Is there a way out of the Israeli-Palestinian trap?
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a historian, philosopher and author
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fuelled by the mutual horror of destruction. Each side fears the other wishes to kill or expel it, and terminate its existence as a national collective. Unfortunately, these are not irrational fears born out of paranoia, but reasonable fears based on recent historical memories and a relatively sound analysis of the other side’s intentions.
The founding event of modern Palestinian identity is the Nakba of 1948, when the nascent state of Israel destroyed the chance of establishing a Palestinian state, and drove about 750,000 Palestinians out from their ancestral homes. In the following decades, Palestinians experienced repeated massacres and expulsions at the hands of Israelis and other regional powers. In 1982, for example, between 800 and 3,000 were massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by a Lebanese Christian militia, allied with Israel, and in 1991 about 300,000 were expelled from Kuwait.
The Palestinian fear of being killed or displaced is not just the result of such historical memories. It is an experience accompanying every moment of their lives. Each and every Palestinian in the occupied Palestinian territories knows that they could any day be killed, imprisoned or driven from their land by Israeli settlers or security forces.
When Palestinians analyse the intentions of Israelis, they conclude that if not for the international community, there is a high probability that Israel will opt to expel most or all of them from the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea and establish a country only for Jews. Over the years, numerous Israeli politicians and parties — including Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud — have expressed hopes of creating “Greater Israel”, with Palestinians dispossessed, expelled or reduced to serf status. Even at the height of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s, Israel looked askance at the prospect of a viable Palestinian state. Instead, it continued to expand its settlements in the West Bank, indicating its abiding wish to dispossess Palestinians of every part of the land.
The current war has confirmed Palestinians’ deepest fears. After the Hamas attack on October 7 2023, calls for the utter destruction of the Gaza Strip and their mass killing and expulsion have become routine in the Israeli media and among some members of Israel’s ruling coalition. On October 7, the deputy Speaker of parliament, Nissim Vaturi, tweeted “Now we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” On November 1, Israel’s minister of heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, posted “The North of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes.” And on November 11, Israel’s minister of agriculture, Avi Dichter, said that “we are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.
If it wasn’t for Egyptian resistance and international pressure, it is not unreasonable to believe that Israel would have attempted to drive the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip into the Sinai desert. As it is, according to Palestinian health officials, Israeli forces have so far killed more than 31,000, including combatants but largely civilians, and have forced more than 85 per cent of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip — almost 2mn people — out of their homes.
Israelis carry their own historical traumas. The founding event of modern Jewish and Israeli identity is the Holocaust, when the Nazis exterminated about 6mn Jews, and wiped out most of Europe’s Jewish communities. Then in 1948, the Palestinians and their Arab allies made a concerted effort to annihilate the nascent state of Israel, and to kill or expel all its Jewish inhabitants. In the wake of their defeat and subsequent Arab defeats in the 1956 and 1967 wars, Arab countries took revenge by destroying their own defenceless Jewish communities. About 800,000 Jews were driven out of their ancestral homes in countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. At least half of Israeli Jews are the descendants of these Middle Eastern refugees.
Jewish fears of murder and expulsion are not just the outcome of such historical memories. They are also lived experiences that constitute part of the daily routines of Israelis. Each and every Israeli knows that they personally might be murdered or abducted any day by Palestinian or Islamist terrorists, whether in their homes or while travelling anywhere in the world.
When Israelis analyse the intentions of Palestinians, they conclude that if they are ever given the chance, Palestinians will probably kill or expel the 7mn Jews currently living between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. Palestinian leaders and their allies from Tehran to New York have repeatedly argued that the Jewish presence in the land between the river and the sea is a colonial injustice that sooner or later must be “made right”.
Some may argue that “righting the injustice” doesn’t mean killing or expelling all Israeli Jews, but rather establishing a democratic Palestinian state in which Jews will be welcomed as citizens. However, Israelis find this extremely difficult to believe, especially given the absence of any lasting Arab democracies and the fate of the Jewish communities in countries like Egypt and Iraq.
Jews arrived on the banks of the Nile and Euphrates at least 1,000 years before the Arabs conquered Egypt and Iraq in the 7th century CE. No one could argue that the Jewish communities of Cairo or Baghdad were a recent colonialist implant. Yet after 1948 these communities were totally wiped out. There are virtually none left in any Arab country, other than the 2,000 Jews of Morocco and the 1,000 of Tunisia. Considering the recent violent history of Jews and Arabs, what basis is there to believe that Jewish communities will be able to survive under Palestinian rule?
