Planting an apple tree in the Empty Quarter will not make it grow or bear fruit, just as planting a date palm high in the mountains of Lebanon will not produce dates. The argument presented here is that what applies to the laws of biological life can also apply, as a historical analogy, to the formation and survival of states.
States Can Wither When Planted Outside Their Environment
A foreign seed planted in an environment to which it does not belong may grow for a time, but it may not survive indefinitely.
History offers an analogy in the European kingdoms established in the region during the medieval Crusades. There was a kingdom in Jerusalem and other Crusader entities in Karak, Tripoli and Antioch, alongside European control over much of the Syrian coastline from Gaza to Alexandretta.
Some of these states survived for decades. Eventually, however, they disappeared completely, leaving no political presence behind. The argument advanced here is that “Israel” should be viewed through a similar historical lens.
The Zionist project emerged from a European political environment and was transplanted into Palestine. Over time, it grew into an established demographic, military and political power. Yet the argument is that longevity and military strength do not necessarily translate into permanent regional acceptance.
More than 78 years after its establishment, “Israel” remains rejected by significant parts of the indigenous population and the surrounding Arab environment.
It has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967 and later formally annexed them, yet much of the area’s Arab population has historically resisted integration into Israeli national identity.
“Israel” also has peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, while its relationship with the Palestinian Authority is governed by political agreements. Despite decades of formal relations, social normalisation between Israeli society and populations in neighbouring Arab states has remained far more limited.
The argument, therefore, is that there is a reciprocal rejection between a political project rooted in a European Zionist framework and the Arab environment into which it was established.
The comparison offered is similar to the biological rejection that can occur when a foreign organ is transplanted into a human body: the host organism may instinctively treat it as something alien.
The central argument is that “Israel” simultaneously practises segregation against Arabs and confines itself within an increasingly narrow definition of Jewish identity, producing internal contradictions that could ultimately constrain the state’s ability to sustain itself.
States Built on Racial Separation Can Face Historical Reversal
The second argument rests on the historical experience of states structured around systems of racial hierarchy.
Such political systems may survive, strengthen and even become economically powerful, but there can come a point at which the political structure itself becomes unsustainable.
South Africa is presented as one of the clearest examples.
The apartheid state denied equal political rights to the country’s Black majority and other non-white communities while developing into a major economic power. Yet apartheid eventually collapsed, and South Africa underwent a political transformation towards formal equality and universal citizenship.
Its experience under apartheid also helps explain why the Palestinian question occupies such a prominent position in South African political discourse.
Zimbabwe followed another path from settler colonial rule towards majority government. Under British colonial rule and white-minority government, the territory was known as Rhodesia before becoming independent Zimbabwe.
The broader argument is that political entities based on racial domination and the denial of equal citizenship can survive for considerable periods without becoming historically permanent.
Nazi Germany is cited as another example of a state that expanded dramatically across Europe but could not generate acceptance among the populations subjected to occupation.
Expansion itself can also become a structural weakness.
The great Persian, Roman and Greek empires expanded across enormous territories, but expansion eventually created administrative, military and political burdens that became increasingly difficult to sustain.
According to this argument, imperial overextension does not merely risk the eventual loss of conquered territory. In some historical cases, it contributes to the weakening of the political centre itself.
The same framework is applied to “Israel” today.
The analysis argues that “Israel” is attempting to expand beyond the territory it occupied in 1948 through continued control and territorial ambitions involving the West Bank, Gaza, southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
Yet, from this perspective, it has not succeeded in establishing uncontested control over either the West Bank or Gaza, while its ambitions in Lebanon continue to face resistance and more than five decades of occupation have not resolved the status of the Golan Heights.
The conclusion drawn from these examples is that contraction, fragmentation or transformation would not be historically unprecedented.
The argument presented here views the current Israeli political structure as historically temporary, drawing comparisons with the Crusader states of Jerusalem and Antioch, apartheid South Africa and white-ruled Rhodesia.
The Petri Dish Analogy: When a Closed System Produces Its Own Crisis
A third analogy comes from microbiology.
When bacteria are cultivated inside a closed Petri dish, they are initially provided with favourable conditions for reproduction and growth. Eventually, however, the population expands until space and resources become constrained.
Waste products accumulate and the environment that initially enabled growth can become hostile to further survival.
The article’s argument applies this metaphor to “Israel”.
It contends that “Israel” has confined itself within an increasingly narrow social and political space by defining itself primarily as a Jewish state while failing to establish an inclusive political framework encompassing all communities in historic Palestine.
This, according to the argument, has produced profound contradictions with Palestinian Muslims and Christians who live under or alongside a state that defines its national character in explicitly Jewish terms.
There are also significant tensions within Jewish Israeli society itself.
“Israel” was initially shaped by political currents that included strong liberal and socialist tendencies. Over successive decades, however, its political centre of gravity has moved increasingly towards the right, with religious and nationalist forces acquiring greater influence.
The argument presented here maintains that the further this movement continues, the sharper the confrontation becomes between the far right and liberal, socialist and left-wing currents within Jewish society.
The Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community illustrates another major internal dispute.
Large sections of the Haredi population have resisted compulsory military service, and military conscription has become one of the most divisive political issues within Israeli society. Israeli data and surveys in recent years have documented widespread Haredi opposition to compulsory service.
The source argues that some Haredim also maintain a more distant relationship with Zionist national institutions, with some threatening to leave the country if compulsory military service is imposed upon them.
There are also smaller Jewish religious movements that reject Zionism altogether.
Neturei Karta, for example, rejects the theological legitimacy of a Jewish state established before the coming of the Messiah and has publicly opposed Zionism.
The source further points to political voices within the Knesset that reject territorial expansion on religious or historical grounds, arguing that reverence for biblical figures or sites does not automatically justify political sovereignty over every territory associated with them.
These divisions form the basis of the article’s “closed system” analogy: discrimination against Palestinians operates alongside increasingly intense disagreements over the meaning of Jewish identity, Zionism, military service, territorial expansion and the future character of the state.
From this perspective, the danger is not simply external opposition but the accumulation of contradictions within the political system itself.
A Project Increasingly Dependent on External Support
The final element of the argument concerns “Israel’s” dependence on the United States and the broader West for military, political and economic support.
For decades, the source argues, Western public narratives frequently depicted “Israel” as a vulnerable state surrounded by hostile Arab societies.
That image, it contends, has been increasingly challenged by the devastation in Gaza and international criticism of Israeli conduct.
The source interprets this shift as the erosion of a political narrative that had helped sustain Western support for the Zionist project.
From this perspective, “Israel’s” long-term future is compared with earlier political entities that appeared powerful and permanent in their own time but eventually disappeared or underwent fundamental transformation.
The comparison is made with the Crusader states of Jerusalem and Antioch, apartheid South Africa and white-minority Rhodesia.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has advanced a related argument, describing the current period as what he cautiously regards as the “last phase of Zionism” and portraying the increasingly aggressive character of the project as potentially characteristic of its final historical chapter.
For this analysis, the central question is therefore not whether “Israel” possesses military power today. It is whether a political structure built on occupation, exclusion, territorial expansion and deep internal contradictions can remain sustainable indefinitely.
