Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes in the London Review of Books about the essential problem still facing Israel (and one that will continue as long as the state occupies the Palestinians like a colonial administrator):
If there is a ”˜tragedy of Zionism’ it is surely this. Without wanting to or even realising what was happening, the Jewish state has found itself on the wrong side of a much greater divide than the mere dispute between Jew and Arab. The reason for the global obsession with the Holy Land is that it has become a crucible, an epitome, a distilled version of a ”˜clash of civilisations’, or at any rate a Kulturkampf, with the world miserably split and Israel, whether it likes it or not, cast as a European settler state. That is why, whatever other achievements Zionism may claim, it has palpably not created a ”˜nation like all others’, normalised the Jewish people, or removed them from the pages of history.