Israel on the Edge: Fighting despair, Arabs, and the enmity of the world

In the current Arab-Israeli crisis, the Israelis appear to have forfeited the sympathy of much of the civilized world. Why is this? And what can Israel, and its allies, do about it?

Part of the explanation lies in the failure of Israel's once brilliantly efficient instrument of state to deliver. After half a century of embattlement with the Arab world, Israel has a tired and combat-weary look and seems to be asking, despairingly: "Where will it all end?"

Israel's case for its offensive against its neighboring terrorist enclaves is, in essence, excellent and unassailable. It is now clear that the Oslo accords were a mistake and have been used by Arafat -- and his foreign backers -- merely as a platform from which to launch indiscriminate suicide-bombing against Israel's cities. But this case has been poorly presented by officials who seem to have lost heart. At any rate it has not got through. When Colin Powell was in Israel, most of the horrifying facts presented to him by Ariel Sharon appeared to be news to him. And if Powell does not grasp the strength of Israel's case, how can millions of ordinary TV viewers across the world, who nightly see Israeli tanks trundling through Arab villages, be expected to understand why the Israeli army has had to conduct its campaign?

Second, there has been a manifest decline in the quality and energy of Israeli diplomacy, formerly one of the world's wonders. Israel's ambassadors in key capitals were hand-picked for outstanding ability and high profiles, with a superb grasp of English forensic skills. They seized with relish on the smallest chance to provide "bites" for television audiences. Now they tend to be second-raters with limited fluency in English.

Third, and more serious, is the decline in the morale and effectiveness of the Israeli army, the overwhelming victor in four trials of strength with the Arab world over the last 50 years. This decline has been noted both by well-disposed military experts from the West and by critical Israelis themselves. Operations are less well planned, troops often inadequately trained, and individual soldiers, most of them conscripts, poorly motivated. These factors lead to excessive use of heavy fire- power, needless killing of innocent civilians, and painful delays, all of which the TV cameras magnify.

These weaknesses on the Israeli side could be removed if the will were there. But is it? Israel has some of the characteristics of a gerontocracy, a state run by old men who have forgotten nothing and learned little in recent decades. It is a genuine democracy -- none better -- but its multiple-party system makes for a deadly paralysis at the top, where old men never seem to die, or fade away either. The man who tried to break this impasse, Benjamin Netanyahu, was eventually rejected by voters (who are highly conservative too), but they now seem to be having second thoughts and it may be that a return of Netanyahu to power would be the first decisive step in putting Israel to rights.

However, there are some factors in Israel's present predicament that are outside her control. Here are the most important. First, there is no symmetry in the Arab-Israeli conflict. If the Israelis score a military victory, or a diplomatic one for that matter, the Arabs live to fight another day. Israel, by contrast, cannot afford one serious mistake. If Israel lost control of the air, and her army were overrun, there can be absolutely no doubt that the entire Jewish-Israeli nation would be exterminated. It would be Hitler's holocaust all over again, conducted not in secrecy and shame but in the open, in a spirit of triumphant exultation as the successful climax of a jihad. This is the nightmare -- not distant but proximate -- that every Israeli prime minister must face and for which he will be held posthumously responsible if he guesses wrongly and fails to use the necessary force in time. By one wrong decision, an Israeli leader can not only lose the war in one afternoon, he can lose half the Jewish people too. This helps to explain why the Israeli elite are hag-ridden with anxiety, obstinate, and often closed to argument.

The lack of symmetry between the risks taken by Arabs and by Israelis is one result of a different view of the sanctity of human life. The Jewish faith was the first religion to preach this sanctity and to magnify the value of each individual human being in the eyes of his Creator -- hence, equally, in other human beings. This is the main reason that Mosaic law differs so markedly in humanity and reason from all the other fiercely retributive codes of the ancient Near East. The value placed on human life by Jews has steadily increased over the centuries, as a response to persecution and, above all, to the Nazi attempt at extermination of the entire people. Israel itself was created as a refuge and fortress in which Jewish lives would be safe from annihilation. It is thus the physical embodiment of the principle that individual life is sacred.