The 21st century will see the sight of nations coming together. It will see the beginning of a world order, and I have no doubt that this idea will be realized.
This is not a vision of starry-eyed idealists. It is an essential necessity for the human race and all its peoples and nations. The world is faced with problems that no single state or group of states can solve by itself. Global warming, which is threatening the very existence of the human species, is by its very nature a world problem. The recent economic crisis has shown that the collapse of one country's economy can spread like wildfire to the entire world. The Internet has established a world-wide community, in which ideas spread easily from country to country, as we can see now in the Arab world.
International institutions, which once aroused only derision, are slowly acquiring real jurisdiction. The International Court has grown teeth. International law, which in the past was mainly an abstract idea, is slowly evolving into a real world law. Important and strong countries like Germany and France are voluntarily giving up large chunks of their sovereignty in favor of the European Union. Regional and world-wide cooperation between nations is becoming a political necessity.
Concepts like democracy, liberty, justice and human rights are not only moral values -- in today's world they have become essential needs, a basis for a new world order.
All these processes are advancing at a maddeningly slow, almost geological pace. But the direction is unmistakable and cannot be reversed. Whatever Barack Obama's deeds -- or lack of them -- his intuition about the direction can be trusted.
That is the "right side of history." But our country is closing its eyes to this. True, it excels in the most international of industries, high tech, and is working successfully to extend its economic ties to the far corners of the world. But it scorns international public opinion, the United Nations and international law. It sticks to a form of nationalism that was "modern" at the time of the French revolution, when the "nation-state" was the highest ideal. Of course, nationalism has not died, and it occupies even now an important place in the consciousness of the peoples. But this is a completely new form of nationalism, the nationalism of the 21st century, which does not stand in contradiction to internationalism but, on the contrary, constitutes a brick in the edifice of the international structure.
THE ARAB nations have suddenly awoken from a centuries-long slumber, and are now fighting to catch up with the other nations. The anachronistic tyrannies that kept them down, wasted their capabilities and imposed on them patterns of bygone ages, are no more.
It is difficult to know where these uprisings, which are engulfing the region from Morocco to Oman and from Syria to Yemen, will go. It is hard to prophesy, especially the future.
2011 may be for the Arab world what 1848 was for Europe. Then, when the French people stood up, the waves of revolution spread over much of the face of the continent. It seems that I am not the only one who is now reminded of this example. Much can be learned from it, and not all of it positive. In France, the uprising swept away a corrupt regime, but paved the way for the rise of Napoleon III, the first of Europe's modern dictators. In Germany, then fragmented into dozens of kingdoms and principalities, the rulers were frightened and so promised democratic reforms. But while the debates of the lawyers and politicians in Frankfurt about the future constitution went on and on, the kings gathered their armies, crushed the democrats and started another era of oppression. (The failure of the Frankfurt assembly found its expression in the immortal German verse: "Dreimal hundert Professoren / Vaterland, du bist verloren!" -- three times a hundred professors / Motherland you are lost.)
The revolutions of 1848 left behind a legacy of disappointment and despair. But they were not in vain. The noble ideas born in those heady months did not die, future generations strove to realize them in all the countries of the continent. The current flag of Germany was born in those days.
The Arab revolutions, too, may end in failure and disappointment. They may give birth to new dictatorships. Here and there anachronistic religious regimes may spring up. Each Arab country is different from the others, and in each the developments will be subject to local conditions. But what happened yesterday in Tunisia and Egypt, what is happening today in Libya and Yemen, what happens tomorrow in Saudi Arabia and Syria will shape the face of the Arab nations for a long time to come. They will play an entirely new role on the world stage.
ISRAEL IS dominated by the settlers, who resemble in spirit the Crusaders of the 12th century. Fundamentalist religious parties, not much different from their Iranian counterparts, play a major role in our state. The political and economic elite is steeped in corruption. Our democracy, in which we took so much pride, is in mortal danger.
Some people argue that all this is happening because "Netanyahu has no policy." Nonsense. He has a clear policy: to maintain Israel as a garrison state, to enlarge the settlements, to prevent the foundation of a real Palestinian state, and to go on without peace, in a state of eternal conflict.
Just now it was been leaked that Netanyahu is going to give a historic speech -- another one -- very soon. Not in the Knesset, whose importance is approaching nil, but in the really important forum: AIPAC, the Jewish lobby in Washington.
There he will unfold his Peace Plan, whose details have also been leaked. A wonderful plan, with only one minor defect: it has nothing to do with peace.
It proposes setting up a Palestinian state with "provisional borders." (With us, nothing is more permanent than the "provisional"). It will consist of about half the West Bank. (The other half, including East Jerusalem, will presumably be covered with settlements.) There will be a timetable for the discussion of the core issues -- borders, Jerusalem, refugees etc. (In Oslo, a timetable of five years was fixed. It expired in 1999, by which time negotiation had not even started.) Negotiations will not start at all until the Palestinians recognize Israel as the State of the Jewish People and accept its "security requirements." (Meaning: never.)
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