Israel seems to be powerful, but in fact it is extremely insecure, as the core of the three major fulcrums of the United States in the world, the fate of the country is deeply bound to the United States, when the United States is strong, it can be a little nicer to the Palestinians, and slowly expand the territory it actually occupies by gentle means.
However, when the relative strength of the United States weakened, and even withdrew from the Middle East, and the Arab world began to reconcile, Israel became the opposite of the Arab world, and its tension can be imagined, and the sense of insecurity that had existed for thousands of years was immediately aroused, just like being chased by a tiger, and it had to rush forward desperately, and it did not care about eating and drinking.
But this desperate struggle, unbridled and indiscriminate use of violence, has exacerbated Israel's crisis and made it even more vulnerable.
A country's perception of its own strength will directly affect its internal and external decision-making. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States launched the Gulf War to defeat Iraq, which is known as the third in the world, and established a hegemonic power unprecedented in human history.
As a result, there was a relaxation of the Palestinians, the promotion of Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, and the agreement to establish a Palestinian state. But this in no way means that Israel has given up on the idea of completely occupying the territory of Palestine and even beyond, but only sees the power of the Palestinians and wants to take their time, and Israel also needs the Palestinians to take on low-paid work.
For example, the Erez Industrial Park established in the northern Gaza Strip once had more than 200 factories and employed more than 5,000 Palestinian workers, and now in Israel, there are a large number of Palestinians without Israeli nationality engaged in manual labor such as construction, cleaners, and dishwashers, which is the foundation of Israel's prosperity.
But there are pros and cons.
The collapse of the Soviet Union greatly improved Israel's international environment, strengthened economic and trade ties with many Third World countries, and more importantly, ushered in a wave of Jewish immigration far beyond that of a few decades earlier.
At the end of 1989, Israel's total population was only 4.56 million, and only in 1990-1997 there was an influx of 710,000 Soviet Jews, and the total number of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union in Israel exceeded 1 million, and in the 2019 election, 770,000 voters were among the immigrants from the Soviet Union, accounting for 12% of all voters, corresponding to 15-17 parliamentary seats, becoming a key force influencing Israel's political situation.
The quality of the population of Soviet immigrants was too high, and half of them were engaged in academic research or management before emigrating. Soviet immigrants who came to Israel in 1990-1993 alone had 57,400 engineers and 12,200 doctors, compared with 30,200 engineers and 15,600 doctors in 1989.
Thanks to the Jews' attention to education and the preferential treatment of the Jewish people in the Soviet Union, these people also engaged in research in many cutting-edge fields in the Soviet Union, which greatly promoted Israel's scientific and technological progress and high-tech industrial development, and laid a solid foundation for Israel in the fields of software development, image processing, and semiconductors. In recent years, in the Global Innovation Index Report, Israel's total innovation index has been ranked among the top 20 in the world for many years, and its sub-categories such as R&D expenditure intensity, innovation competitiveness, and financing environment for technology companies have often ranked first in the world.
Today, 14% of Israel's citizens are engaged in technical and non-skilled high-tech occupations, and the science and technology industry accounts for 20% of GDP. In 2021, high-tech exports accounted for 54% of the total export value, of which the semiconductor industry accounted for 16%, with a population of less than 10 million, there are more than 30,000 chip engineers and more than 200 chip companies, which has also attracted investment from global high-tech enterprises.
Relying on the strong talent advantage, Israel has been able to achieve a thorough economic transformation, from a planned economy to a market economy, from public ownership to private ownership, and vigorously promote scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship, and Israel has become a "country of entrepreneurship".
The influx of a large number of Soviet Jewish immigrants not only increased consumer demand and attracted a large amount of foreign investment, but also greatly stimulated Israel's construction and real estate industry, Israel began to build housing and settlements on a large scale, and many small towns developed rapidly, Beersheba, the center of the Negev region of Israel, was just a very barren town before, and the influx of a large number of Soviet Jews made the population of this town rapidly increase to more than 250,000, which is what it is now prosperous.
But, again, but.
The Soviet Jews brought more than just benefits, and it didn't matter when the United States was more powerful than ever, but when the situation in the region deteriorated, it was different.
Under the influence of the Soviet Union and the memory of the narrow victory in the Fourth Middle East War, the Soviet Jews were particularly worried about the lack of national strategic depth, and Israel had placed more Soviet Jews in Palestinian areas close to Gaza and even the West Bank, which not only squeezed out the resources and space for the Palestinians to survive, but also exacerbated the Palestinian-Israeli contradictions, making the Soviet Jewish immigrants on the front line pay more attention to security.
