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Why Israel can't survive
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Contributor | RP |
Last Edited | RP Apr 25, 2008 11:55am |
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Category | Profile |
News Date | Wednesday, April 23, 2008 05:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
Description | The threat posed to Israel by Palestinians isn't military, or even necessarily violent. Roadside stabbings, suicide bombings, skirmishes, even rockets from Gaza hurt Israel. They will never destroy it. It is also true that Israel faces other serious, even existential, martial perils. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia guerrilla army, bloodied Israel two summers ago, and a nuclear-armed Iran would jeopardize its very future.
But Israel is ready to confront both these dangers.
Palestinian Arabs present a challenge to Israel that is at once more straightforward and infinitely more difficult to solve. Within one or two decades, the number of Muslim and Christian Arabs living under Israeli control (including in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself) will surpass the number of Israeli Jews. When that happens, if there is still no Palestinian state (and in the absence of large-scale ethnic cleansing), Israelis will be forced to choose between two futures. Their country will either be Jewish, but not democratic — in other words, a Jewish minority will control a land mostly inhabited by Palestinians — or Israel will be democratic, but not Jewish, because Arabs will form the majority in what will become a bi-national state.
Israel will be Jewish, or democratic. It can't be both. And if it can't be both, the Zionist dream on which Israel is founded will end. This is the gravest threat Israel faces on the eve of its 60th anniversary. It won't have another 60 years to address it. |
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