoirs of anger and resentment, it has deeply damaged Israel’s own morale, cost the lives of many of its soldiers and hurt its world image.

Still, the answer is not a wholesale return to the pre-1967 eastern border. That border has to be at least partially redrawn to protect Israel’s security, and, if necessary Israeli troops may need to be stationed in strategic areas within the new Palestinian state and some existing Palestinian and Israeli communities relocated to create a rational boundary line.

The Holocaust and previous waves of anti-Semitic pogroms, expulsions and discrimination in Europe and the Middle East have deeply imprinted on the Israeli psyche the need for a defensible Jewish state.

No one else, not even the United States, has the right to advise Israel to place its own security at grave risk, particularly when, if thrust into Israel’s predicament, we would not follow our own advice.