Israel is in the doldrums. It is going nowhere. Its president, Moshe Katsav, and its prime minister, Ehud Olmert, are mired in scandals as are other senior Israeli politicians. It came out badly from the fighting with Hezbollah for more than a month in Lebanon. Ehud Olmert had intended to remove certain Israeli settlements from the West Bank following the withdrawal from Gaza, but this has been put on hold. Iran is seen as the main threat and its influence is stronger in the area than it has been for decades. It is believed it is going to follow Israel’s example and develop nuclear weapons.

One of the inherent problems of being an Israeli citizen is that you have been brought up on myths and lies. You have been told that you are living in a land promised to you by God — and you are thus superior to anybody else living in that land, even if they have lived there for countless centuries. You have been told that because Jews undoubtedly lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago this justifies a Jewish state in Palestine in the 21st century.

It gets worse. You have been told that being a Jew and belonging to one of the world’s great religions is not sufficient; you must also be identified with a sliver of land, the size of Wales, surrounded by hostile Arab states.

You, or your parents, were once told by a Prime Minister (Gold Meir in 1969) that “There are no Palestinians”, but you see them all the time. You have been told that Israel was created to look after the Jews that survived the massacres that so disgraced Europe in the middle of the last century, which ignores the single-sentence declaration embodied by Arthur Balfour in 1917. If you start for a moment to examine these myths and lies it must be difficult to know where to stop and how to draw the line.

Under the heading “Diaspora blues” The Economist (Jan. 13) had a thoughtful article on Israel and its supporters. In it, the writer said:

“Israel is an increasingly divided society. Secular and religious Jews used to have more beliefs in common, albeit for different reasons (e.g. holding on to the occupied territories, whether for security or for religious redemption), but for decades their interests have been diverging. They disagree on the most basic questions: Borders, who is a Jew, the role of religion, the status of non-Jews.”

It is just possible that Israel could turn one day from a democracy to a theocracy. It is true that the Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox in Israel, only make up ten percent of the population. But since 1948 the Haredim have been growing in strength. They tend to have large families.

I was astonished when I discovered many years ago, that most of the Haredim do not recognize the State of Israel and, indeed, are anti-Zionist. To the outside it does seem curious that such extremists should support foreign and defense policies that could easily lead to armed conflict with their Arab neighbors, while most of them and their families do not serve in the Israeli Defense Forces.

The population of Israel is 6.1 million of which 14 percent are Arab Muslim and 2.5 percent Christian. A further 3.6 million Palestinians are dispersed between Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Approximately ten Palestinian babies are being born for every two Israeli babies and it is possible that by about 2070 most Israelis will be Arab Israelis. Of course, the majority of the population of the former Mandated Palestine will be Arab well before that date, which is why Israeli politicians do not talk of a single state solution. But the ever-expanding Israeli settlements work against the two-state solution. Israelis claim that Israel is the only properly functioning democracy in the Middle East — a claim that is becoming less and less true. What do they think will happen when the Arab Israelis are in the driving seat? That is likely to happen in their children’s lifetime. In Jerusalem the Arab population is expected to outnumber the Jewish population by 2028.

Israel has an amazingly discriminatory Law of Return, which non-Jews and a few Jews find hard to accept in this new century. In general terms this allows citizenship in Israel to be granted to those who have a Jewish spouse or Jewish roots. Many non-Israelis think Israel’s long-term future lies in abandoning the concept of being a Jewish state. I agree with them; it will happen in this century.

It is blindingly obvious that the Israelis need to clean out their political stables, elect honest, decent and capable politicians (hopefully fewer generals!) and have a structured debate as to what Israel should stand for in 2007. The lack of strategic thinking is astonishing.