East in Hebrew usage: Middle East is a European term, assuming the center of the world to be somewhere in the West, but it is ridiculous for an Israeli to talk about the Middle East when he means, for example, countries like Algeria or even Egypt, which lie to our west. Therefore, when we started to talk about a Hebrew nation instead of a Jewish nation, we also started to talk about the Semitic region, or simply The Region (ha-merkhav) instead of the Middle East.
Belonging to The Region means dealing with the central problem of our existence-the Arabs-either by military or by political means, either through war or through peace. We Israelis, who have been born into this problem, know that we must solve it-we all know it, from Moshe Dayan, identified with the warlike approach, to people like me, standing for the opposite. We don't wrack our brains trying to hnd a solution to the Jewish Question, real or imaginary; the central task of our generation is to integrate our nation into the framework of our region.
We are nationalists. To Western ears this word has a negative coloring. Indeed, to anyone from the older Western nations, nationalism is an unconscious part of a mental set; such a person can even consciously believe that nationalism belongs to the past and is an evil to be overcome.
Yet nationalism simply means that in the world of today, individuals, except for perhaps a handful of universal geniuses, function within national political frameworks and national cultures. In the best sense, nationalism, defending its own national rights, recognizes the national rights of others. It is only in its exaggerations, in its imperialist or fascist forms which try to suppress other nations, that nationalism becomes a destructive force.
Even extreme nationalists, such as Dayan, recognize the national aspirations of the Arabs, something our Zionist fathers were unable or unwilling to take into account.
The emergence, then, of a young nationalist generation, superseding Zionism, creates the psychological basis for a solution.