Is Israel's existence threatened by its neighbors?
General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
Is Israel's existence threatened by its neighbors?
PRO (yes)
CON (no)
Dan Haloutz, Major General and Commander of the Israeli Air Force, in a Feb. 3, 2002 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs article titled "21st Century Threats Facing Israel," wrote:
"The challenge of full-scale war is not behind us. Many countries in
the region do not accept the presence of Israel as a natural fact. If
the time comes that someone in the region thinks we have lost our
strength, we can expect to be challenged."
Ephraim Sneh, MD, Chair of the Knesset Subcommittee on Defense Planning and Policy, in a July 23, 2003 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs article titled "Iran after the Iraq War," wrote:
"Iran's development of weapons of mass destruction will pose a threat
to Israel's very existence... Even after the removal of Saddam Hussein,
Israel still faces very real threats to its security and must continue
to make all the preparations and to take all the necessary precautions
to forestall these dangers."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, PhD, Iranian President, was quoted in an Oct. 26, 2005 Aljazeera.net article titled "Ahmadinejad: Wipe Israel Off Map":
"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world
oppressor against the Islamic world... The skirmishes in the occupied
land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of
war will be defined in Palestinian land... As the Imam (Ayatollah
Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, during his speech at the Oct. 26, 2005 "World Without Zionism" conference, held in Tehran, Iran
Max Abrahms, MPhil, Soref fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in a 2003 Middle East Quarterly article titled "A Window of Opportunity for Israel?" wrote:
"In the 1990s, the disarmament of Iraq effectively neutralized the
threat from Israel's eastern flank. In the 2000s, despite the removal
of Saddam, Israel faces a looming threat from the east, in the form of
Iran's nuclear ambitions."
Joseph Yackley, MA, a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, and Stephen Zunes, PhD, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, in a May 2002 Foreign Policy In Focus article titled "U.S. Security Assistance to Israel," wrote:
"First, the most serious challenge for Israel has not been protecting its existence from hostile neighbors but rather pursuing an increasingly repressive military occupation that has created international diplomatic isolation as well as terrorist attacks.
Second, while armed attacks against Israeli occupation forces and settlers in the occupied territories, suicide bombing attacks against civilians inside Israel, and widespread condemnation by Arab governments have heightened Israeli citizens’ sense of vulnerability, Israel’s neighbors have not seriously threatened Israeli territory."
Kenneth Stein, PhD, Professor of Middle Eastern History at Emory University, in a 1998 CNN article titled "On Israel's 50th the Glass is Half Full," wrote:
"Israel's domestic and foreign problems are not immediate existential threats... Israel and a majority of the Arab world have overcome some of their animosities to reach a point where their violent conflict has turned into a series of disjointed relationships...
The central turning point in Israel's modern history was the June 1967 war... The Arab world, Israelis, diaspora Jews, and a world community learned that the Jewish state was not subject to destruction. Emerging from the June [1967] war was an American-dominated 30-year process of negotiating Israeli agreements and treaties with the Arab world.
Fifty years after Israel's establishment, Israeli existence is no longer defined strictly by its enemies. Its independence is no longer wholly reliant upon the United States. There is no Holocaust lurking around the corner as Israel easily protects Jewish life."
Ali Abunimah, MA, Vice President of the Arab American Action Network, in a May 8, 2002, Washington Post interview entitled "The Aftermath of Sharon's Visit to the U.S." stated:
"The assessment from many Israeli experts is that all of Israel's
neighbors combined present virtually no military threat to Israel. This
is not going to change any time soon. Israel is also surrounded by
countries that have made peace with it, or declared their desire and
reasonable terms for doing so. The Palestinians obviously present
absolutely no military threat to Israel's existence, although
Palestinian groups have demonstrated their ability to inflict horror
and misery on Israeli civilians."
