The psychology behind Israel's status quo (Carlo Strenger)

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Israel’s political right does not see that the long-term price of not ending the occupation, which endangers Israel’s survival as a democracy and turns Israel into the symbol of the conflict between the West and the Islamic world, could be horrendous.

By Carlo Strenger | Oct.31, 2012 | 12:59 PM |

If you live in Israel, are interested in politics and care about Israel’s future, the Arab Awakening is a central, inevitable topic.

Seemingly it is also a point of contention between Israel’s right, now consolidated by the Merger of Likud and Yisrael Beitenu and Israel’s largely non-existent peace camp.

The right, more often than not, is fond of making fun of the very concept of an Arab Spring, preferring to call it an Arab Winter. The peace-camp, according to Israel’s right, is supposed to be optimistic about the Arab Spring, arguing that there will soon be a new Middle East, and that the Sheep and the Wolves will live in eternal Harmony soon.

Israel’s rightists who claim that there is no partner for any peace deal for Israel will find their views reinforced by a recently published analysis by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in the New York Review of Books entitled ‘This is not a revolution.’ Malley, who is Jewish, participated in the failed Camp David Summit of 2000 and was severely criticized in Jewish circles for arguing soon after that Arafat was not solely to blame for the Summit’s failure, and that Barak carried as much responsibility. Agha is at Oxford and an expert on Palestinian society and politics, and they regularly co-author analyses on the Middle East in a number of influential venues.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/the-psychology-behind-israel-s-status-quo.premium-1.473512