Israel searches for its place amid Arab Spring

The burst of deadly cross-border violence between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza has brought international attention back to the broken peace process in the Middle East, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured above) warning that he would not hesitate to take “offensive and defensive” actions to “protect our country and its citizens.”

But the borders with the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank are not the only source of Israeli fears these days. Like the rest of the world, Israelis Friday were waiting for news about fresh protests in Egypt and Syria - two countries it shares borders with.

Joel Schalit, a journalist and author of the book Israel vs. Utopia, told FRANCE24.com that Israel is caught between the desire to positively engage the wave of democratisation that is simmering in the region and a widespread fear of what those tumultuous political processes will produce.

“Members of the Right say the revolts will unleash the worst anti-Israeli tendencies, and will use this as an excuse not to dialogue with Palestinians” says Schalit, who is based in Britain. But he says there is also strong support for the Arab Spring in other political circles and “sincere analyses of why it bodes positive things for Israel.”

The decades-long Middle East conflict will hereafter be considered in light of the Arab Spring, and Israelis are struggling to understand their place and interests amid the popular revolts that have won Western backing and inspired sympathy across the globe.

A new conversation

Ariel Woolf, a former rabbinical school teacher (a teacher at a Rabbi school) in Efrat who is now completing his theological studies there, pointed to the case of Egypt to explain his mixed feelings about the Arab revolutions. Egypt and Israel have been at peace for more than 30 years, but the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak revived fears of war.

“We don’t know what the outcome will be,” Woolf said. “We shared a luke-warm peace that maybe wasn’t good for the Egyptian people but that has been good for us.” He evoked the resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which he is convinced is a threat to Israel. “Out of the chaos can come many good things, or worse things,” Woolf cautioned.

That fear of change was expressed by Donniel Hartman, president of a Jewish research and education institute in Jerusalem. In his “Letter to the Egyptian People”, published on the centre’s website in February, Hartman emphasised the need for a new conversation between Israelis and Egyptians.

“For the last 30 years it seems, we never got a chance to talk,” he wrote. “We spoke with your leaders, but as you so aptly proved, they don’t speak for you anymore, if they ever did.”

Hartman went on to warn that a change in the status quo could “cause us to revert to the old and mutually destructive patterns” or could act as “catalyst to move us forward.”

However, Joel Schalit is skeptical about whether Israel’s current leadership is capable of starting a new conversation with its Arab neighbours, or even the long-standing Western allies. “This is the most politically isolated government since independence. Their response has been to dig in their heels and wait,” Schalit says.

Expressing a sentiment that he assures he has recently heard from Israeli opinion leaders, Schalit says that hope for progress rests in the new leaders of the Arab world. “The initiative will probably not come from us,” Schalit lamented.