Some have an almost religious faith that Israel will one day cease to exist. Others maintain that Israel will end if the Arabs optimise their conviction that it is an alien entity in the region, incapable of reaching a just peace because it seeks to dominate rather than to assimilate. Odder yet is the belief that peace is the key to Israel's inevitable destruction. Unless Israel can be delivered a major defeat just once, proponents of this belief hold, normalisation is the most powerful weapon against it, because it would then be torn apart by its internal contradictions.

There is no proof of the potential efficacy of either the major defeat concept or the normalisation weapon, even if Ben-Gurion had raised the spectre of the latter. Unfortunately, the reiteration of such unsubstantiated claims becomes a form of opiate for the people, a mystical alternative to the summoning of collective will, the formulation of a strategy for resistance, and the proactive exploitation of Israel's internal contradictions.

Plurality within the framework of Zionist unity has never been a sign of a weakness that, if left to its own dynamics, would lead to Israel's collapse. To the contrary, it is a sign of strength. It is indicative of the ability of that plurality to organise itself, in accordance with the rules of a democratic process and on the basis of certain principles of a national consensus. Moreover, to add insult to injury, those people who appeared in this region from all corners of the earth did not come from a single nationality or even, necessarily, from a democratic culture in the countries they hailed from. Yet they succeeded in creating a national bond, or call it what you will, that could serve as a basis for the rules of a communal democratic game for Jews without their polity breaking down along tribal, sectarian or cultural divides. Meanwhile, 60 years after the Nakba, the Arab peoples, who speak a single language and who had formulated an Arab national project long before the birth of colonialist Zionism, are still reluctant to respect the rules of a democratic game for fear that that will lead to dissolution into hostile parties, tribes and sects.

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/901/op5.htm