ARTICLE: Letter from Jerusalem: The Apostate, by David Remnick, The New Yorker, July 30, 2007

Excerpt:

[T]hey also wonder how, when both Palestinian and Israeli politics have degenerated, the economy has soared. The Tel Aviv stock-exchange index has gone up two hundred and ten per cent in the past four years. ...

It may turn out that the most important constituency applying pressure to the Israeli government to engage the Palestinians in diplomatic negotiations will be not the activists or the left wing of the Labor Party but, rather, the entrepreneurs and managers who run such successful companies as Teva, Check Point, and Iscar. ...

The business élites know that potential war on any front threatens their interests.

"The continued success of the economy depends on global companies being willing to let Israeli companies into their networks," Avishai told me over lunch in Jerusalem. "If Israel collapses into chaos - if the Lebanon war had been six months instead of one - that could all end."

Highlighted text demonstrates how connectivity forces code/compromises, even in this most "irrational" of strategic environments.

Thanks to Doron Ben Avraham for sending this.