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21 Apr 2008 12:52 pm

Is Israel Doomed?

The predicament is not a new one, but it has a new intensity:

“Now we must look … not to the familiar, instinctive reaction of the Israeli way of fighting—that is, what doesn’t work with force will work with much more force,” [David Grossman] said. “Force, in this case, will fan the flames of hatred for Israel in the region and the entire world, and may even, heaven forbid, create the situation that will bring upon us the next war and push the Middle East to an all-out, regional war.”

If you haven't read Jeffrey Goldberg's raw essay on the dreadful choices the Jewish state has to make, check it out. Between Gaza and Lebanon, and the demographic math, Israel can no longer rely on the deployment of force to ensure its survival. And it is, of course, hard not to see some of the paradoxes of Israel's quest for long-term survival with the West's task in Iraq. How do you occupy without becoming a colonial power? How do you coerce the essentials of coexistence? And at what point is the pursuit of peace a chimera or the only possible option? Or both? It is hard to read Goldberg's essay without wondering if our fate isn't tied in some profound way to Israel's - and that we haven't been trapped into exactly the same mistake. Finding a way to combine the judicious use of force with the necessity to find some kind of dialogue and coexistence is difficult in most circumstances. In the Arab Middle East, I think it is safe to say that it is largely impossible. And yet what choice do we have?

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