Mary Dejevsky writes:
The Israel of the next 30 years is likely to be more divided, less productive, more inward-looking and more hawkish than it is today – but without the financial means and unquestioning sense of duty that inspired young people to defend their homeland by force of arms.
Recent mass protests against inequality and the cost of middle-class living also suggest that the social solidarity that has prevailed hitherto could break down. In such circumstances, it must be asked how much longer Israel can maintain the unity it has always presented against what it terms the “existential threat”.
An Israel whose borders are leaky, which is surrounded by states that are at once chaotic and assertive, and whose citizens are less able or willing than they were to fight, could face real serious questions about its viability. The choice then might be between a fortress state, explicitly protected by nuclear weapons, and a state so weak that association, or federation, with the burgeoning independent Palestine would become plausible: the so-called one-state solution by other means.
In either event, those with other options – the younger, more educated, more cosmopolitan sections of the population – might well seek their future elsewhere, leaving the homeland of their ancestors’ dreams a husk of its former self.
The Israeli hawks will bring down their country, as the U.S. retrenches from being the worlds cop/aggressor to rebuilding its own homeland, the Chinese will pay but lip service to Israel after Israel has sold out the U.S. Industry knowledge they have acquired, whether by legal exchange or stolen, the elite abandoning once again those left behind, as they have always done. Who knows, the Israeli elite nay indeed swarm the U.S.
Why not offer all Israelis their choice of citizenship in any of the countries that currently support it–The US, UK, Germany, et al.–and $1,000,000 cash for every man, woman, and child? The total cost would be less than one year’s aid to Israel. The total benefits, incalculable. For everything else, of course, there’s Mastercard.