First and foremost, this article is a load of tripe, and is at least 4 years old, since it refers to Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister. Sharon had a stroke in 2006 and has been in a coma ever since, and the country has moved on. That's strike one. Strike two is that it is written and published by the Islamic Association of Palestine (look at the end) which is a front for Hamas in the US. Probable bias. Strike three is that the whole premise is flawed--Yes, Israel has nukes that they could point at European capitals. So does the US. So does Russia. So does China. Shoot, the UK could nuke Paris if they wanted. Changing the targeting information of a ballistic missile isn't difficult if a country wants to do it. It takes an hour or so, since these days it's just software. So stating that Israel could nuke someone is a bit silly.
That's my bit against the article. What follows is a bit on how I perceive the problem with Israel. You don't have to read it, but I've studied the area a bit (i.e. first two years at uni and some other stuff, not just Wikipedia) and I just finished a Master's in Political Science/International Relations (graduated yesterday, anyone got a job for me?). So there might be some valid ideas. Feel free to disagree.
The thing with Israel is that they occupy a rather precarious political position in international relations. Yes, there is a lot of western guilt about the Holocaust, and yes there are a lot of rich Jews with a lot of influence in the US, and probably some in other countries. But guilt and influence only go so far.
The problem for Israel, and this has been a problem since their independence, is that they perceive themselves to be an pariah on the international stage--i.e. they don't think that anyone would help them, and they feel excluded. And this is probably true, or at least it has been in the past. Would the US put troops on the ground to protect Israel from a hostile Egypt or Jordan? No, or at least they didn't in 1967 or 1973. And in both of those cases there was a real threat to the state of Israel. They US might hem and haw, or might support idea of a possible secret operation, but despite all of the influence and all of the guilt, western governments would never put troops on the ground in Israel.
So Israel is faced with the problem of feeling constantly under attack and constantly threatened with destruction. How much of this threat is real? Probably not a lot, but there is a cultural memory of the many wars of the past 60 years and of the many real threats to Israel. Because of this the idea of defense is part of Israel's political system. They are automatically going to assume that someone is going to attack them and no one is going to support them.
Hopefully this is starting to change. But the problem is that there are organizations, especially Hamas, and countries, Iran now and Iraq and many others in the past, who publicly state that they support the destruction of Israel. And it is easy for us to look at Hamas or Iran and think that they are a bunch of loonies, but the Israelis and especially the Israeli government remember 1973 when Israel came very close to being overrun. So they take the threats seriously, and act accordingly. And they've been fighting for so long--it takes time to get over old wars. This is true on both sides. Years ago when I was learning Arabic I became friends with some guys from Palestine and they used to tell us stories about how they spent their childhoods--throwing rocks at Israeli tanks. Not because they really hated Israelis, but because that was what you did.
Israel needs to start acting like a respectable state and stop dealing with problems like a rouge state. If they have a problem they need to deal with it on the international stage, working with the EU and the UN and not making unilateral decisions. If they act like a bunch of loonies (the blockade thing comes to mind) then they will be treated as such.
Thanks for reading
mark
