Lord Risby: Israel must grasp the mood for change

Lord Risby is the former Conservative MP Richard Spring.

As a student I visited Israel when the collectivist culture of the founding fathers 63 years ago was still in evidence. The ethos of kibbutz life was a source of considerable national satisfaction. Today as one looks at Israel, it has been transformed into one of the most successful economies in the world. From science to medicine, from IT to bio-technology, Israel continues to produce both brilliant individuals and world-beating businesses of the highest quality.

When Binyamin Netanyahu addresses the US Congress later this month he can feel very proud of his country’s accomplishments. He will be rapturously received by the representatives of a country to which Israel is joined at the hip. Israel’s democratic credentials and its ferociously independent judiciary are complemented, in the American view, by its being on the front line against terrorism, and the threats to its very existence expressed by theocratic Iran.

Yet surely this is precisely the time for Israel to be bold and counter-intuitive, to grasp the mood for change sweeping through its neighbours and embrace it, to set out a new and different geo-political compact for the region. Yet the country’s response to the seismic changes in the Arab world has been muted and cautious. Israel now faces the possibility of a successful Hamas-Fatah alliance, internationally recognised statehood for the Palestinians, a less predictable Egyptian government and an unknown ultimate outcome in Syria.