Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary but facing an uncertain future
Pastor Dale Morgan
Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary but facing an uncertain future*
By STEVEN GUTKIN
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM
A Jewish astronaut greets Israel from space. Revelers try to set a
record for the most people singing a national anthem. To celebrate
turning 60, Israel is staging fireworks, air force flyovers and a
birthday bash for anyone born on the day the Jewish state was founded.
Israel is marking its 60th Independence Day, which began at sundown
Wednesday, with a great sense of pride but also uncertainty about its
future and doubts about prospects for peace with the Palestinians. Six
decades after rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, the Jewish state
is still plagued by threats from abroad and an identity crisis at home.
Israel at 60 is a paradox of exuberance and despair — a country enduring
near daily rocket attacks from militants while producing scientists who
have pioneered Wi-Fi and instant messaging.
Its 41-year occupation of Palestinian territories has invited
international condemnation. Yet Israel is a thriving democracy that has
provided a haven for the world's Jews.
This Independence Day is marred by a fresh criminal inquiry of Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert, whose legal woes are calling his political
survival into question just as he is moving to forge a peace deal with
the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.
However, Israelis are putting aside their frustration with politics for
what is expected to be one of the most joyous birthday celebrations
since the first on May 14, 1948 — a date marked each year in Israel by
the Hebrew calendar.
Independence Day began just as Memorial Day for fallen soldiers ended —
a jarring contrast between solemnity and joy that underlined the link
between the military and the existence of Israel.
Events marking Israel's 60th include plays, concerts, sports
tournaments, Holocaust memorials and inauguration of a footpath around
the Sea of Galilee.
NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, the first Jewish crew member on the
international space station, sent a greeting from space to the people of
Israel.
"Every time the station flies over the state of Israel, I try to find a
window, and it never fails to move me when I see the familiar outline of
Israel coming toward us from over the horizon," said the American-born
astronaut.
Also Wednesday, Jewish communities worldwide joined Israelis in a
rendition of the Israeli anthem — Hatikva, or "The Hope." Their goal: to
enter the Guinness World Records for the most people singing a national
anthem at the same time.
During the holiday, Israel is prohibiting Palestinians from the West
Bank and Gaza from entering Israel, fearing attempts by militants to
disrupt the celebrations.
President Bush will attend a conference in Jerusalem next week marking
the anniversary, along with Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail
Gorbachev, Rupert Murdoch and the founders of Google and Facebook.
Shimon Peres, Israel's president, is hosting the conference, along with
a party for 60-year-old Israelis born on the day Israel declared its
independence, re-establishing Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land for
the first time in nearly 2,000 years.
"We are small in size, small in numbers, so we cannot become a big
market or a big industry," Peres told The Associated Press. "But Israel
can become a daring laboratory."
Peres, a Nobel Peace laureate, promotes Israel as a "green" country and
a high-tech powerhouse — including a government plan to install the
world's first electric car network by 2011.
Israeli venture capitalists are setting up an online multimedia
encyclopedia generated by users, and a product called Pop Tok that sends
video clips from movies and TV shows as instant messages.
Yet Israel is also home to Sderot, a town near Hamas-ruled Gaza where
people take shelter almost every day to escape militants' rockets.
Israelis strive to live normal lives, but they are threatened by
Iranian-backed militants on their northern and southern flanks.
They see Iran as their greatest threat, with its nuclear program and a
president who calls for Israel's destruction.
Israel's conflict with the Palestinians is the biggest obstacle to
normalcy. The fighting has resulted in the displacement of hundreds of
thousands of Arabs and has become a rallying point for Muslim extremists
worldwide.
Palestinians refer to Israel's creation as 'al-Naqba', or "the catastrophe."
With Israel's occupation of Arab lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war
entering its fifth decade, most Palestinians are living in poverty,
fueling extremism that can spoil Mideast peacemaking.
Israel at 60 is a place where creativity flourishes, but also where
Palestinians are not allowed on West Bank roads reserved for Israelis.
Israelis argue Palestinians have squandered opportunities for peace. But
the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even during times
of peace negotiations, has deepened Palestinian distrust of Israel's
professed willingness to divide the land.
After years of resisting territorial compromise, most Israelis have come
to realize their country cannot remain both Jewish and democratic if it
holds lands with high Arab birth rates.
Israel's experience with evacuating territory is not a happy one. It
withdrew from Gaza three years ago, but Hamas militants eventually took
over the territory. This diminished prospects for an Israeli withdrawal
from the West Bank — a necessary ingredient of any future peace deal.
Israel has seen miracles before, beginning with its very birth when
Jewish fighters pushed back six Arab armies.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat also did the unthinkable when he came to
Jerusalem and then signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state. And the
world was stunned by a 1993 handshake on the White House lawn between
former archrivals Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, raising hopes for
peace in the Holy Land.