Israel Needs a New Map

I n November 2010, I spent a long and fascinating evening with a dozen veteran settlers from the ideological core of the movement previously known as Gush Emunim. I was in their settlement to discuss ha-matzav (the situation) with these Jews, who were living the political consequences of their ideology every day. At the end of a long evening, I asked them a question I've asked almost every Israeli I have met for the last 15 years: Can you describe a future for the country that you like and that you think is possible? When I first began asking this question in the late 1990s, Israeli Jews in the center-left of the political spectrum had little difficulty answering with one version or another of the two-state solution. On the other hand, apart from those who would simply say they trusted in HaShem (God) to make things work out, I had very little luck finding Is-raeli Jews on the right side of the spectrum capable of describing a future for the state and its relationship with the Arabs and the region as a whole that they liked and that they thought was possible. But by the early 2000s, it was not only the right that had difficulty answering this question; few in the center or left could do so, either. I was therefore not surprised at this meeting with the Gush Emunim activists in 2010 when not a single one of them was capable of answering that question. One settler declared that — for reasons he did not explain — the question itself was unfair. He was actually told by his colleagues , " No, actually, we have to realize this is a fair question, " but he insisted it was unfair. What was striking was the glum realization that none of those present , usually so voluble and confident on so many topics, could describe a future that in its basic outlines they themselves could consider both satisfying and attainable. The angst that filled their room that night is part of a larger, oft-commented-upon sense of depression, worry, even existential dread that has settled upon the Jewish state. A revealing sign of this abiding mood is the prevalence in Israeli political discussions of conditional sentences in which the main clause refers to the survival of the state. For example: " If Iran gets nuclear weapons, the state will not survive …