MacLean's: Why Israel can't survive

[MikeWB]

http://www.macleans.ca/world/global/art ... 237&page=1

Why Israel can't survive

Sixty years on, the country is facing a choice of two futures: it can be Jewish or democratic -but not both

MICHAEL PETROU | April 23, 2008 |

Also at Macleans.ca:

    * The Macleans.ca Interview: John Mearsheimer
      The controversial author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy on U.S. inaction in the Middle East
    * View the Israel photo gallery

On a clear day, from a hilltop outside Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority's quasi-autonomous territory in the West Bank and just about dead centre of all the land controlled by Israel, it is possible to look east and see the mountains of Jordan, another country, then turn around and see the smudged skyline of Tel Aviv and, a little farther on, the ocean.

One sweeping glance captures the boundaries of a conflict that has persisted for 60 years and whose foundations haven't changed. Israel's earliest advocates understood the challenge their dreamed-of homeland would face years before the Zionist project really got under way. Shortly after Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, published The Jewish State in 1896, two Viennese rabbis decided to travel to the Middle East to explore for themselves Herzl's idea of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Their visit resulted in a cable home in which the two rabbis wrote: "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man."

Continued Below

Since then, Herzl's dream of a Jewish state has been realized, although he never lived to see it. And Israel's success in its first 60 years has been staggering. It has created a home, and a nation, for Jews from all over the world who often shared little in common other than faith