[Skybird]

There were years when I spend consideration to the land-for freedom question. I have stopped doing that for three simple reasons.

First, the Isyraeli soc iety within the borders of the state has a growing subgroup of ethnic Arabs and Palestinians. This already is a security concern for the Israeli military, becasue if over 20% of the people living in your borders are potentially hostile to you and demographically gain power very fast, then you just need to look at the uprises in several Arab states this spring to see how real the thread can become, even more so with pressure pout on Israel even from outside its borders. It has Palestinians around it, and it has Palestinians inside of it. Even more, Palestinians still seem to demand a<n unlimited right to return to the former territoty of all Palestine, which would mean they jst demand the riught to overrun the Israelis by back-migration.

Second, at Haifda, the stzate of Israel., from the coast of the ocean to the border to the Westjordan Palestinian land, is just around 15 km thin. Around Jerusalem, the ocean and the the border to Jordan are just around 80 km apart. In many areas of Northern Israel you can walk in just one day from the Western border of the state to the Eastern border. To hold such a thin bottleneck of a territory against an enemy from within and from the outside with no manouvering room left, is a military nightmare, an open wound.

Third, why could anyone assume a treaty with the Palestinians could be trusted? They will not give up there claims, and when their leasdershipo signs something, most Palestinains still will not chnage their minds, which in most cases is hostile to Israel.

These three reasons simpyl are facts of Realpolitik. They define the vital, essential, non-negotiable, most existential security interests of Israel. The golan heights simply are prey they took in a war when they were attacked by surprise. The Syrians gambled, and lost, so they have to pay the price for the aggression, like Germany has lost former parts in the East that now belong to Poland, with most Germans not questioning that at all.

Long-termed, strategically, I think the position of Israel most likely is not defendable. Demography is against them, Islamic dogma and antisemitism is against them, limited space is against them, dependency on import of ressources as well as the sharpening sweet water crisis is against them, their extreme vulnerability to own losses is agaimnst them, shjort: the state was foudned in a most exposed, gegraphically enormously disadvantaged position. You can take such land and hold it for a while when youre juist a bridgehead with the bulk of your forces coming after you. But there are no reinforcements for Israel, it stands alone. The support by the Europeans is half-hearted, and split-tongued, it cannot be trusted. The UN is against them, and the world climate is turning decisevly anti-semitic again. The nimbus to be unstoppable and invincible, has been destroyed in the last two military campaigns in Lebanon.

I persopnalyl alwys thought it was maybe understandable but still a very stupoid idea to mean the Jews soemthign good after WWII and give them the chance to found Israel the way and in the place they did. If it were just 2 or 3 years ago, I would say to hell with it, dissolve this state, restore the sdtaus quo in Palestine. But actually, the foundign of Israel is more than half a century ago now. More than two generations that had nothing to do with the events of 1948, lived and died in and often for Israel. Dissolving the state now would mean to accept a great injustice once again, of the same proportion like the Palestinians claim it was done to them. But hiostory meanwhile has created the facts,m and hardened them. Live with it. We cannot always push back the clocks by decades and cneturies, just because something has changed decisively a very long time ago.

So, for pure pragmatzic reasons I support Israels right to exist and to defend its existence. But it is a dilemma that knows no real solution: in the long perspective, I see only black future perspectives for Israel.

Beyond that, Anti-semitism and a strong hate for Judaism has been a characteristic of Islam from Muhammad'S living days on, it is part of Islam from beginning on. Which makes it diffiocult to imagine that some good-will sit-ins and feeling-good events will chnage the fundamental basis of how Islam and the Arabs meet Israel. I have been in many Muslim cijhtries - and hating the Jews was a very prominent hobby everywhere from Algeria to Iran and everyhwere in between.

An ironic point is that Palestinians are not liked as well. They have bitten too often the hands trying to help.

Islam is at civil war with itself, and the driving power behind the conflict in the middle East and Palestine is that confrotnation between Shias and Sunnis, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Palestine and Israel being "solved" as a conflict will not make a difference to the tensions, at best this is a proxy battlefield only. In other words, the West totally overestimates the importance of the coinflict about Palestine/Israel. That must be because the illusion lets us believe there could be a solution that we can negotiate. Accepting that the drama in reality is due to internal Islamic tensions and civil war that rages since over a thousand years now, would mean to admit that we are helpless in the face of this mess. And Wetsern poltiicians and socalled "intellectualls" cannot bear to be shown unimportant to such an extent.