For more than two years, Israel has found itself in the eye of a storm. This is not to say that Israel has been at the center of events. Quite the contrary — the eye of the storm is a very quiet place. Israel has been eerily quiet. As Israelis look left and right, north and south, east and west, all they see is a tornado of chaos, massacres, instability, political and economic collapse, sectarian violence, gang rapes, religious fanaticism and civil wars. Yet, miraculously, amidst all this, Israel is stable, calm, democratic and prosperous.

The Post-World War I Order that shaped the Middle East for the past century is unraveling violently. The dark forces of hatred between sects, tribes, religions and classes that had been suppressed by sultans, kings and dictators have risen to the surface. If history is any guide, it will be decades or even centuries before these forces play themselves out. And if the French revolution is anything to go by, Egypt will see the high ideals of the initial days of its revolution realized in a century or two — not earlier.

There is tremendous hope in the desire expressed by people throughout the region for freedom and democracy, but even under the best of circumstances, the transition to stable, liberal democracy takes several decades, and the Arab world has nothing even approximating the best of circumstances. The combination of the democratic deficit, collapsing economies, corruption, illiteracy and poverty is the worst possible one.

Faced with events of such historic proportions and intense violence, the best prescription for Israel is to stay out — or more precisely, to be a "neutral bunker." Neutral in the sense that Israel should have nothing to say regarding the events unfolding in the Arab world, and bunker in the sense that Israel's foreign and defense policy should operate with one goal: prevent the insanity gripping the Arab world from invading its borders.