would send shock waves throughout the region and the international system. It would be such an affront to Arabs and Muslims that any government that remained neutral would face overthrow - there would be a general mobilization of Arab states against Israel. Expulsion would create tension between Israel and the United States. Since US interests are promoted by regional stability, destabilization would threaten those interests.Elimination of IsraelRadical Palestinians, and even some Arabs who are not Palestinian feel that Israel has treated its subjects and its neighbors badly and cannot be trusted. They reject the idea of a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab and Muslim world as something that should not be allowed. These radicals resist any settlement with Israel. Since l948 Israel has had wars with all of its neighbors, sometimes with the Arab states attacking first. If the Arab states would form a common military alliance, they might defeat and conquer Israel so that many Jews could be forced to flee, with the remainder living under Palestinian rule.But looking country by country, there is little threat: Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel, Lebanon is small and weak and has never had a strong army, Jordan is also small and is militarily weak, Saudi Arabia is distant and not a major military force, Iraq is distant and has been devastated by war, and Syria is no match for Israel. Therewith the United States would act to protect Israel, something that the Arab states know and would not want to confront. But the most serious reason not to eliminate Israel is that it has nuclear weapons and would use them, and the Arab states do not.As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational "terrorists" who have no point of view worth listening to. The...
