Israel at 60

Former U.S. National Security Adviser

Israel's birth came as redemption in the wake of an unprecedented crime — the Holocaust of the Jewish people. The 60 years that followed were punctuated by moments of pride and peril: victories in several wars of national survival, but also by continuing uncertainty about the country's future. Will Israel survive another 60 years if the next decades are dominated by nuclear proliferation, growing violence in the Middle East, intensifying popular passions among the demographically prolific Palestinians, and eventually, the fading of America's regional domination?

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin died 12 years ago at the hand of a fellow citizen because he had the courage to recognize that his country's long-term survival required that the Biblical Land of Israel be shared with another people born of the same soil, the Palestinians. To make that happen, both sides will have to make territorial compromises and painful concessions: the Palestinians by forsaking "the right of return," the Israelis by a willingness to agree that a united Jerusalem be the capital of two states.

Such an outcome could yet be Israel's greatest triumph: security, dignity, and prosperity for two talented peoples who, by working together, could transform Israel and Palestine into the Singapore of the Middle East. And, it's an outcome in whose achievement America has a moral and a strategic stake.