About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

555 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 7 (1998)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0555 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE Israel in transition, the phrase featured in the title of this volume, refers to a two-sided process. One side shows a country beleaguered by existential threats for decades and becoming a linchpin of a dramatic peace process, a side well known and well covered by the global media. The other side features a small and poor country becoming a strong and prosperous one, while at the same time going a long way toward joining the global marketplace. By the nature of things, the public around the world is primarily interested in the big political processes, which seem to impinge directly on the interests of external forces as well. Hence, most of the attention of the world has been directed to the diplomatic and ideological features of the historical attempt to generate a stable peace in the Middle East, first between Egypt and Israel and in recent years between Israel and the Palestinians. Yet many of the reasons for the existing peace process are to be found in domestic Israeli developments, just as many of the constraints of its continuation in the present and the future have to be understood against the background of what is taking place in Israeli society and politics. At the same time, the impact of external developments on Israeli society has been nothing short of momentous. Israel has changed dramatically, and by now it has reached a stage of development that would make it all but unrecognizable to its founding fathers. Around the world it is still customary to think of Israel in terms that have not stood the test of time, and within a framework-often romantic and nostalgic-that has little to do with present- day realities in the country. By the time most of the articles in this volume were completed-June 1997-Israel had just entered the fiftieth year of its independent existence. It celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of its most impressive victory, that of the Six Day War in 1967, and it was looking back on a hundred years of Zionism, the ideological force that is considered the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Even in purely quantitative terms, Israel is not always what it has traditionally appeared to be. While we are used to thinking about it as a small country, its population (5.8 million and growing rapidly by both immigration and a relatively high rate of natural increase) is larger than that of Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, or Finland. Its gross domestic product per capita-a good indicator of prosperity and standards of living-is the sixteenth largest in the world, putting it in a category with the advanced industrial countries of Western Europe. It has the second-largest number of cellular phones per capita in the world, and its citizens use their mobile phones for more minutes per capita than the citizens of any other country around the globe. In many additional statistical categories that indicate what is commonly referred to 7

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most