These Are Normal Days, Ms. Livni.

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After being named Prime Minister-designate, Tzipi Livni told reporters: "These are not normal days for Israel. There are great diplomatic and economic challenges facing it." (Emphasis added).

But the reality is: these are precisely normal days for Israel. There are always great diplomatic and economic threats. The question is: what does tiny Israel do to change the normal days into better days?

The cost of normal days for the past sixty years—threats of war and economic boycotts—has been the cementation of a society that is too often on edge, anxious and temperamental. Normal days means that Israel has been unable to become an outwardly loving, warm and gentle society of high justice and morality that serves as a light to other nations.

The continued bellicose threats from enemies dedicated to Israel’s destruction have caused great internal strife. Sometimes the internal strive even exists within one person. Prime Minister Olmert now claims that he was wrong for thirty-five years, and that the only way to peace is through the same type of concessions that did not work in Lebanon, have not worked in Gaza, and have been rejected by Arab counterparts for 60 years.

Israel is now militarily and financially dependent on the United States. This is because Israel is not the necessary size to thrive peacefully and live as a full partner with other nations. Its diminutive size prevents it from maximally contributing towards the betterment of humanity.

These are normal days, Ms. Livni. But normal days must end.

The Times (of London) had it right nearly 90 years ago. The Jordan River “will not do as Palestine’s (the future Jewish state–ed.) eastern boundary. Our duty as Mandatory,” the Times proclaimed in reference to the British who were chosen by the world to act as mandatory, “is to make Jewish Palestine not a struggling state but one that is capable of a vigorous and independent national life.”

But sympathy for the plight of Jews has waned on the world stage, and times have put enormous pressure on Israel.

Under the current political course, Israel is a struggling state. Under the current political course, Israel’s national life is far from independent. Under the current political course, diplomatic and economic challenges will continue indefinitely until Israel collapses.

Of course, Israel might survive as a failed nuclear state for some time, but Israel’s days of contribution will diminish as the enlightened and able abandon the dream, abandon the vision, and finally abandon an uncivil society. Just like the disappearing non-Muslim communities throughout the former Ottoman Empire, the Jews of Israel will be worn down to a point of capitulation.

As Yasser Arafat said after signing the Oslo Accords, “We will make life unbearable for the Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; Jews won’t want to live among us Arabs.”

It may be shocking, but like Lehman Brothers, Israel is not too big for the world to let fail.

The assumptions of the country’s leaders—that the road to peace and prosperity runs through the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza—must change, or the country must change its leaders. There is plenty of real estate throughout the Middle-East for everyone to peacefully co-exist.

A peace deal between Israel and her Arab neighbors that only temporarily replaces normal days with better days is no peace deal at all.

True peace will address the humanitarian needs of Palestinian Arabs within the context of 21 independent countries that presently control 99.8% of the greater Middle-East. And true peace will allow Israel to flourish, be truly independent of all other countries, and lead to perpetual better days so that Israel and Israelis can live in a just, moral and civil society that contributes mightily to the good of all humanity—truly a light to others nations.

-- David Naggar