Palestinian-Israeli conflict could get much worse if tolerated.
If he [Obama] allows Israel to continue to stall and to demonstrate that it will make no end to the West Bank occupation, he will disappoint the highest hopes that have existed among both Jews and Arabs since 1967 that a positive outcome is possible between Israel and the Palestinians.
In that case, there may be still another, and more violent, intifada, and more regional violence and terrorism. Or perhaps nothing will happen. An apartheid Israel will survive, and the Palestine population will grow, whether within or without the legal frontiers of Israel.
The Palestinian leaders, their people, the Hezbollah and Hamas leadership, and the Palestinians’ external Arab supporters, as well as the Israelis themselves, will decide that, and will have to accept the consequences.
But there will be other consequences. The present condition of low-level but generalized war, or state of terrorism, or institutionalized hostility by Muslims against the United States and against Americans, will continue and undoubtedly widen.
Americans convinced that America must dominate the Middle East will grow in influence; there will, in some sense, be a restoration of the national leadership and outlook that existed under George W. Bush.
The governments and public opinion of the European Union will disengage from U.S. pro-Israeli policies. There will be sanctions on Israel of various kinds, and no doubt measures of intellectual, cultural, sportive and other boycotts of Israel, of the kind already envisaged in some Western circles.
Emigration from Israel of the young, the talented, the morally alienated—also a reality today—will increase. But further speculation is undoubtedly unprofitable.
