While conflicts have existed between Israel and a slew of other nations over the decades, it would seem that there is one country that would stand out to be the Lex Luthor of the Hebrew homeland's Superman: Palestine.
According to a timeline, the conflict between the two started as early as late 1917 with the Balfour Delcaration promising a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Tensions would grow even greater when Israel declares itself a Jewish state in the Israel War of independence in 1948. From then it would seem to be a serious of attack and response between the two countries. Incidentally, a majority of the violence would be started by Palestine and their Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that believed an extermination of Israel was ideal in the mid 60's. This view of a necessary termination would lead to the constant negative attitude toward Isreal.
In recent years, such as the last decade, there have still been conflicts between the two opposing nations. Surpisingly however, in an overview of the events of the Palestinian-Isreali conflict, it would appear that the majority of people in the often antagonistic Palestine desire to maintain their hatred but practice peace. Yet on the other hand, interviews with Palestinians have suggested otherwise (even women are training with weapons to fight their "sworn enemy Isreal." That is coming from one side of the world while tensions build in correlation to the situation in Egypt. Israel enjoys some security on the Egyptian side due to an agreement over Gaza, and while he might not have been the most popular ruler, Mubarak's strict police force did discourage activist or terrorist initiatives in Egypt allowing Isreal to only have to keep one eye open while they sleep (on Palestine).
The whole history of contemporary (in the sense that we're not talking biblically old) Isreal would seem to be a survival based on reciprocity and negative escalation. They are unfortunately stuck in the center of the world were tolerance is a foreign word and were change is just as foreign. They have constantly been picked at for nothing more than their existence and beliefs. Yet they are damned by the rest of the world for returning fire. This is not an area in which compensation will yield results. Instead it will reveal a vulnerability to further competitive attacks. With Isreal being surrounded by potentially hostile forces, 2 consecutive attacks with no reciprocation may be too much for the small country to recover from. It is an interesting situation because even though negative reciprocity is generally viewed in a negative sense (hence the term negative reciprocity), it would seemto be the only thing keeping the country alive.
