In long run, Israel will have to compromise to survive

ATLANTA — In its first 60 years of existence, the modern state of Israel has faced several moments when its survival seemed less than assured. And with the exception of those Jews who are certain of God's protection, most Israelis understand that they will face more such difficult moments in the future.

As a birthday reminder of that fact, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week renewed his anti-Israeli rhetoric with a diatribe made more threatening by his nation's apparent pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken," Ahmadinejad said, warning that "this regime is on its way to annihilation."

We can sit here in America and note that the religious mullahs, not Ahmadinejad, hold the real power in Iran, and that Israel's own nuclear arsenal should provide more than enough deterrent against an attack. Even if Iran does acquire a nuclear weapon, the logic against it ever being used against Israel is almost overwhelming.

However, many Americans are also old enough to remember the anxiety created in this country by the even more unlikely prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. That fear would be compounded many times over for a country the size of Israel and a people with the history of the Jews.

Living in a neighborhood like the Middle East doesn't help matters any, not with a civil war simmering in Lebanon and Qassam missiles being launched at Israeli targets from Gaza.

However, it is their inability to make peace with their Palestinian neighbors — a failing for which the Israelis and Palestinians are both to blame — that causes the greatest anxiety. In a new poll, 75 percent of Israelis said they expect to fight another war with their Arab neighbors in the next five years.

Transfixed by knowledge that a mistake could be fatal, trapped by history in an embrace with the Palestinians that they cannot break, the Israelis seem uncertain of how to change course.

"First we lost our belief in the power of peace to solve our problems," Bradley Burston, an Israeli journalist, wrote recently in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, recalling events of the past few years. "Then we lost our faith in the power of war to do the same. Israelis and Palestinians both, we are in a state of unaccustomed loss of ideals ... nothing has worked."

That frustration is understandable. In its 60 years of existence, modern Israel has accomplished wonderful things for its people. Under harsh conditions, they have built a technologically advanced democracy and a strong Western economy. But the fragility of that accomplishment is impossible to ignore.

Besieged by terrorists, the Israelis built a wall to protect themselves against infiltration. While the wall all but eliminated suicide bombers, it has proved ineffective against missiles and mortar shells.

To counter such threats, Israel has tried to create a buffer zone, trying to push those missiles out of range, but that too is a temporary strategy. In time the range of those missiles will increase, their accuracy will improve, their payloads will get bigger.

For all its power, the Israeli military cannot change that situation. Nor can it alter a demographic trend in which Jews are becoming the minority in Israel and the occupied territories.

"The day will come when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned last year. "As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

For all those reasons, time is an enemy at least as threatening as Iran. Without fundamental change, things can continue in Israel as they have for many years or decades, but long term its odds of surviving a multigenerational war of attrition would be slim.

An American government that does not press both the Israelis and Palestinians to change course — that does not prod from the outside to force true compromise upon both — is not a true ally of Israel.

Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.