Israel is experiencing today what Arab peoples have gone through for decades: A government hiding behind the pretexts of foreign threats to justify its control of power and its ignorance of reformative and developmental requirements. [The government] evades responsibilities that include budget crises, the expansion of the power base, the failure of foreign policy, and the lack of a future vision, which are the diseases diagnosed by Knesset members Dalia Itzik and Ronnie Bar-On in a session allocated for discussing the situation of the government on the occasion of the first anniversary of “the most right-wing government in Israel's history,” under Benjamin Netanyahu. After a wave of charges leveled by the Bar-On at the prime minister accusing him of weakness, indecision, succumbing to panic, and seeking to “steal” the deputies of the non-participating partiers in the government coalition, Itzik summed up the situation Israel is experiencing with one question: “What would we do if Iran did not exist?” Thanks to its president who calls day and night for wiping the Jewish state from the world map; its nuclear program which can be described as mysterious and suspicious at the very least; and its interference in the affairs of Arab states, Iran provides all the necessary pretexts for Netanyahu to evade the responsibility of addressing domestic problems. Among these serious issues is the growing tension between religious extremists and secularists on the one hand, and between the Jewish majority and Arab minority inside the Green Line on the other. Moreover, another crisis is represented by Israel's refusal to recognize the high price it pays for its insistence on the West Bank's occupation (the Gaza Strip is still under occupation in accordance with international law, which does not recognize the withdrawal of the occupier and the vacuum it creates at the level of sovereignty). The country of every Arab citizen is threatened with destruction daily. He is overshadowed, alongside his fellow citizens, with the concerns of aggression and related killings as well as the growing civil strife it entails, as demonstrated by previous experiences, in addition to the significant suffering of the Arab peoples because of the tragedy inflicted by Israel to the Palestinians. If this citizen were to compare the complaints of the Israeli deputies to his situation, he cannot but notice similarities, albeit nominal and brief, between the Israeli complaints and the ongoing Arab grievances. “What would we do if Israel did not exist?” is an appropriate question for the governments and the mainstream Arab awareness as well. To understand the situation of the Arab citizen, one does not need to look thoroughly into the numbers of domestic and international statistics on unemployment, poverty and illiteracy, in return for the talk about the big surprises and efforts to change the face of the region, so as to realize the catastrophe of the promised Arab disastrous course. One news bulletin is enough. The question which the Arabs should answer pertains to the “nature of the region” in which they want to live, under occupation or after getting rid of it. The question will become even more pressing if some promises and prophecies come true, ones saying that Israel will be wiped out and will cease to exist and that the Arab peoples will break into Jerusalem onboard of their civil conflicts, according to a resistance leader lately. In other words: How will the Arabs coexist with each other following the hoped-for liberation? If the answer says that the conditions of development, civil rights, public freedoms, will remain unchanged after the liberation, then the meaning of all the Arab-Israeli conflict for millions of Arabs who linked their future to a just solution to this conflict should be questioned. But if the answer holds optimism about inevitable deep reforms after getting rid of Israel, then it goes without saying that we should ask about the reason hindering these reforms now.
