Israel Made All The Wrong Choices

Israel Has Made All The Wrong Choices If It Wants To Be Accepted

By The Daily Star
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Courtesy Of The DailyStar

Israeli officials have long warned about the dire threat posed to their country by the Islamic Republic of Iran, as President Shimon Peres did during his address on Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly. Peres and his colleagues are right in their assessment that Iran's current behavior poses a strategic challenge, not just to Israel but to the entire Middle East region.

However, the Israelis are facing a far greater danger that might eventually bring about the demise of the Jewish state: themselves.

In order to appease a tiny, radical segment of their society, Israeli leaders have turned down the Arab Peace Initiative, which represents a historic opportunity to reach a comprehensive peace agreement with all Arab states and to firmly cement Israel's place within the community of Middle East nations.

Instead, they have deliberately chosen to delay peace and maintain Israel's illegal settlements and occupation, as well as the Jewish state's status as a tiny country surrounded by hostile neighbors. But time is not on the side of the state of Israel.

Already Palestinians who have grown frustrated with the pace of peace negotiations are talking about changing strategies and pursuing the cause of a binational state that would spell the end of the "Jewish homeland."

Others have given up entirely on the very notion of peace and have joined the swelling ranks of Islamic resistance movements.

Moreover, the decision to remain in conflict has exacerbated the brain drain that results from the flight of an increasing number of educated Israelis who have no interest in raising their children in a war zone.

Israelis were given a choice between two futures:

They were offered a Jewish state in which Israeli citizens could one day safely travel around the region, engage openly in economic and cultural trade with their neighbors, become more prosperous and take comfort in knowing that a buffer zone of friendly neighbors might rally to their defense in the face of threats from further afield.

Instead they have chosen an Israel that remains at war with its neighbors, builds bunkers in every city, creates unnecessary risks that deter investors, drives away its best and brightest citizens and thereby becomes increasingly backward, and comes under a sustained threat from hostile forces in neighboring states, some of which might one day acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Surely the current choice of the Israelis ranks as one of the greatest mistakes ever recorded in history.