For decades, a simple explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took hold across broad segments of Israel’s Left and Center: at its core, the conflict was territorial. Israel would give up land, the Palestinians would establish a state, and the conflict would gradually come to an end.
The Oslo Accords were built on this premise. Negotiations were conducted on its basis, and far-reaching proposals were offered to the Palestinians. But the events of recent years, above all the October 7 massacre, have shaken the assumption on which this entire approach rested for many Israelis.
The question they are asking today is far more difficult: What if the conflict is not only about where the border will be drawn, but also, and perhaps primarily, about the very legitimacy of a Jewish state existing in this region?
This does not mean that every Palestinian seeks Israel’s destruction, and a complex national conflict should certainly not be reduced to a sweeping generalization about an entire population. But it is no longer possible to ignore the enormous influence that Islamist religious ideology has gained in Palestinian society over recent decades.
Hamas makes no secret of its worldview. For Hamas, the struggle does not end at the 1967 lines, and the land is not merely territory subject to political negotiation. It is part of a much broader religious and historical vision.
This is something the West has struggled to understand. For years, it has tried to interpret the conflict through concepts familiar to it: borders, settlements, sovereignty, national rights, and self-determination.
All of these are indeed important components of the conflict. But they do not explain the intensity of the hatred, the glorification of martyrs, the celebration of armed struggle, or the fact that after Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza did not become a laboratory for building a prosperous state. Instead, it gradually became a military stronghold for Hamas.
In this sense, Oct. 7 was a defining moment.
Israelis who believed that economic improvements, jobs in Israel, and eased civilian restrictions would reduce the motivation for confrontation discovered how dangerous it can be to assume that the other side operates according to the same logic.
The massacre was not directed at settlements in the heart of the West Bank. Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and Nir Oz are inside sovereign Israel. For the terrorists who entered those communities, that, too, was considered “occupation.”
This is the source of the awakening now taking place among parts of Israel’s Left and Center. It may be that the debate over dividing the land concealed a deeper question for years: Is the Palestinian national movement truly capable of accepting, and not merely as a tactical matter, the existence of a Jewish nation state?
Alongside the military campaign, another battle is being fought, one no less sophisticated: the war for global public opinion.The question they are asking today is far more difficult: What if the conflict is not only about where the border will be drawn, but also, and perhaps primarily, about the very legitimacy of a Jewish state existing in this region?
This does not mean that every Palestinian seeks Israel’s destruction, and a complex national conflict should certainly not be reduced to a sweeping generalization about an entire population. But it is no longer possible to ignore the enormous influence that Islamist religious ideology has gained in Palestinian society over recent decades.
Hamas makes no secret of its worldview. For Hamas, the struggle does not end at the 1967 lines, and the land is not merely territory subject to political negotiation. It is part of a much broader religious and historical vision.
This is something the West has struggled to understand. For years, it has tried to interpret the conflict through concepts familiar to it: borders, settlements, sovereignty, national rights, and self-determination.
All of these are indeed important components of the conflict. But they do not explain the intensity of the hatred, the glorification of martyrs, the celebration of armed struggle, or the fact that after Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza did not become a laboratory for building a prosperous state. Instead, it gradually became a military stronghold for Hamas.
Israelis who believed that economic improvements, jobs in Israel, and eased civilian restrictions would reduce the motivation for confrontation discovered how dangerous it can be to assume that the other side operates according to the same logic.
The massacre was not directed at settlements in the heart of the West Bank. Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and Nir Oz are inside sovereign Israel. For the terrorists who entered those communities, that, too, was considered “occupation.”
This is the source of the awakening now taking place among parts of Israel’s Left and Center. It may be that the debate over dividing the land concealed a deeper question for years: Is the Palestinian national movement truly capable of accepting, and not merely as a tactical matter, the existence of a Jewish nation state?
Alongside the military campaign, another battle is being fought, one no less sophisticated: the war for global public opinion.
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