Citing a gradually shrinking pool of Israelis and Palestinians who care to study and speak each other’s languages, this telling justification is cited for one side:

Many Israelis look to Europe as their prime economic and cultural reference point. In business, the language they need is more likely to be English or French than Arabic. Today, among those Israeli Jews studying Arabic, many more than a decade ago are doing so for one reason: preparing for service in the Israeli security agencies.

This is nothing new. Despite the obvious post-Holocaust reasons for establishing the Jewish state, from the start Israel has been more European than Middle Eastern.

I think this is often glossed over when considering tensions in that region. There’s certainly no shortage of anti-Semitic feeling in the Islamic world. But what grated more on the Arab states was an Israel that, by the way it was set up and settled, more resembled a European colony or client state than a “native” political entity.

There’s some simplification in that characterization, but I think it fits. The continued affinity for overseas sociopolitical ties only reinforces the otherness that the Islamic world assigns to Israel. At this point, there’s no other choice for either side, but the roots for this division were planted from the beginning.