Much stronger than the entire Arab world combined might be going a bit too far. Perhaps stronger (without the much) would be accurate, or "much stronger than any Arab country".
The problem is they only have to lose once, at least only once in a decisive way, not a "loss" like failing to root Hezbollah out of Lebanon. They don't have strategic depth or a large population.
And being the strongest doesn't guarantees that you won't lose.
If WMD were taken out of the equation on both sides, and Egypt staid peaceful, then I still think Israel would be pretty secure from direct invasion (although obviously not from terrorism), assuming there was no large change in the balance of forces. But over time the balance of forces can change, and there isn't exactly a 100% guarantee that Egypt will remain peaceful, even if it seems likely at the moment. Israel's security situation did benefit from the smashing of Saddam's army, but even without Egypt or Iraq as active enemies, its not unreasonable for Israel to think that they can't be comfortable just because of their past victories and current military superiority.
If in the future China was more powerful than the US the US would still be separated by an ocean, and it has a lot of territory and people which would make any invasion an unreasonable idea (just as it would be an unreasonable idea for us to try to invade China now even if we had some reason to do so and scaled up our armed forces and didn't have to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan). Which isn't to say that absent Israel's nuclear deterrent, it would be sensible for a coalition of Arab countries to try and invade Israel, but its not quite as crazy, and it is something they have tried before. |
