I think you're wrong about that. If Israel insists that the conflict will only be resolved when one of the sides is no more, then that side will be Israel. They can't round Palestinians up and murder them by the millions, for obvious historical reasons if nothing else. And as long as the Palestinians are kept in a third-world economy they'll have third-world demographics, which in turn means that Israel can't outbreed them either. They can't turn to their neighbours for support, because their neighbours only support them because of the Big Neighbour in the West, and the Big Neighbour is not going to last forever. When their only present ally is gone, where are they going to turn?

They may or may not be able to fend for themselves in purely military terms, but they are not able to maintain the current level of militarisation of the economy without outside help, and all the shiny military hardware in the world matters not a jot if your economy collapses. As the Americans are learning. Painfully.

In short, their long-term strategic situation is as tenuous as the DDR's: They exist only because they are protected by powerful outside interests. Those interests will eventually cease to protect them, and when that happens, they had better already have found an accommodation with their neighbours.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.