|
Israel-Arabia:
Eye to Eye with the Future as Taught by the Past
Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto
Policy Paper No. 112, 2001
Summary
Present public discussion is mostly governed by acceptance or non-acceptance of past political deeds that are mainly water under the bridge, by personal criticism of leadership and by public malaise. The paper hereby presented is an attempt to draw a picture of foreign policy problems related to various threats that we are facing, their interdependence and interaction, while pointing at potential solutions whose probability of success seems to be higher than others. Although Zionism, in general, has proven to be an incredible success, the horizon looks heavy with stormy clouds for want of Zionist perseverance:
-
By the end of World War II and the horrors of the holocaust, in 1945, there were about 500,000 Jews in British Palestine, scraping a living off the bottom of the barrel of the Middle East (ME) British War economy. That was after 50 years of Zionism under Ottoman and British rule.
-
By the end of the century, year 2000, there are about 5,000,000 Jews in independent Israel, with a per capita income of about $19,000 (US) per year, which is approximately that of Britain, in spite of war, embargoes, boycotts, terror, western mercantilism, bias, a UN hijacked by 22 Arab plus Islamic plus "independent" votes, Arab virulent hatred and a Jewish bureaucratic, East European type of mismanagement.
Immigration continues. The 21st century is that of brainpower, a raw material that Jews seem to have in abundance.
However, it seems that the Jews suffer from a "national/genetic mutation" developed during 2000 years of Diaspora, which is manifest through the loss of the practical instinct of tribal self-rule and even through the loss of the healthy, animal, survival instinct of the species.
It is about this "mutation" that this paper is written.
Important remarks:
-
This paper is neither attempted prophecy nor pretentious foresight or political promotion. It is, rather, an attempt to point, extrapolating from past and present, to a path whose probability of leading to a fair, stable, non-warring Israeli-Arab relationship may be higher than that of others.
-
Dear Reader,
If the following pages induce pessimism, which is not the purpose of this paper, please turn back to this Foreword for a better perspective.
"The question," said an old veteran, "is not whether Israel will survive. We're beyond the point of no return on that issue. The question is, rather, whether reaching a modus vivendi with the Arabs will cost the lives of 300 Jews and 3,000 Arabs, or 3,000 Jews and 30,000 Arabs, or more."
This paper is an attempt to present the logic of minimizing these figures.
For the complete article (in English), click
here.
|
