THE FALL OF ISRAEL: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy & Military

Description

The path to the obliteration of Gaza was paved not just by the most far-right government in Israel’s history, but by the confluence of a set of longstanding forces. It is this great conjuncture that has transformed Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, while driving the region to the edge. In The Fall of Israel, Dr Dan Steinbock connects the dots among these lethal headwinds and the missed opportunities for peace, addressing the impact of Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians and into the future on Israel, itself, with particular attention to the latest Israeli war on Gaza.

What makes The Fall of Israel unique is its comprehensive scope. It covers Israel’s political, economic, social and military changes, the shifts in the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty, Israel’s odd path from egalitarian ideals to its apartheid rule and atrocities, the attendant regional and global reverberations – and the fatal human and economic costs of unwarranted wars.

The Fall of Israel outlines the ethnic expulsions of Palestinians, the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, a half century of failed U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East and Israel’s militarization, enabled by the symbiotic bilateral ties with the U.S. and massive U.S. military aid. In the Gaza War, these ties fostered paradigms of devastation, such as the Dahiya doctrine and mass assassination factories, backed by pioneering artificial intelligence. The settlements have contributed to the destabilization of region since the early 1970s, compounding Israel’s economic and geopolitical threats. They have not ensured Israel’s national security. They have undermined it.

The Fall of Israel addresses the decay of Zionism, Israel’s slide from democracy toward autocracy and the efforts to institute a Jewish rather than a secular state. It shows how the postwar labor alignments were replaced by the hard-right coalitions, thanks to U.S. neoliberal economic policies, assertive neoconservatism and Jewish-American donors. It also explains the causes behind the rise of the Messianic far-right, centrist parties and the effort at a resuscitated left. The corrosion of Israeli society and politics is reflected in and driven by its economy, now constrained by adverse erosion, as reflected by the liabilities of its high-tech cluster, the talent “brain drain,” threatened welfare state and subsidized religious sector. The already evident costs of war have set the stage for an extraordinary economic uncertainty in the foreseeable future. New austerity drives will only accelerate the economic polarization and rising poverty in the Israeli society.

The book traces how, building on long traditions of modernization and Islamism, the Palestinian struggle for self-determination opted for armed struggle since Israel refused to withdraw from the territories it occupied first in 1948 and then in 1967. As the UN resolutions were not enforced in the region, and following the lack of progress in diplomacy and Israeli provocations at Al Aqsa Mosque, Palestinians initiated the First Intifada. When Israel moved toward the peace process, so did the Palestinians. And similarly, when the right-wing cabinets moved away from the peace prospects, and again targeted Al Aqsa, to court the Messianic far-right constituencies, Palestinians began the Second Intifada. Through these years, Likud coalitions tried to divide the PLO and Hamas, rejected the democratic results of the 2006 Palestinian election launching Gaza’s disastrous blockade. That paved the way to economic devastation in Gaza and, ultimately the Hamas-led offensive of October 7, which it named Al Aqsa Flood, the subsequent Israeli obliteration of Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank. These in turn have paved the way to the degradation and deep divides of Israeli economy and politics, and the erosion of its operational and military capabilities.

These nightmarish events have unleashed new international efforts against Israel’s ultra-apartheid and genocidal atrocities, and U.S. complicity, as well as renewed international boycotts, and the largest international university mass protests since the Vietnam War. In the absence of concerted efforts at a credible peace process, the potential for lethal regional escalation remains substantial, along with severe global repercussions, including the potential for a nuclear crisis.