For various reasons, Soviet Jewish immigrants were particularly eager to build a thicker strategic barrier for Israel and make up for the lack of strategic depth, and even regarded "settlements" as the fulcrum for realizing the "Greater Israel Dream".
Soviet Jewish immigrants paid special attention to security, the number of voters was large enough, there were no overwhelming parties in Israel, and there were many parties and scattered forces, so Soviet Jewish immigrants became a force to influence the political situation.
As the security situation deteriorated, especially after the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in 2006, and the "Cast Lead" campaign in 2009 against Gaza, the right-wing Homeland Party began to focus on representing the will of Soviet Jewish immigrants, and the slogan put forward in the 2009 election was to address Israel's security issues rather than the interests of immigrants.
Hardline Jewish immigrant votes are increasingly important to Likud and Netanyahu. In 2013, it was because the Homeland Party joined the Likud Party that the coalition successfully formed a government ahead of other parties, and in 2018, the Homeland Party was dissatisfied with Netanyahu and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement, and party leader Lieberman resigned as defense minister, and in the 2019 elections, it refused to ally with the Likud party, resulting in the failure of the coalition, and also led to four consecutive elections in Israel from 2019 to 2020.
Perhaps as a sign of loyalty, immigration is more extreme. Just like the current Israeli Minister of National Security, Ben Gvir, who was originally an Iraqi Kurd, was adopted by a Jewish couple to become an Israeli national, but he himself is more extreme than the Israelis, and is extremely hostile to Arabs, and even openly called for the elimination of Prime Minister Rabin.
After introducing the Soviet Jewish immigrants inside Israel, it is easier to understand why Netanyahu is so tough.
But toughness comes at a price, and Israel, which looks like a strong Israel, is nothing more than a paper tiger, and if it doesn't find a good opportunity to get off the donkey, it is likely to suffer irreparable damage.
Israel is surrounded by the Arab world, and security is important, but more importantly, it is the economy, which is the foundation on which Israel can stand, and Israel's economic structure is extremely fragile.
More than 7% of Israel's GDP belongs to the service industry, the core is the science and technology service industry, because of the high technology content, is a country of entrepreneurship, so there are many high-income people, which drives a significant increase in consumption power, which also makes the service industry more profitable, thereby driving other service industry practitioners to rise, forming a very virtuous circle.
Although Israel has a developed agriculture, it mainly produces high value-added agricultural products, and it makes good profits from exports before buying food, which is good in peacetime, but once the situation is unstable, Israel cannot even guarantee its own food security.
The upside is that Israel has become a haven for foreign capital investment, which has increased from $3.32 billion in 2015 to $25.6 billion in 2021 in Israel's high-tech industries alone.
But this also means that Israel's prosperity is based on foreign investment, talent, scientific and technological innovation, and globalization, and is highly dependent on a safe and stable external environment. The deterioration of the Palestinian-Israeli situation after 2000 led to two consecutive years of negative growth in Israel in 2001 and 2002, and the tourism industry also plummeted.
It's just that fortunately, the integration of high-quality immigrants from the Soviet Union has allowed Israel to catch up with the information revolution and the wave of globalization, and the dominant semiconductors have been integrated into the general trend of the times and have obtained extremely rich returns.
But what about this time?
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict that broke out in September 2000 lasted for more than 20 months, killing about 2,000 people on both sides and injuring more than 15,000 people.
This is bound to greatly shake the confidence of external investors, such as Nvidia has announced the cancellation of the artificial intelligence summit scheduled for Tel Aviv this week, what about high-tech talent?
In 2020, the proportion of R&D investment in R&D investment in Israel was only 9.6%, the lowest among OECD countries.
The industrial structure is even more dangerous, with Israel's own technology enterprises basically engaged in high-profit human capital and a knowledge-based economy, and the domestic industrial manufacturing that turns technology into reality is relatively weak and highly dependent on multinational corporations.
Once security is not guaranteed, external investment, immigration, and even the loss of existing assets, industries, and talents will be greatly damaged, Israel's economy will inevitably be hit hard. The deterioration of the situation will inevitably increase military spending, which will make matters worse.
And this time, once the economy is damaged, it will be difficult to get out of the crisis.
After all, there are no more millions of high-quality Soviet Jewish immigrants, the globalization of the semiconductor industry has been interrupted, and countries are trying to build their own systems.
Continue to be tough? Even if Hamas is cleaned up, a second or third Hamas will be born among the surviving Palestinians, and as for genocide, don't joke, it will be self-defeating.
Solve the consequences of your own making.