Figuring out what is happening with respect to Israel's problems with the Arabs is like figuring out what is happening in the American economy.
Both have been marked by periods of calm, and both have seen their years of crisis.
Israel is affected by the numerous perspectives among Arabs, including intense Islamists and nationalists, and competition between them. There is always a faction that sees violence as the way to its paradise, against what may be a majority who are content to live alongside of Israel at peace.
American investors are perennially threatened by individuals and institutions that cannot stop pursuing a good thing to the point where it becomes absurd. The image holds for the dot.com meltdown of the early 2000s, and for the sub-prime disaster mixed with the packaging of complex financial instruments that analysts have trouble understanding and evaluating.
Hopefully, we have entered a period of relative calm in this part of the Middle East. If so, it may come from Israel's willingness to use a bit of its power. One hundred and twenty deaths in Gaza over the course of a few days, against two Israeli deaths, and continued shortages of fuel, electricity, food, and clean water may have convinced enough of the Hamas leadership and their allies that violence does not produce what they hoped.
Just about every day we hear dire threats from Hizbollah leaders in Lebanon. So far the border is quiet, and there has yet to be an attack against an Israeli or Jewish facility overseas. The calm may end sooner rather than later. But it may reflect more than 1,000 Lebanese deaths in 2006, and the substantial destruction in Shi'ite areas of the south and Beirut. Against Hizbollah bombast, Israeli sources have said that an attack on the north or an overseas facility will produce more destruction in Lebanon.
The Israeli choir that laments the lack of IDF success in the 2006 war may be singing the wrong tune.
In the case of the American economy, and this part of the Middle East, it is difficult to know just when a crisis has passed. And it is impossible to find a period of more than a few years of prosperity/quiet between crises. The time frame for Israel goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. The American economy has shown busts far back into the 19th century.
In both cases, there has been boom after bust. The American economy retains the strength of its size, and until now has bounced back from its excesses of greed, stupidity, and corruption. Analysts who admit to being baffled by the most recent manipulations of entrepreneurs say that investing in common stocks pays off in time.
Despite the chronic threat of violence, Israel is arguably the most successful of the 100 or so countries born in the aftermath of World War II, both in the quality of its democracy and the extent of its economic development. The World Bank ranks it as one of the world's wealthiest countries, albeit toward the bottom of that league. All of Israel's universities appear on a recent list of the 500 best in the world, and half of the country's universities appear on lists of the 150 best. I know of no old country whose universities do as well collectively.
Israel's Arab minority scores closer to the Jewish majority on measures of income, health, and longevity than do African-Americans with respect to whites in the United States. On measures of health and longevity, Israeli Jews and Arabs do better absolutely than American whites and African-Americans.
Israel's democracy is notable for its competitiveness and openness to internal criticism. For those who read the op-ed pages of daily newspapers that emphasize the problems and the dangers, it is difficult to believe that the country has survived.
Neither the American economy nor the Israeli polity can rest assured. American ideas of individual freedom and minimum government provide the opportunities for unlimited foolishness as well as creativity.
Israel lives in a region soaked with extreme varieties of religion and nationalism, along with an Arab mass that can turn quickly to focus on the Jews as the source of all that is evil.
Israel's leaders muddle through a number of unpleasant alternatives. They cope with attacks on their civilians by a limited use of their military power. Pacifists, humanists, and anti-Semites do not see 120 deaths in Gaza and more than one thousand in Lebanon as "a limited use of military power." Among the factors that keep those numbers lower than they might be is the intolerance of the United States and European countries for prolonged campaigns of Israeli self-defense; and a concern for humanitarian values that affects Israelis as well as others.
Israeli leaders, and Americans with responsibilities for economic control, should give up on the dream of solving their country's problems once and for all times. A period of calm that last for days, or ideally weeks, months, or years is the most they should expect.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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