Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians are every bit as oppressive today as they were a decade ago. It is, however, much harder to claim that ending the occupation should still be a top US priority because it would stabilize the region and strengthen American interests throughout the Middle East. Israelis look at their two recent military withdrawals—from southern Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005—and see their occupying forces replaced with missile-firing Islamists: Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Withdrawing from the West Bank, most of them believe, would endanger the roughly 60 percent of Israel’s population that lives nearby. The occupation gnaws at the nation’s moral and democratic fiber and poses a risk that there will be more non-Jews than Jews ruled by the Jewish state. Still, Israelis believe that withdrawal would be even more dangerous. As many say, we are stuck; better stuck than dead.
Source : Stuck
