Originally posted by Peer:
The terror-regime of the German Democratic Republic falled in my lifetime...
The terror-regime of the Soviet Union falled in my lifetime...
The terror-regime of the Apartheid-system of South-Africa falled in my lifetime...
So why shouldn´t also the terror-regime of Isreal fall during my lifetime?
Because in the the first three cases the authoritarian regime oppressed its own citizens in with no threat from outside.
In case of Israel, the regime in no way opresses the citisens inside the state. Quite opposite, the constant and real external threat is keeping the multifaceted society united as no other country.
Israeli citizens have no reason to overthrow their regime right now, but whenever they wish to do so, they conduct elections.
As for outside threat, combined arab world cannot currenly defeat them through conventional military means even if they put aside their mutual hatreds (remember same palestinians participating and supporting mr. Hussein in his invasion of kuwaitis?) and few would consider exchanging nuclear strikes with Israel on behalf of palestinians.
Also, Israeli economy currently develops faster then other countries in the region, so they are getting stronger, not weaker relative to their surroundings.
If they pull it off for another fifty years, the surrounding arab countries may run out of oil and go back to the status of third-rank countries they had before WWII. That may happen even sooner if Israelis come up with good way to use solar energy. I wonder if they already have done so and kept it under wraps due to a secret agreement with arabs or as a threat for the future.
Some say that US can stop supporting Israel economically and militarily (arms sales), but that is highly unlikely - Israel can definitely live without US money. As for military hardware, China, Russia and few other countries would only be happy to trade with Israel in exchange for their technology wich would inconvenience US much more in the long run.
Time will tell, but Israel seems pretty stable to me for the time being.
miko