Relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel Future Scenarios

How will the State of Israel look when it celebrates 75 years of existence? How will Israel look in 2023, when it marks 75 years since its establishment? Will it be enjoying peace and tranquility in a democratic and developed Middle East? Or will it remain a fortified, isolated, and besieged country, possibly even excommunicated from most of the international community? Will it be a society divided, violent, and torn, or will there be more harmony in the relations between Arabs and Jews, religious and secular, the haves and the have-nots? The future of this country has preoccupied many people in recent years, both within and outside Israel; those who have Israel's best interests in mind and those who wish it harm. And between these two poles are those considering another, much more calamitous option: that the country will not even reach its 75 th birthday. A number of public opinion polls in Israel commissioned in the last two years demonstrate that many people, in some cases even a high percentage of respondents, are expressing fear that the State of Israel will not endure for many more years. While such a position primarily reflects the current public mood, the more critical question is how Israel, in fact, will look in the future. Certainly this question cannot be answered with an empirically reliable prediction. How, in this dynamic, constantly changing world of ours, could it be possible to predict what will happen in the distant future? Looking back, even the most important formative events in Israel's history were not predicted ahead of time. No one estimated how significantly massive immigration from the Moslem states from the beginning of the 1950s would shape Israeli society; the Six-Day War's outcome came as a surprise and has influenced Israel more than any other historical event in the country's history up to today; the wave of a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union likewise came as a shock to virtually everyone. What can be done is to focus on the near future. Therefore, looking forward a decade to 2023, provides a reasonable amount of time for evaluation. One can examine scenarios instead of forecasts; scrutinize a wide variety of options that are plausible, and give each one of these likelihoods differential probabilities. This method does not by any means guarantee absolute success, as certain possibilities may evade the researcher, and any estimate of the …