Pride and trepidation as Israel turns 60

'Daring laboratory'
"We are small in size, small in numbers, so we cannot become a big market or a big industry," Peres told The Associated Press. "But Israel can become a daring laboratory."

Peres, a Nobel Peace laureate, promotes Israel as a "green" country and a high-tech powerhouse — including a government plan to install the world's first electric car network by 2011.

Yet Israel is also home to Sderot, a town near Hamas-ruled Gaza where people take shelter almost every day to escape militants' rockets. Israelis strive to live normal lives, but they are threatened by Iranian-backed militants on their northern and southern flanks.

They see Iran as their greatest threat, with its nuclear program and a president who calls for Israel's destruction.

Poverty and hopelessness
Israel's conflict with the Palestinians is the biggest obstacle to normalcy, and has become a rallying point for Muslim extremists worldwide.

With Israel's occupation of Arab lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war entering its fifth decade, most Palestinians live in a state of poverty and hopelessness, fueling extremism that can spoil Mideast peacemaking.

Israel at 60 is a place where creativity flourishes, but also where Palestinians are not allowed on West Bank roads reserved for Israelis. Israelis argue Palestinians have squandered opportunities for peace.

But the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even during times of peace negotiations, has deepened Palestinian distrust of Israel's professed willingness to divide the land.

Birth rates
After years of resisting territorial compromise, most Israelis have come to realize their country cannot remain both Jewish and democratic if it holds lands with high Arab birth rates.

Israel's experience with evacuating territory is not a happy one. It withdrew from Gaza three years ago, but Hamas militants eventually took over the territory. This diminished prospects for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank — a necessary ingredient of any future peace deal.

Israel has seen miracles before, beginning with its very birth when Jewish fighters — many of them coming out of Nazi ghettos and concentration camps — pushed back six Arab armies.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat also did the unthinkable when he came to Jerusalem and then signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state. And the world was stunned by a 1993 handshake on the White House lawn between former archrivals Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, raising hopes for peace in the Holy Land.

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