Israel had been trying to promote itself as a holiday destination like any other – now it’s back to square one

For the first time in two weeks of bombardments, there is a ceasefire in the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza. Egypt helped to broker the agreement, with the United States offering muted encouragement from afar. But a ceasefire, while sparing further casualties for a while, is not going to change – let alone solve – anything. Disputed territory and the huge imbalance of forces ensure there will be no lasting peace, let alone stability, on current terms.

And while the human and material losses have been disproportionately suffered, as ever in this conflict, by Palestinians – with more than 200 people killed compared with 12 Israelis, vastly more people injured and massively more infrastructure damaged – the past two weeks have left Israel once again the moral loser.

At a time when it was featuring in the international news as a world leader in combatting the pandemic and trying to promote itself again as a beach holiday destination like any other, it is now back to square one. The image of Israel is as the aggressor: the bully, the killer of women and children.

At which point (and whichever side of the age-old argument you are on, you surely must ask): why oh why does Israel do this to itself, is there really not another way? I have to say, with great reluctance, that I am not sure there is under current circumstances; or at least not another way that Israel will be persuaded to follow.

Many Israelis would object that the reason these images are uppermost reflects media bias: that suffering makes for more impactful pictures than resilience; that the question of “who started it” has been lost – was it the threat of evictions in a traditionally Arab part of Jerusalem, or alleged provocations in and around al-Aqsa mosque? And might it all have subsided perhaps, had not fighters in Hamas-ruled Gaza not deployed some of their stockpiles of rockets, including in the direction of Tel Aviv airport? And what is Israel to do now?

Was Israel’s apparent decision to destroy the network of tunnels beneath and around Gaza an opportunistic move out of all proportion to the danger represented by Hamas? Probably a ringing “yes”, if you are Palestinian or a self-described objective observer; “no”, if you are many Israelis.

In the nearly 40 years that I have been visiting Israel, so much has changed vastly for the better; and yet so much has stayed the same. Living standards have risen immeasurably. Infrastructure has been transformed. Israel’s cities enjoy modern transport, modern sanitation; there are excellent roads, decent housing, good health and social services. It has the highest of hi-tech, world-class universities, plenty of its own entrepreneurs. It has made the desert bloom – it even exports avocados, for heaven’s sake. As a visitor, you no longer have to choose between the communal rigours of a kibbutz marooned in the 1950s and a fusty international chain hotel. Israel has first-class resorts and shopping centres.

Then, as a visitor, you reach the entrance to said shopping mall, and you are met by an armed security guard and an airport-style X-ray arch, and you remember: you are in one of the most security-conscious countries on the planet – and it is security-conscious for a reason. Israel has feared for its very existence from its foundation as a modern state in 1948. Many of its earliest settlers had survived the Holocaust or wars and persecution in North Africa, and it is their children who deserve much of the credit for the democracy and properity Israel enjoys today.

Yet the more Israel has developed the appearance and accoutrements of a modern state, the more the dissonance seems to grow with the many layers of its origins as a Jewish state, surrounded by potential enemies. From the perspective of today, Israel’s siege mentality, entirely justified before its victory in the 1967 war, seems hard to justify. Its state-of-the-art military might – including an assumed, but undeclared, nuclear capability – surely makes it invulnerable. But the security imperative (including compulsory military service for men and women, an extensive reserve, and regular civil defence exercises) permeate everything. Such efficient organisation, by the way, is one reason for its vaccination success.

The dissonance is between Israel and its neighbours, yes. Syria has been at war for 10 years. Lebanon lurches from crisis to crisis. The development of Jordan and Egypt has stalled since the Arab Spring, and while life in Ramallah – the Palestinian capital – has greatly improved over the same time, much of Israel has become a conspicuously first-world country, indistinguishable from many in Europe.

But the dissonance is also within Israel itself. In part, it is material, as between the living standards of mainly Jewish and mainly Arab populated areas. Where once East Jerusalem seemed part of a piece with the rest of the city, that is no longer so; to cross is to move from Europe into the Middle East. But there are cultural and demographic pressures, too, which threaten to tear the common fabric.

Orthodox Jews form a bigger and more separate community than before, and are – controversially – exempt from the nation-building experience that is military service. Their higher birthrate, and the higher birthrate among Arab Israelis, means that the mainstream Jewish majority, proportionately, will shrink.

And that majority, for its part, fears not only declining influence, but that Israel’s founding myths could dissipate – including the experience of the Holocaust, as the last of the survivors, and their firsthand testimony, depart this life. The violence that broke out in Lod and other places with mixed Jewish-Arab populations, following the latest violence in Jerusalem and the rockets from Gaza, offered a disquieting intimation of the future.

In one way, Israel is more secure than it has ever been, thanks to its state-of-the-art defences and its preparedness as a state. But its beleaguered mentality is in many ways undiminished, as is the notion of Israel as the last, maybe the only, safe refuge for Jews in all the world – a view only reinforced by the reemergence of antisemitism in Europe.

So long as this sense of insecurity persists, responding to attacks from Gaza with destructive firepower will take precedence over courting international approval. Indeed, as seen from Israel, there will be no alternative. But the difficulties do not stop there. The more Israel feels beleaguered, from without and within, the more protective it is likely to become, both of its own security and its Jewish identity – which will leave it swimming, as so often, against the international tide.

At the very time that many developed countries are becoming more ethnically mixed and more secular, so, it seems, Israel is trying to buck the trend. That is not going to make life any easier: for it, for the region, or for its declining number of friends abroad.