People have been writing about “the day after” in the Middle East, as for example this. The thrust of these essays is to try to imagine what peace might look like in the region.
Peace presupposes a willingness to stop fighting. Can you imagine the Islamic forces opposing Israel being willing to stop fighting while Israel remains in place? I cannot.
Can you imagine Israel’s Jews being willing to pack up and do the diaspora all over again? Again, I cannot. Therefore, for me at least, there is no imaginable “day after.”
Have there been lulls in the fighting since Israel was founded? Certainly, normally after Israel has militarily defeated the Arabs there is a period of apparent “peace” while the Arabs recoup their battered societies and forces.
Does this constitute a “day after?” Not in my mind, it doesn’t. Show me a place anywhere in the world where Muslims have agreed to live in peace with their non-Muslim neighbors and then actually done so for any reasonable period. I follow international affairs and I know of no such place.
