And with Israel having nuclear weapons, and the Samson Option being a very real thing I doubt Israel will ever face a truly existential threat.
It's hardly been discussed in the wake of more pressing events, but Israel currently faces (and has faced for some time) a very existential threat -- and surprise, it's why Israel's reliant on forever war as an economic vehicle. The country has no peacetime economic foundation, and is artificially supported by US military aid. Its economy is a paper tiger and dependent on perpetual war; it's a PIIGS country with lipstick. You see, Netanyahu signed the country's death warrant fifteen years ago. He did a hardcore neoliberal and broke the economy's back; most notably in the agriculture, education, and housing sectors.
The agriculture one is actually pretty funny; Israel's agriculture industry is dependent on settlement, since most of its agricultural production comes from kibbutz and moshav farming...and the
labor on those farms used to come from Palestinian de facto slave labor, until recent events sharply curtailed that for reasons that should be obvious. The next biggest source of Israel agricultural labor is international itinerant labor, mostly from Arab, eastern African, Indian subcontinent, and Pacific island countries; again, not exactly the most secure labor sources in wake of recent events. Israel has such an agricultural labor shortage right now they're pressing IDF recruits, cadets, and soldiers to work fields rather than train or fight (and covering it up by doing a "for the good of the people"/"soldiers working hand-in-hand with the people they serve" propaganda).
Getting more into brass tacks, Israel doesn't actually produce a staple crop. What little wheat and sorghum they produce goes to livestock. Otherwise, it's all fruit, veg, citrus, and...decorative flowers. They produce a trivial amount of grapes (which go to their middling wine industry) and cotton for export. They're completely dependent on import/export.
By the way, here's a funny: the CAWMBLERMUNISMS!-hating right-wingers who love Israel never
quite noticed Israel's agricultural sector is dominated by state-sanctioned, subsidized, communal farms. Which would be the rote definition of it, but for the fact it's all "settlement" land and run by the ultra-Orthodox crazies who enjoy immense social, political, and economic privilege under Likud governments...while those demos simultaneously remain the poorest in Israel. If that demographic situation is vaguely reminiscent of that of
certain central European countries in the 1930's which shall remain nameless, you're not entirely wrong.
Education speaks for itself. Netanyahu gutted Israel's public education system and poured money into...wait for it...private Orthodox religious schools. Hence the massive brain drain that's been happening for over a decade, peaking with the current genocide.
Housing is even funnier than agriculture: he jacked up property taxes across the board while heavily subsidizing settlements.
Of course, all the typical "gut social welfare, deregulate and deindustrialize" neoliberal nonsense applies, but taken to extreme. Most of Israel's vaunted venture capital sector is foreign investment, subject to the wiles of international whimsy, public perception, and profitability. That famous Israel tech sector is likewise dependent on offshoring, and almost entirely defense tech -- all those US-based MNC's that operate in Israel, offshored their defense departments there and/or contract with Israel for defense applications of existing tech.
In fact, defense is the only economic sector in Israel which doesn't only look good on paper.
That's Netanyahu's catch-22: during his rule, he's seen the transition of Israel into a country whose economy is solely dependent on one thing and one thing alone: Palestinian genocide and manufacturing consent for it. In fact, I could be persuaded to argue the Israeli economy has never been based on anything but war and genocide, given the Israeli boom-bust cycle coincides near-perfectly to cyclical conflicts against Palestine and the external Arab world (it booms during the ramp-up, peaks during the conflict, and busts after its resolution). Except this time around, Netanyahu fucked the country over so thoroughly it has no economic cornerstone independent of Palestinian genocide.
TLDR: no Palestinian or Arab on earth, or country full of them, represents an existential threat to Israel. The BDS movement does, because Netanyahu destroyed Israel's peacetime economy.
