Abstract

Israel: The Stagnation of War

A year and a half after a brilliant military victory, Israel remains a land obsessed by physical survival. Its citizens are supremely confident of their own military prowess and utterly contemptuous of the military and general capabilities of their Arab neighbors. Border skirmishes and border casualties are a daily affair; the possibilities of heavily damaging sabotage are only too well known. Israel occupies vast new territories of land where dwell 1.25 million hostile Arabs and there is no consensus as to what to do with that land or its inhabitants. Indeed the disposition of the occupied territories defines the content of much of Israel's politics today. The one other public issue of consequence is the future political leadership of the country. Israel's parties, like most of its other public institutions, are still controlled by first-generation East European Jews, now in their 70's.