Israel at 60: Proud but facing an uncertain future

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Also Wednesday, Jewish communities worldwide joined Israelis in a rendition of the Israeli anthem Hatikva, or "The Hope." Their goal: to enter the Guinness World Records for the most people singing a national anthem at the same time.

During the holiday, Israel is prohibiting Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from entering Israel, fearing attempts by militants to disrupt the celebrations.

President Bush will attend a conference in Jerusalem next week marking the anniversary, along with Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev, Rupert Murdoch and the founders of Google and Facebook.

Shimon Peres, Israel's president, is hosting the conference, along with a party for 60-year-old Israelis born on the day Israel declared its independence, re-establishing Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land for the first time in nearly 2,000 years.

"We are small in size, small in numbers, so we cannot become a big market or a big industry," Peres told The Associated Press. "But Israel can become a daring laboratory."

Peres, a Nobel Peace laureate, promotes Israel as a "green" country and a high-tech powerhouse including a government plan to install the world's first electric car network by 2011.

Israeli venture capitalists are setting up an online multimedia encyclopedia generated by users, and a product called Pop Tok that sends video clips from movies and TV shows as instant messages.

Yet Israel is also home to Sderot, a town near Hamas-ruled Gaza where people take shelter almost every day to escape militants' rockets. Israelis strive to live normal lives, but they are threatened by Iranian-backed militants on their northern and southern flanks.

They see Iran as their greatest threat, with its nuclear program and a president who calls for Israel's destruction.

Israel's conflict with the Palestinians is the biggest obstacle to normalcy. The fighting has resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and has become a rallying point for Muslim extremists worldwide.

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