The first 66 years in the life of a state are a period of mentoring and adaptation, of putting down roots and of growth. Not so in Israel’s case. Few states, if any, have reaped a comparable harvest of accomplishments in the first seven decades of their existence. A state born on the morrow of the Holocaust, on a land poor in resources but saturated with the blood of its fighters, became in an instant fertile soil for new Hebrew creation, for a flourishing industry and a burgeoning scientific hothouse. The security threat that kept hovering over the young state, as well as the economic, social and cultural challenges, turned it into a vibrant, creative, ambitious entity.

The Middle East arms race, Palestinian terror and Arab refusal to make peace sucked up the best of the state’s human resources. Defense considerations and the politics of fear left no room for diplomatic initiative and the politics of hope. For most of its first 40 years, the Western world — with the United States at its head — stood unquestioningly at Israel’s side. In the first 20 years after its conquest of the territories, Israel was the darling of the international community and, of course, of the Jewish communities around the world. The settlement enterprise was considered in those years an integral part of the “startup,” dubbed in Orwellian parlance “enlightened occupation.”

Since the first intifada, which broke out at the end of 1987 and was accompanied a year later by the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the roles keep reversing. Israel started showing early signs of weariness and complacency, and the Palestinians took the initiative and started displaying creativity. From a terror organization with which contact was banned by Israeli and US law, the PLO turned into a recognized ruling party whose diplomatic representatives are scattered around dozens of world capitals. The UN repeatedly condemns the construction in the settlements, and more and more states and organizations around the world are joining the boycott of settlement products. The Palestinian signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993 brought about a split of Israeli society and division among the Jewish communities in the West. The member states of the Arab League and of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation are adhering to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and providing the Palestinians with total backing to proceed, guided by the beacon of this plan.

The last diplomatic initiative with which Israel has been credited in the arena of the conflict was its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005. Since then, Israel excels at imposing punishments and making threats in response to Palestinian initiatives. In November 2012, 138 states voted in favor of Palestine’s acceptance by the UN as a nonmember observer state. Besides Israel, only the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau voted against the resolution, which grants Palestine a status similar to that of the Vatican. In addition to its symbolic significance, the move strengthened the Palestinians’ international standing and their demand for an end to the occupation. And what did Israel do? It berated the world for failing to demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it continued to expand the settlements and display helplessness in dealing with violent settlers who perpetrate acts of terror known as “price tag.” Despite it all, the Palestinians insisted on staying at the negotiating table, showed restraint and rubbed their hands in glee at the international community’s growing criticism of Israel.