The
demands of controlling another people around the clock justifies huge
budgets, the latest weaponry (much of it paid for by the United States)
and the creation of a powerful class of military bureaucrat.
While
teenage conscripts do the dangerous jobs, the army's senior ranks
retire in their early forties on full pensions, with lengthy second
careers ahead in business or politics. Many also go on to profit from
the burgeoning "homeland security" industries in which Israel excels.
Small specialist companies led by former generals offer a home to
retired soldiers drawing on years of experience running the occupation.
Those
who spent their service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip quickly learn
how to apply and refine new technologies for surveillance, crowd control
and urban warfare that find ready markets overseas. In 2006 Israel's
defence exports reached $3.4bn, making the country the fourth largest
arms dealer in the world.
These
groups fear that a peace agreement and Palestinian statehood would turn
Israel overnight into an insignificant Middle Eastern state, one that
would soon be starved of its enormous US subsidies. In addition, Israel
would be forced to right a historic wrong and redirect the region's
plundered resources, including its land and water, back to Palestinians,
depriving Jews of their established entitlements.
A
cost-benefit calculus suggests to most Israeli Jews -- including the
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu -- that a real solution to their
conflict with the Palestinians might come at too heavy a price to their
own pockets.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
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