Israel’s strategic choices, as Israelis see it, are rather like those sometimes argued for Australia. It wants powerful friends but cannot take them for granted. Ultimately it must depend on itself, if needs be alone. Surrounded by deadly enemies, it must make the cost of conquest so high, and so uncertain, that invaders are deterred. All the better when one has nuclear weapons, because its enemies must consider whether, if the survival of the state is in question, Israel would use them, whether on the battlefield or in the cities of the enemy.

When faced with invasion, it must always win a complete victory over its enemies, because otherwise annihilation is a real possibility. Alternatively, it must be in such a superior position when international calls for a ceasefire can no longer be resisted, lest any enemy is able to consolidate any strategic advantage gained. Nuclear weapons aside, it cannot threaten annihilation to enemy nations, because attempting to do so would only widen the conflicts in which it is engaged, and, possibly, bring hostile international intervention beyond its capacity to resist.

It will find its allies where it must, but has learnt that it can never rely upon them. They, like Israel itself will determine their actions by their own national interest and cold calculation, not by sentiment, old treaties or sense of a common cause. Its most likely ally, the United States, was once much affected by its need to maintain access to Arab oil, and had to balance its loyalties to Israel against its need to maintain relations with at least some of its suppliers. But now American dependence on Middle Eastern energy is much reduced, but other nations with continuing needs, such as China, or Europe, may see the balance of interests in different terms.

The sense of Israel having to stand alone against its enemies is deeply influenced by the horror of the Holocaust, when the world did little about Nazi extermination programs, even though it was aware of them. It was reinforced by the desperate struggles between Jewish settlers in Israel, whether against the native Palestinians and British colonials trying to keep the peace and ultimately throwing up their arms in despair. And by the terrorism, massacre, murder and intimidation by which many Palestinians were pushed permanently out of Palestine in the lead-up to the proclamation of Israel, supposed to be shared with the Palestinians. Israel will never be free, or at peace with itself or its neighbours until its faces up to the injustices of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, never allowed to return.

If Israel has felt continuously under threat from neighbouring Arab nations for its whole 75 years, its sense of permanent siege has been accentuated by the spectre of war and resistance from the Palestinian population. The tit for tat has assumed the character of a foreign occupation on the part of the Israelis, with Palestinians facing restrictions on their movement, and continuous police and military controls, designed to stop or punish guerilla attacks on the Israeli population, including by children. Each side blames the other for the conflicts, and the barbarity these have involved, but they........

© Pearls and Irritations