Like you said, it could work two ways, depending on how you see the political situation there. For one, Israelis might use their economic power as a bargaining chip, literally buying peace from neighbors (and you'd have to be an idiot political leader to not want to cash in when a major economic power comes to your door). Remember that although you may perceive them as this big, bad colonial power, and many Israelis
do support those policies in order to take over the entire area of Israel and Palestine, still many Israelis are reluctant to draw up peace agreements because there's a security dilemma and they want some sort of solid guarantee that peace will be upheld with favorable terms indefinitely, which means of course buying peace from your neighbors. This means for example engaging in friendly trade with Egypt to curry favor with its new government, engaging in trade with Iran to open up a dialogue finally, but it could also mean expanding the Israeli labor market, namely to unemployed or underemployed Palestinians.
Obviously there are already Palestinians working in Israel, but as you can imagine the current situation sees a lot of career and income imbalance (not due to prejudice, but rather because of the jobs Israeli employees trust Palestinians to undertake); if the Israeli economy has a boom and it's not able to fill it with its own people (which would be unwise after a certain point as any economist will probably chime in to say), there's already an able and willing labor market right next door, which could again mean the possibility of cooling relations between the two peoples. Israelis will cool to Palestinians who they'll pretty much need as their labor safety valve, and a larger number of Palestinians will be earning a sufficient income to bring real, lasting wealth and maybe even public improvement to their respective territories.
Israelis aren't blind to the Palestinians' suffering for the last 60 years; it's just hard to acknowledge it when suicide bombers, riots, and random missiles come flying out the other side. If the above scenario happens and they're able to point to money being used to create and sustain economic development in the territories rather than to funding terrorist activities, they'll be more open to talks.
The other way this could work would again make Israel feel more open to talks, but rather because the growth itself is a safety valve. I've never heard that growth justification you mentioned, but I can tell you from my personal experience and studies of Israeli history that while they've been
more economically powerful than Palestine, they still barely cut it; all the money they get from the US to fund their military is more than just a number showing how much importance they put into it. Up until the last few years, the New Shekel has been weak, and the Shekel that preceded it...well, they had to create a new currency afterwards, so you figure it out. In summary, Israel's economic history until I'd say 2006 or so looked like Brazil's from the Great Depression until around 2006 as well.
Anyway, you can imagine what sort of existential fears and other anxieties probably ensue from pouring so much money into the military under a weak (although in recent years until 2006 not really *weak*, just not strong) economy and still not being able to effect peace with your neighbors. It's possible that once the economy takes off (and I'm not saying it's definite, I'm just saying it's like...60-80% likely, provided current events don't culminate in some catastrophic downturn for Israel politically or economically), Israelis will feel less anxious about existential fears and feel more in a position to be more lax about
all policies and problems on the table. Err something. I kinda wanted to write this scenario first because I knew it would be complicated to explain, and now I forgot what the punchline was.
But it is true that Israelis and even many Diaspora Jews perceived the national economy until recently as weak or unstable (as would probably be obvious to anyone who notices it's the
New Shekel).
Topic: The Israel Discussion Thread (Read 76979 times)