The current war has confirmed Israelis’ deepest fears. After Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, Hamas and other militants turned it into an armed base to attack Israel. On October 7, Hamas terrorists killed, raped and took hostage more than 1,000 Israeli civilians. Entire communities were systematically destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis had to flee their homes. If any Jews harboured hopes that they could live in a Palestinian state, what happened to Jewish villages such as Be’eri and Kfar Aza and to Nova music festival attendees proved that Jewish communities cannot survive under Palestinian rule for even a single day.
Reactions to the massacre in the Muslim world and elsewhere fed Israeli fears of extermination. Even before Israel began its bombardment and invasion of Gaza, numerous voices justified and even celebrated the murder and abduction of Israeli civilians as a step towards righting historical injustices. Every time demonstrators in London or New York chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, Israelis conclude that “they really do want to exterminate us”. Of course, Hamas by itself lacks the military capabilities to defeat and destroy Israel. But the war has demonstrated that an alliance of powerful regional forces that back it, including Hizbollah, the Houthis and Iran, poses an existential threat to Israel.
It would be wrong to equate the situation of Israelis and Palestinians. They have different histories, live under different conditions and face different threats. The point this article makes is only that both have good reasons to believe that the other side wishes to kill or expel all of them. They consequently see each other not just as run-of-the-mill enemies, but as an existential threat constantly hovering overhead. Unsurprisingly, both sides wish to remove this. However, the Israeli wish to remove the Palestinian existential threat poses an existential threat to the Palestinians — and vice versa. For the only way to completely remove it seems to be to get rid of the other side.
The tragedy of this conflict is that the problem arises not from unjustified paranoia, but rather from a sound analysis of the situation, and from each side knowing only too well its own intentions and fantasies. When Israelis and Palestinians take a good look at their own dark wishes, they conclude that the other has ample reason to fear and hate them. It is a devilish logic. Every side says to itself: “Given what we wish to do to them, it makes sense that they will want to get rid of us — which is precisely why we have no choice but to get rid of them first.”
Is there a way out of this trap? Ideally, each side should give up its fantasy of getting rid of the other. A peaceful solution to the conflict is technically feasible. There is enough land between the Jordan and Mediterranean to build houses, schools, roads and hospitals for everyone. But it can be realised only if each side can honestly say that, even if it had unlimited power and zero restrictions, it would not wish to expel the other. “No matter what injustices they committed against us and what threats they still pose, we nevertheless respect their right to live dignified lives in their country of birth.” Such a profound change in intentions is bound to manifest itself in action, and eventually ease the fear and hatred, creating space for genuine peace.
Of course, accomplishing such a change is extremely hard. But it is not impossible. There are already numerous individuals on both sides who wish well for the other. If their number increases, eventually it should change collective policies. There is also one important group in the region that collectively feels a part of both sides, and doesn’t wish to see either disappear: the close to 2mn Arab citizens of Israel, who are usually referred to as either Arab Israelis or Palestinian Israelis.
When Hamas launched its attack, it hoped these Palestinian-Israelis would rise up against their Jewish neighbours. Many Jews were terrified that this was indeed about to happen. In fact, on the day of the massacre, numerous Arab citizens rushed to help their Jewish neighbours. Some were even murdered by Hamas for doing so. For example, Abed al-Rahman Alnasarah of Kuseife was murdered while trying to rescue survivors from the Nova festival, and Awad Darawshe of Iksal was killed while taking care of injured victims.
Every day since, despite hostility from many Jews including government ministers, Arab-Israelis have gone on serving in Israeli institutions from hospitals to government offices. The two most prominent Palestinian-Israeli politicians, Ayman Odeh of the Hadash party and Mansour Abbas of the Islamist United Arab List party, roundly condemned the massacre and called on all sides to lay down their arms and seek peace. Jews should know by now that Arab-Israelis do not fantasise about the day when they can finally kill or expel all Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
No matter how hard it is for the rest of us to change our intentions, the good news is that this is something each side — even each person — is capable of achieving by themselves. We have little control over the intentions of others, but we should be able to change our own minds. Even readers who are neither Israeli nor Palestinian can contemplate whether they wish well for both sides, or whether they cherish the hope that one of these groups would simply disappear from the face of the Earth.
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