Israel thought its best bet in the face of the Arab Spring roiling the Arab world was to hunker down and wait on events, defined by a senior official to the New York Times as a “porcupine” policy. But the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo by rioters last Friday and Saturday demonstrated how wrong Israelis were in reading the tea leaves and how isolated they have become.

Two countries Tel Aviv banked on to retain its regional military superiority apart from its American mentor, Egypt and Turkey, have both turned hostile even as it chooses to rule over occupied Palestinian land since 1967 and seeks to attain a Greater Israel by settling its people over more and more occupied areas.
But as dramatic developments have unfolded in the Arab world and Turkey’s political rulers have tamed the Army, a relationship predicated upon a dictator in one instance and the Army’s assertion of political power on the other has lost its raison d’être.
Israel is more isolated today than it ever was since 1967. A Right-wing dispensation is digging its own grave even as Israelis are rebelling as never before over a system of growing inequalities. This is a striking contrast to the pride pioneer Jews took in maintaining equality through their Kibbutz Movement.
The nature of the Israeli predicament can be gauged by the pathetic efforts of the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as the representative of the shameful Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United States and the United Nations, which has distinguished itself as the rubber stamp of pro-Israeli American policies. The US-supervised, pro-Israel so-called peace process was going nowhere; the leadership of the Palestinian Authority was shamed into ending the charade as more and more of Palestinian land was swallowed up and settled upon. Deciding to go to the United Nations later this month to seek the status of “an observer state” after the inevitable US veto in the UN Security Council is an act of desperation.
Palestine could then become a member of the International Criminal Court and seek to challenge Israeli occupation in The Hague.
US President Barack Obama tried his best to inject new momentum into the sham peace process through his brave speech to the Muslim world in Cairo and asking Israel to halt the building of new illegal settlements on the occupied West Bank. He had soon to eat his words as he realised to his cost that Israel was not a matter of foreign policy but a domestic issue, with a majority of US congressmen and senators pulverised by the all-powerful American Israeli lobby and he had no room for manoeuvre.
President Obama now is playing catch-up in seeking to deflect the Palestinian United Nations move — unsuccessfully so far.
For the present, Israel has lost its ambassadors in two Muslim states, Egypt and Turkey. The latter has also suspended military cooperation with Tel Aviv, has threatened to take the storming of the Turkish-flagged vessel running the Gaza blockade in which nine Turks were killed by Israeli commandos to the International Court in The Hague and has warned that its Navy would escort future aid ships breaking the Gaza blockade.
The mobs that attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo were protesting against the killing of five Egyptian policemen although their motivation was also influenced by their frustration with the slow pace of change after the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. Israel has refused to apologise to Ankara on the Turks’ deaths or pay compensation to the victims’ families. Also under threat is the proposed gas exploration deal Israel has struck with Cyprus.
The French have injected themselves into the crisis by trying to shape the Palestinian UN move, suggesting that the principal actors move on from the Oslo accords that were the basis of the long-drawn-out but failed negotiations between Israel and Palestinians. The last nail in the coffin was hammered by President George W. Bush by his deliberate neglect of the problem — Ariel Sharon used this opportunity to destroy the Palestinian infrastructure, confining their tallest leader Yasser Arafat to a battered building in Ramallah in which he lay dying.
While there will be many moves and counter-moves to head off the looming crisis, one thing is clear as daylight: Israelis and Palestinians cannot go back to the status quo of the pre-Arab Spring era, with Arab states paying lip service to Palestinians’ independence and doing little
else. With people in the Arab world rebelling against their autocratic rulers, Israelis cannot continue to colonise Palestinian land, treat Palestinians as second class citizens in what former US President Carter has defined as an apartheid state. The future remains uncertain.
With the US presidential election already casting its long shadow on the American political scene, President Obama has to tread cautiously. But the present Israeli policies of building a Greater Israel are simply not sustainable any longer. There are lone voices in Israel seeking an alternative policy option, as for instance the former Labour Party minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. He has suggested that Tel Aviv recognise a Palestinian state and begin negotiations on borders and security.
There are other liberal voices such as that of the newspaper Haaretz, but the Right-wing forces in ascendance in Israel — thought to be over 50 per cent of the population — are in no mood to give up their war gains in 1967 and it is a matter of speculation when the mood in Israel will change, with the United States of America in its pocket, so to speak.
The choice before Israel is as stark as it is simple. Either do the right thing belatedly or get swallowed up in a sea of Arab resentment, which can only lead to further strife and bloodshed.
Total and unconditional US support to Israel in whatever policies it chooses to adopt will not save Tel Aviv because colonialism belongs to another era, and with Arab dictators curbing their people becoming an endangered species, the peace treaty both Egypt and Israel say they will preserve is becoming irrelevant.

S. Nihal Singh can be contacted at snihalsingh@gmail.com