Can a small country defeat threats of superpower level —
without itself being a superpower?
The answer to that question may well decide Israel’s future. One
encounters among Israelis quiet confidence that the immense
challenges Israel faces will not overwhelm the Jewish state. Begin,
though, with the many dangers. The Arab Spring has sprung, and is
too far along to be returned to the status quo ante of
January 2011: the long winter of dictatorial rule over submissive
masses. Its direction is country-specific, as were the revolutions
of 1848. But like those revolutions against stagnant absolute
monarchies, they are destined for an unlovely ending. In the 1848
cases, the re-establishment of monarchical rule allowed tottering
empires to endure another two-thirds of a century. Then came the
Great War, unleashing upon the world the twin terrors of Nazi and
Communist totalitarianisms that gave the “Bloody Century” its
infamous name, and now the third terror that darkens the 21st
century in its infancy, that of Islamism in its various malignant
forms.
That Israel is in the geographic midst of these upheavals
forces its leaders and people to think without illusions — or, at
least, with far fewer than common in other Western countries. Save
for the ideological Left, no one in Israel who is seriously
sentient about world affairs thinks the “peace process” anything
but moribund. There will be no peace with the Palestinians now, or
anytime soon. The furies unleashed by Islamism’s many forms make
compromise acceptance of the Jewish state a fantasy.
Israel itself has myriad vulnerabilities. Three of them
are: geography, topography, and demography. Israel’s geography is
vertical. slender, and cinched at the waist. A unitary Palestinian
state uniting Gaza with the West Bank would cleave Israel in two.
Topography is no cheerier: Israel is flat, bounded by the Gulf of
Aqaba in the south, which leads to the Red Sea; by Lebanon and
Syria to the north, the former a hostile Hezbollah-dominated state
and the latter a hostile secularist tyranny, albeit one in peril of
toppling; and sandwiched between mountains to the east and the
Mediterranean Sea to the west. Demography is equally daunting: much
of Israel’s population is concentrated in its middle, which
includes not only Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, but other
consequential cities. Its 7.5 million people include three major
groups: Non-Orthodox Jews, Israeli Arabs, and the Orthodox. Most of
the heavy lifting is done by the non-Orthodox Jews, while the
Orthodox are supported as they study and pray. The Arabs, some 20
percent of the population, are simmering with resentment at
discrimination and disproportionate poverty, but at least to date
Sharia law is a minimal irritant, unlike the grave threat it poses
in Europe. The three groups have equal one-third shares of Israel’s
current first-graders.
The country’s water supply is precarious. One-third of
Israel’s water comes from the Golan Heights region in the
northeast, captured in two stages from Syria, in the 1967 and 1973
wars (not all of it—Syria retained some territory). Israel annexed
its share of the Golan in 1981. Water had been the focal points of
Israel from the start. With 20 inches of annual rainfall spread
across 28 days of annual rain, Israel husbands its water carefully.
It flows down from the mountains of the Golan and supplies the
Jordan River; 75 percent of Israel’s water is recycled, with the
next ranking recycler Spain with 22 percent. Few people know that
the early 1960s “Water War” was over what amounts to Israel’s
lifeline. The first attack carried out by the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) was on the National Water Carrier on New Year’s
Day 1965—more than two years before Israel took the West Bank
after the 1967 war. The PLO’s goal was to “liberate” Israel itself
from Jewish control. All credible evidence shows that Palestinians
by overwhelming majorities, and all their leaders, pursue that goal
today, undiminished.
Add now to this dolorous picture three other factors.
First, the growing threat of nuclear weapons that a nuclearizing
Iran will likely acquire will tilt the regional balance towards
Iran; it will ignite a regional nuclear arms race, with Saudi
Arabia and others spending petrodollars to buy bombs from Pakistan,
North Korea, or any other willing seller. Worse still, a small
salvo of nuclear warheads landing inside Israel would devastate the
country, beyond plausible recovery. The United States could
survive, albeit gravely wounded, the loss of New York, Washington,
D.C., and Chicago better than Israel could deal with the loss of
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Small countries cannot survive
multi-bomb nuclear attacks. Second, the Internet is a hotbed of
anti-Israel propaganda, much of it jihadist and viciously
anti-Semitic; the demonization of Israel fosters the literal
delegitimation of the Jewish state. And third is a weak American
President, sympathetic to Muslims — Barack Obama has called the
muezzin call to prayers the “most beautiful sound” in the world —
and harsh towards the Jewish state, preferring to “lead from
behind.” This means that at least until noon on January 20, 2013,
Israel will have to watch its diplomatic back as to its number one
ally. Cooperation between military and intelligence entities is
close and convivial, but frosty diplomacy tilting towards the
Palestinians has put Israel on the defensive. A second Obama term
would be disastrous for Israel — and for America as
well.
So Israel has a rough row to hoe in a rough neighborhood.
The Furies will not subside anytime soon, and dangers will increase
before, if ever, they recede.
