[Avodah] border issues.....pikauch nefesh??

[Lisa Liel]

On Tue, 24 May 2011 15:37:44 -0700 (PDT), Harvey Benton 
<harvw613 at yahoo.com> wrote (v28i82m14):
>there is a difference in kedusha and halachic status between areas 
>of eyisrael
>conquered by yehoshua, later by David (different categories, etc) and those
>promised to Avraham as a yerusha....
>do any of these distinctions make a difference nowadays to possibly giving up
>land for peace (as was rightly or wrongly done with the egyptians/in the
>sinai).
>--------
>or do we say, that for now, that even though these territories were 
>conquered by
>a non-torah, non-moshiach dika state, the inyan of pikuach nefesh takes
>precedence???
>hb

As I understand it, the territories that were conquered by war have 
kedusha only so long as we're living there.  But the territories that 
were granted to us by the goyim have permanent kedusha.  I remember 
seeing a map that showed sort of a butterfly-shaped area, roughly 
equivalent to Judea and Samaria and a mirror image of it to the east 
of the Jordan River, and said that was the extent of the return in 
Persian times.  If that's the case, then Judea and Samaria and a big 
chunk of Jordan have permanent kedusha.  And presumably, so do the 
areas that were offered to us in the 1947 Partition Plan, so that's 
the Negev, about half the Galilee, and a bunch of the coastline.

According to the Minchat Chinuch, milchemet mitzvah, an obligatory 
war, which includes wars of self-defense, takes precedence over 
pikuach nefesh.  We talk about there being only three exceptions, but 
really there are five.  Murder, avodah zarah, gilui arayot, chilul 
Hashem, and milchemet mitzvah.  As the Minchat Chinuch points out, we 
don't rely on miracles, so if milchemet mitzvah didn't override 
pikuach nefesh, the entire mitzvah of milchemet mitzvah would be torn 
out of the Torah.  Because people inevitably die in wars.

When non-Jews demand that we surrender land, particularly 
borderlands, that's considered a case of milchemet mitzvah.  I don't 
know what the excuse is nowadays for permitting it.

Lisa