When Israel is 64

• Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler (tel aviv)
• Thursday, April 29, 2010
• Inter Press Service

But on their Independence Day this week, the refrain was very much at the back of their minds: two years from now, will the U.S. still need us? Will it still be on Israel's side?

Much of the reflection about the future focused on what should be done about Iran's perceived nuclear ambitions.

In their official addresses, both President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to highlight Israel's military capabilities while warning Iran of the perils of ignoring those capabilities.

From their picnics at the seaside and in national parks, watching the traditional display in the country's skies by the Israeli Air Force, were ordinary Israelis listening? Are they in tune with their leaders' warnings?

All through the holiday, there was virtually not a word about the future of the West Bank, not a word about their Palestinian neighbours, not even a word even about how the Palestinians are busy building their own state.

Also irrelevant to most Israelis, the fact that hard-line West Bank settlers are busy trying to deny that Palestinian state and, in parallel, to make their own future in the West Bank irreversible -- so long as the settlers are not being killed.

Alongside the Independence Day celebrations, there were a handful of alternative ceremonies at which Israelis and Palestinians used the opportunity not to celebrate Israel's independence but to mark it as a time when the two peoples ought to be reaching out to one another.

At one such ceremony at the Temuna Theatre in Tel Aviv, a thousand Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians, most of them in their 20s, gathered to remember all those who have fallen on both sides.

Doron Tsur, one of those taking part in the ceremony, told IPS, 'There can be no living together until we understand each other's pain' -- for Palestinians, the pain of the Nakba, the 'Great Catastrophe', the dispossession and displacement of their people when Israel came into existence; for Israelis, the pain of the tens of thousands who have been killed establishing and preserving their state.

There are other undercurrents. Ground is still being prepared for a serious effort to end the 100-year conflict.

After a hiatus of several weeks, Sen. George Mitchell is now back in the region aiming to spark off the first round of so-called ''proximity talks'.

At the heart of this latest visit of the U.S. President's special Middle East envoy, a series of quiet understandings appear to have been ironed out between Netanyahu and the Obama Administration.

These understandings focus on a temporary freeze of Israel's policies in occupied East Jerusalem, particularly with regard to building of new settlements, the evicting of Palestinian families from their homes, and demolishing Palestinian houses which have been built without the requisite Israeli permits.

Alongside that, however, there's also the sense that Netanyahu is still trying to keep Obama at bay, attempting to parry the insistent U.S. demands that he undertake the necessary bold moves to enable a peace process to take off.

This flurry of new diplomatic activity fails to take into account what Tom Segev, one of Israel's top 'new historians' says has always been 'one of the major issues in the conflict -- Israel's prevailing state of mind.'

What is that 'prevailing state of mind'?

At one get-together of friends in Jerusalem, journalist Yehuda Litani suddenly interrupted communal nostalgic singing by posing the question on everyone's mind: 'Will our country in fact still be here when we're sixty-four? ' he asked, reflecting the question posed by the Beatles about the unknown future in one's existence.

Much depends on Obama's determination: will he find a way to fold this deep-rooted, and ever-increasing, Israeli fear into a cogent peace process that will result in the security they crave while giving Palestinians the independence they crave.

As Segev writes in The New York Review of Books, 'The wishes of ordinary Israelis, their hopes and illusions, self-deception, short-sightedness, and mostly their collective and individual fears have determined their country's action to no less a degree than the official decisions by the government.'

Over the past year, the Obama Administration has increased markedly the scope of U.S. military cooperation with Israel. Now it needs to exploit its position to influence Israeli democracy in a way that Israeli policy will change.

A successful reach-out to the Israeli people may require the President to bypass an Israeli government that is seemingly set on retaining Israel's occupation, thereby denying the interfolding national aspirations of (Israeli) security and (Palestinian) statehood.

To be successful, the U.S. would have to convince Israelis that their long- term security anxieties created by an independent Palestine neutralised. But more importantly, it would mean the permanent scotching of what Israelis perceive as the more immediate threat to their future -- a nuclear Iran.

There's another, even more immediate, fear among Israelis: that if their government continues to resist the grand Obama goal of bringing a broad peace to the Middle East, their country risks becoming terribly isolated.

Were Washington, in consequence, to shift away from its position as Israel's closest ally, Israelis fear they would find themselves - in the Beatles terminology - asking of the U.S., 'Do you still need me?'

That is an elemental Israeli anxiety that Obama could well exploit.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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