Editorial

In November 1947, a plan drawn up by a special committee of the United Nations recommended partition to allow the creation of Jewish and Arab states and Jerusalem as an international zone. This was endorsed by the General Assembly on the 29th of that month. Contrary to modern perceptions, the most enthusiastic supporter of a Jewish state at the time was the Soviet bloc.

The following year, on May 14, Israel declared its independence and was accorded de facto recognition by President Harry S. Truman and de jure recognition by Joseph Stalin.

"Israel slipped into existence," noted the historian Paul Johnson, "through a fortuitous window in history which briefly opened for a few months in 1947-1948."

Egyptian air raids began that same night and five Arab armies invaded the fledgling state, which repulsed all five and, as a consequence, expanded its territory. The Arab-Israeli problem was born.

Three major wars later - not counting the two conflicts in Lebanon - it remains in place.

Interesting to note that, in the wake of that war, nearly half a million Jews living in Arab lands took refuge in Israel. Arab governments took no Arab refugees but, with the United Nations, set up refugee camps. The inhabitants would return home once Palestine had been re-conquered. An UN plan in 1950 to resettle them was rejected. Indeed, seven years later, in the wake of Egypt's defeat in the Suez crisis, Cairo Radio was broadcasting that the refugees were "the cornerstone in the Arab struggle against Israel..."

Half a century and many peace plans later, Camp David to Oslo, the region remains mercilessly prone to strife. The presence of Hizbollah in Lebanon and a disunited Palestinian government - Hamas in Gaza, Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, an Iranian leader committed to the elimination of Israel, paymaster and weapons supplier to Hizbollah and Hamas, also determined to wipe Israel off the map, do not make for harmony; and there is none.

On the 60th anniversary of its existence, it would be a rash critic who did not concede that despite its front-line status, Israel is a success story with a per capita GDP (PPP) near to $30,000 (as opposed to Egypt's $5,000). Few can cease to admire that it is a liberal democracy in a desert of states that, with the exception of Iraq, aspire to none; and Iraq's aspirations are conditional to success against those who would prefer it to fail.

To its north, Hizbollah bides its time; to its south, Hamas imitates Hizbollah; to its east a still fractured Iraq and, further east, Iran aiming to become a nuclear power; to its north-east Syria, too, plays for time and recently received a bloody nose when Israel destroyed sites Syria had intended for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. All governments kept quiet about this.

No country in the world has lived in a state of siege for so long; none has displayed so much determination to survive and plan its future in a peaceful environment where, at present, there is only strife. Only a country with everything to lose and with the memory of the Holocaust in its bones can be so steeled in resolution. For many reasons Israel deserves admiration - even if many insist it ought to be condemned too. What is certain is that it will have to continue defending its patch for some time.