CAN ISRAEL Survive?

After gains on Iran, Tel Aviv faces mounting strains—military, political and demographic—that raise fresh questions about its long-term security and global standing

- BY MATTHEW TOSTEVIN Matthew Tostevin is global affairs editor at Newsweek. Email him at [e-mail]

"ISRAEL IS AT THE PEAK OF ITS POWER,” ISRAELI PRIME Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said triumphantly on Holocaust Remembrance Day in April. Those words look increasingly prophetic in a way he did not intend, as the limits of the power he trumpeted become evident. U.S. President Donald Trump's deal to end what began as a joint war with Iran has left Israel on the sidelines and its security concerns ignored.

Personal strains are showing between Netanyahu and an irritated Trump, who had previously been hailed as the most Israel-friendly president yet, and Israel's armed forces are stretched from Lebanon to Syria to Gaza and the West Bank.

Meanwhile, anti-Israel sentiment is growing not only in Europe but in the United States, which has been the bedrock of Israel’s support. Add in the demographic and political strains in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and Israel has rarely looked more alone and vulnerable, despite its vaunted strength.

It raises questions about the long-term survival of a state founded in 1948, the idea of which sounded “mad,” Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, wrote in his diary in the late 1800s.

“We are at an existential moment,” former Israeli prime minister and Netanyahu opponent Naftali Bennett told The Times of Israel mid-June. “It’s never been Israel's doctrine to have an ongoing war, which exhausts Israeli society, exhausts the reservists, exhausts the economy, and dramatically hurts our international standing.”

The Israeli government did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment.