HAIFA, Israel — On my way into the administration building at Haifa University yesterday I ran into an old friend, professor Yair Hirshfeld. Along with fellow academic Ron Pundak, Mr. Hirshfeld initiated the talks with Palestine Liberation Organization representatives in Norway that led to the Oslo Accords.

It was a funny kind of day to meet up with him because Israel was now fighting on two fronts, in Gaza and Lebanon, where it adhered to the territorial strategies outlined in most peace plans, including Oslo: more or less a return to the 1967 borders. In these cases, there was neither more nor less but an exact return to the lines as they existed on June 5, 1967, before the Six-Day War and the subsequent Litani incursion into Lebanon in 1978 and Operation Peace for Galilee in 1982. (Full disclosure: I participated in the 1982 war.)

There have been arguments over the validity of demanding that Israel withdraw to the 1967 Green Line, mostly on the grounds that these lines were never recognized borders except retroactively. To reiterate, the 1967 lines were the result of an armistice imposed on warring Arab and Israeli forces in 1949.

Nevertheless, these lines have acquired an after-the-fact international sanction, and to be considered as an effective diplomatic tender, Palestinian Arab territorial demands conform by limiting their maximal claims to the lands occupied as a result of the 1967 war. What happens, though, when Israel accepts this international logic and limits its presence up to the very borders the international community has been insisting upon?

In four of six fronts — Sinai, Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon — Israel has now withdrawn to the 1967 lines. The two remaining fronts — the Golan Heights and the West Bank — await diplomatic resolution. During previous attempts to negotiate a treaty with Syria, Israel has exhibited the same tendency.

But in the two cases at hand, the Israeli steps were taken unilaterally. In neither case were Israeli withdrawals the result of a negotiated settlement with local parties on the other side of the line. This was not for lack of desire on Israel’s part, but neither the Lebanese nor the Palestinian Arabs could provide a viable negotiating partner. Israel therefore was forced to choose between unilateral withdrawal and stand-pattism. In both cases, the decision was made to test the international waters by complying with the notion that, territorially speaking, the Israeli future will look like the pre-1967 Israeli past.

In the Knesset on Wednesday, there was much rapid movement between the members’ cafeteria and the plenum. A national unity government was mooted; with his longer-term plans for the West Bank in mind, Prime Minister Olmert preferred keeping his current coalition. After all, the opposition right parties are unlikely to make too much trouble for Mr. Olmert as long as the shooting continues. And any resolution that appears as an Israeli setback would force the new coalition partners back out into the opposition. Either way, Mr. Olmert gets a pass for now and a possible headache later.

Accompanying Muslim friends to the Temple Mount, we were turned away. “Only Muslims. We have trouble,” we were told. On an identical journey just two weeks before, we were allowed to enter the Dome of the Rock mosque.

When Menachem Begin put the Camp David Accords (which led to the peace treaty with Egypt) up to a vote, a small faction within the Labor Party, led byYigal Alon, abstained. Labor was otherwise throwing its support to Begin from the opposition benches. Begin required that support to garner a majority for the agreement because his own Likud ranks saw sufficient defections to deny him a Knesset majority.

Alon’s reasoning was that Israel should not have agreed to return to Egypt the Rafiah salient (including the new city of Yamit) because handing it over would set a dangerous all or nothing precedent. Surely, he argued, Israel would want to hold on to parts of the Golan Heights and West Bank for strategic reasons; giving Egypt everything would effectively set in stone the recipe for peacemaking: for peace, a return to the 1967 lines.

After seeing Mr. Hirshfeld at the university, I traveled down the Carmel to the sea to watch the sunset. The beach, usually filled to overflowing in July, held hundreds in place of thousands. The mayor, Yona Yahav, told me that the city was scrambling to ensure that emergency services would function at the highest level in case of calamity, including a real possibility Hezbollah would employ chemical weapons.

There was speculation that the U.S. Navy was pulling six fleet ships out of Haifa port. A pair of attack helicopters flew overhead, en route north to Lebanon. A frigate sailed northward to port. Communities to the north were all in shelters. Later at dinner in the Arab section of Haifa, we heard that a Katyusha missile had hit three kilometers away at Stella Mares, home to the Carmelite monastery. This was the farthest south any Hezbollah missile had ever gone, and it struck at a Roman Catholic community.

The day ended with Israel in range of hostile missile fire from the 1967 border with Lebanon down to Haifa, and from the 1967 border with Gaza up to Ashkelon.

It is now time for all those who demanded Israeli withdrawals to the 1967 borders to put up or shut up. Putting up means unequivocally supporting Israel’s right to self-defense.

Shutting up means to stop haranguing Israel and recognize that Iran is a regional radically anti-status quo power; that Persia has not been this powerful since Alexander the Great defeated Darius III in 331, and that Persian power has not projected this far west since Xerxes’s armies were stalled by 300 Spartans at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E.