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Dazzling high-tech firms divert attention from a serious productivity problem.

Special Report: Six Days of War, 50 Years of Occupation / The Economist
May 20, 2017

The economic disparities are striking. With GDP per person at $35,700 a year in 2015, Israel’s standard of living is much the same as France’s. For the West Bank the figure stands at $3,700, akin to Egypt’s; for Gaza it is about $1,700, similar to Congo-Brazzaville’s. In real terms, Gazans are about 25% poorer today than they were at the time of the Oslo accords.

Israel’s security barrier is, to a large extent, also a one-way protectionist barrier. The Palestinian market is fully exposed to Israeli goods, but Palestinian products struggle to get out. Strawberry farmers in Gaza, working less than a kilometer from the border fence, say they cannot export to Israel and only rarely to the West Bank. In the main, Palestinians are treated as a source of cheap, and disposable, labor.

IN A PATCH of desert until recently frequented only by passing camels, workers in a computer lab examine new “smart” appliances: a slow cooker on one bench, a security camera on another, a smoke detector on a third. Millions of devices that incorporate mini-computers are being connected to the internet. But as well as convenience, the “internet of things” offers cyber-criminals many new vulnerabilities to exploit. “If I were an attacker, I would never hide in your PC,” says Oleg Brodt, director of research and development at Cyber@BGU, the cyber-security research centre run by Ben Gurion University in Beersheva. “I would try to hide in your smoke detector or door alarm, because nobody bothers to protect them.”

The centre has shown how wearable devices can be used to eavesdrop on corporate networks. It has also demonstrated the multitude of ways in which even supposedly ultra-secure computer systems not connected to the internet can be hacked. These include exploiting FM radio waves emitted by video cards, the blinking of LED lights or even the pattern of heat signatures.

Continue reading “Startup Nation or Left-Behind Nation? Israel’s Economy is a Study in Contrasts”

Religious soldiers are replacing kibbutzniks. Does it matter?

Special Report: Six Days of War, 50 Years of Occupation / The Economist
May 20, 2017

Is the IDF the most moral army in the world, as many claim? There must be doubts. Breaking the Silence, a group of reservists who bear witness to what they have seen and had to do while in uniform, tell many disturbing stories, from the petty humiliation of Palestinians to actions that might count as war crimes.

ARMY INDUCTION DAY feels like a graduation party. Family and friends gather. The kids leave home to become the defenders of the Jewish state. The gun is passed from father to son. On the day the paratroopers are being signed up at Bakum, the main recruitment centre of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), young men dance in a circle to the beat of a drum, singing “Don’t be afraid, Israel.” All in the cheerful band wear the knitted skullcaps of the national-religious movement, having studied at a religious military academy in the settlement of Eli.

Religious Zionists have largely taken over the ideological fire of the secular kibbutz movement, which built socialist collective farms in the early years of the state. Now it is the boys from the yeshivas (Jewish seminaries) who seek to settle the land and become army officers. If the army is a microcosm of Israeli society, then its top units may be the harbingers of Israel’s future elite. The paratroopers form a sort of military aristocracy. Eight of the 15 IDF chiefs of staff since 1967 have worn the red beret and boots, and several became prominent politicians.

Continue reading “The Army’s New Elite: Israel’s Army is Recruiting Ever More Ultra-Orthodox Officers”

Israel’s politicians promote religion and intolerance.

Special Report: Six Days of War, 50 Years of Occupation / The Economist
May 20, 2017

“I am not so concerned about security and more concerned about what happens in Israel. This issue divides us. It creates hate and chauvinism. I don’t want Israel to become hell.”
— Israel Harel, a veteran of the Israeli settler movement

THE SIGN AT the entrance is clear: “According to Torah Law entering the Temple Mount area is strictly forbidden due to the holiness of the site.” Rabbinical tradition holds that Jews may not set foot on any part of the esplanade atop Jerusalem’s holiest site. Once the location of the Jewish temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, the area has for centuries been a Muslim compound comprising the al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock. Because the location of the Holy of Holies (the inner sanctum of the former temple) is unknown, say the rabbis, ritually impure Jews might accidentally enter and defile it. These days Jews mostly pray outside, at the base of the retaining wall, known as the Western Wall, or Kotel.

Nonetheless, Jewish zealots venture into the al-Aqsa compound almost every day, ostensibly as tourists. The police let them jump the queue of foreigners and form a protective cordon as they perambulate the Dome of the Rock, amid curses from Muslim worshippers. Sometimes they stand silently, gazing at it longingly. They are filmed by the police, who are supposed to ensure that they do not attempt to pray. One trick is to address God while pretending to speak on a mobile phone.

Continue reading “Right v. Far Right: Politics in Israel No Longer Offers Much of a Choice”

A guide to the ABC of the conflict.

Special Report: Six Days of War, 50 Years of Occupation / The Economist
May 20, 2017

Between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean, the overall number of Palestinians has more or less caught up with the number of Jews: about 6.5m for each. Palestinian statisticians say Arabs will equal Jews by the end of the year; Israeli demographers reckon the high birth rate among the ultra-Orthodox will keep Jews just ahead.

THE SIX-DAY WAR increased Israel’s territory threefold. The “borders of Auschwitz” were gone; the vulnerable nine-mile narrow waist acquired a thick cuirass with the mountains of the West Bank. Israel soon annexed East Jerusalem with some surrounding land; it did the same with the Golan Heights in 1981. Elsewhere, it left the status of the occupied territories undefined, waiting for a peace that never came even as Jews settled there.

After the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when Israel was caught off-guard by Egypt and Syria, America mediated a limited “disengagement” in Sinai and the Golan. In 1979 Israel agreed to give back all of Sinai under a peace treaty with Egypt.

The Oslo accord of 1993 set out a five-year period of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It left the hardest issues — borders, settlements, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees — to be sorted out later. The interim arrangements created a crazy quilt of territories: in Area A, the main Palestinian cities, the Palestinian Authority was given full civil and security control; in Area B, mostly taking in Palestinian villages, it had civil-affairs and some law-and-order powers, but Israel retained ultimate security control; in Area C, the biggest zone, encompassing settlements, access roads, nature reserves and so on, Israel kept full control (see map).

Continue reading “Peace, Or in Pieces? How the 1967 War Changed the Shape of Israel”