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If There Were No Israel

[The Oregonian] Edward Glick - Let's imagine that a genie makes Israel disappear and also makes all of us lose our memory of the "Zionist entity." What would an Israel-free Middle East be like? For starters, the only democracy in the region will have vanished. There would still be Arab hostility, dictatorship, corruption, overpopulation and socioeconomic dislocation. Palestine would still be as underdeveloped as are most of the Arab states, whose combined gross domestic product is less than that of Spain. Most Palestinians would still be unemployed and unemployable, partly because of the inability or unwillingness of their rulers to create viable institutions and infrastructures, and partly because there would no longer be an Israel for the Palestinians to work in. Iran would still be run by the ayatollahs. And the U.S. would still be facing the specter of an atomic, biological or chemical version of 9/11. The writer is professor emeritus of political science at Temple University.
2009-03-17 06:00:00
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