Can Israel Be a Mideast Country?

Israel is, of course, Semitic. It is rooted in the Middle East. Its population is, in a steadily growing majority, non-European. Yet Israel is perceived-—by itself as well as by others-—to be a European nation. That this should be so, more than three decades after the achievement of Israeli independence, suggests a singular rigidity in both Arab and Israeli thinking.

Israel as a European nation is the central myth of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Like most myths, it is not entirely untrue. But it also is not altogether true. A historical examination of the Middle East would show, at the very least, a more complex picture.

The power of myth rests not upon factual accuracy but upon symbolic expression. Just as the identifica...