A growing number of Israelis are moving out. Israel was losing between 18,000 and 20,000 people each year through emigration. The current cycle of violence has almost doubled that number. Even Germany is attracting Israelis looking for “another world.” In the past three years, almost 10,000 have gone to Germany to claim citizenship because their forefathers were born there before the Nazi era. At the same time, Israel suffers from falling birth rates. The average Israeli family is not producing the 2.1 babies needed to maintain present population levels.

Extrapolating from the existing trends one could show that Israel may have no Jewish majority within three decades. A new study by Amon Sofer of Haifa University shows that Israel plus the occupied territories will be 58 percent Arab within 18 years.

Leaving aside the occupied territories, Israel’s own Arab citizens would represent 32 percent of the total population by 2020. One can imagine the electoral weight they could exert, especially within Israel’s system of proportional representation. Sofer’s projections show that Israel could have an Arab majority 30 years from now.

Leaving statistics aside, it is clear that Israel suffers from national claustrophobia. It is a tiny country, some one percent of Saudi Arabia’s territory, located in a hostile region. It has little access to its region and has to tag itself to Europe, where anti-Semitism was born and still lives in the darker crannies of the popular subconscious.

As the Israeli novelist Amos Oz shows, life in Israel is no great fun. The state-dominated economy harks back to the Soviet model. One recurrent joke is that the only way to make a small fortune in Israel is to arrive with a big one!

Israel has some of the highest taxation levels in the world, partly because it has to finance a costly war machine. And now, as the experience of south Lebanon showed, that war machine no longer guarantees victories. Revelations that Israel has a nuclear arsenal are a cause of concern for many Israelis. Israel has stockpiled some 200 atomic bombs, each 10 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. So much destructive power in so small a country is a recipe for disaster in case of accident, let alone war. The fact that a young person could spend up to two years of his or her life in military service is causing growing resentment especially among the new middle classes that look to Europe and the United States as models. The rising influence of Jewish fundamentalists, and the corruption they have brought into the heart of government, disturbs liberal Israelis.

It was another form of “ national claustrophobia” that the Nazis used to justify their agenda: they were looking for “ Lebensraum” (living space) where the German nation would supposedly breathe and grow. Israel, too, needs “ Lebensraum” which can come only at the expense of the Arabs. This is why the founders of Zionism dreamed of a state extending from the Nile to the Euphrates. That dream has little chance of being realized.

To break out of “national claustrophobia”, Israel not only has to make peace with the Arabs but also to win their hearts. That is not easily achieved. Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt is two decades old and yet, as far as people-to-people contact goes, the two neighbors live on different planets.

Planting a community in the middle of hostile territory was not invented by Israel. Human history is full of similar events. In every case one of three things happens.

In most cases, the newcomers are gradually absorbed into the reality of their environment. This was the case with Aryans who settled in India. The original Greeks had a similar experience when they began to pour into the areas around the Aegean Sea. In a few other cases the newcomers were numerous enough to wipe out the existing societies. This was the case with the European conquest of North America. A third possibility, observed in some Latin American societies, is the blending of the native communities with the newcomers.

Which of these models could apply to Israel?

Israel cannot be absorbed into the broader Arab reality because its raison d’etre is the preservation of a Jewish persona. Nor can Israel absorb the Arabs because it lacks numerical superiority. Judaism rejects proselytizing, and thus cannot open itself to converts. Here is a house that anyone can leave, albeit by attracting curses as send-off, but no stranger can enter even at the price of submission.

The Zionist movement emerged in the 19th century when nationalism was in vogue in Europe. The birthplace of Zionism was Vienna, capital of a cosmopolitan empire where atavistic uncertainties were comforted by the idea of nationhood. Zionism became a synthesis of the weaknesses of nationalism on the one hand and of religious obscurantism on the other.

Nationalism is a secular doctrine that rejects religious distinctions in the name of the superior reality of the “nation.” At the same time nationalism opens its doors to anyone who wants to belong to the nation concerned. Religion, however, recognizes no nations and regards nationalism as anathema. Religion and nationalism can live together only if the former is regarded as a matter for the individual while the latter concerns the community. Thus Zionism is a unity of opposites, trying to bring together two conflicting realities.

That leaves the third model: the inclusion of Israel into a new blended reality, which requires the opening of the Arab hinterland to the Jewish state.

Some Israeli politicians have understood this — among them Shimon Peres. In a book published in the 1990s, Peres argued that Israel could prosper only if it found a place as an accepted part of its region. Peres dreamed of Israel as “ the brain” of a region from Morocco to Oman, putting the Jewish state in command of what could become an economic “superzone”. In other words, Israel would gain an empire without recourse to traditional methods.

An empire, however, needs the openness and religious tolerance that a theological-ethnic state like Israel cannot offer. Rome could become an empire because it did not believe in exclusivity and was not fussy about marrying non-Romans. Israel is a project aimed at perpetuating what cannot be fixed: i.e. religious and ethnic identities.

Nations survive and prosper by constantly changing, admitting into their fold newcomers and adopting new ideas and life-styles. A nation is a process of becoming, not an immutable “ being”. The secret of a nation’s survival is its inclusiveness. Israel, however, is an exclusive club that cannot produce the resilience of bona fide nations. Does Israel have a future?

Yes, but not as a theological-ethnic state. It could, some time in the future, form a confederation with Jordan and an inevitable Palestinian state. Further down the road, there could be a broader grouping, at least at economic level, to include other regional states. Whichever way one looks at it Israel’s chances of survival as a distinct community depends on its ability to abandon the Zionist dream and transform itself into a democratic, pluralist and multifaith state.

Once that happens Israel would not be what it is today.