Many Muslim states already have cooled their ardor toward Palestinians, and particularly Hamas. This may have something to do with the fact that they’re more afraid of extremists undermining their regimes then they are about the threat from Israel. But it also may be that they’re simply moving on. Gulf states’ leaders building the fantastic and futuristic first-world city of Dubai may feel little in common with Hamas extremists who won’t put down the gun to pull their nation out of poverty. Saudi royalty investing in the multi-billion-dollar King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to build Arab ascendency in research may be sick and tired of the Palestinian leadership that’s kept Gaza City as a teeming slum. Moderate Arab leaders may not like Israel, but they don’t like the Hamas/Hezbollah solution to Israel, either. Iran is continuing to support Hamas, but for how long? Iran has serious domestic problems of its own, that will eventually demand most of its leaders’ attention. With high unemployment and inflation at 25 percent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can’t spend all his financial and political capital helping Hamas and Hezbollah. His successors will be forced to turn inward.
And, how long will the United States continue providing Israel with unconditional support in its war against Palestinians? Longer than Iran will support Hamas, but not indefinitely. About half of Americans say their sympathies lie with Israel in the conflict with Palestinians. And the Israel lobby, with help from Christian conservatives, will try to keep it that way. But there will come a tipping point where the American public begins asking itself: Why are we sticking their necks out for the Israelis? What does the United States get out of it? What have the Israelis ever done for the United States?
Demographic change in the United States is not in Israel’s favor. The percentage of whites – which includes the Jewish and Christian conservative populations – is declining. The nonwhite population does not have the same connection with Israel. And, while the number of Muslims in America is uncertain, the population is clearly rising, becoming wealthier and slowly gaining political power.
The tipping point may not come for years, but I think I know what it will look like. Remember when U.S. public opinion turned against the Iraq war? War fever ran high following the Iraq invasion, but once the futility, carnage and immense cost could not be ignored, public opinion reversed and nothing could change it. Americans were simply done with the Iraq war. The question is not if but when the same will happen with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like the Iraq war, the situation in Israel-Palestine is just too untenable – and outrageous -- to continue engaging the American public forever.
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