Only when Palestinians are prepared to see a future state as their home — rather than a launching point for renewed struggle — will peace be possible.
Calls for a Palestinian state are echoing from Western capitals, but Israelis know the truth: October 7th was not about founding Palestine, it was about destroying Israel. For decades, the dream of a “return” has been the deeper obstacle to peace, more enduring than the absence of a flag or defined borders. If Palestinians truly want statehood, it must be accompanied by the acceptance — at long last — that Israel is here to stay.
The Hamas-led attacks of October 7th made this brutally clear. They were not about establishing a Palestinian homeland in Gaza and the West Bank, but about erasing the Jewish homeland altogether. The chants that accompanied the violence spoke not of independence but of conquest: liberating Jerusalem and Jaffa, not Khan Yunis and Rafah. To argue that granting Palestinians a state today would “reward” Hamas is to miss the point. Hamas’ war aims were never about sovereignty; they were about Israel’s destruction.
For decades, the central question has not been whether Palestinians would gain a state alongside Israel, but whether they would accept that Israel itself has a right to exist. With Arab armies long defeated, the dream of eliminating Israel shifted to the so-called “right of return.” Through UNRWA, the United Nations kept this dream alive, ensuring millions of Palestinians and their descendants remained officially “refugees,” waiting for the day they might return to the homes their ancestors left in 1948.
If Palestinians were truly ready to accept that their future lies within Gaza and the West Bank — and not inside Israel — then Hamas’ October 7th assault would stand as a catastrophic failure, exposing the futility of its cause.
Yet on campuses and in capitals across the West, the chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” remind us that for many, the conflict is still framed not as a struggle for independence, but as a campaign to eliminate the Jewish state. This vision cannot coexist with peace. A Palestinian state can only bring an end to the conflict if it also brings an end to the dream of returning to Israel and dismantling it from within.
That is why Israel’s answer must be “yes, but.” Yes — if the Palestinian state is demilitarized and committed to peace. Yes — if all refugees and their descendants are resettled within its borders, ending the cycle of statelessness and the perpetual hope of “return.” Yes — if its borders are drawn on the basis of the 1967 lines, adjusted by mutual agreement to ensure both security and viability.
To say “no” outright would only reinforce the narrative that Israel opposes Palestinian independence, when in truth the struggle has always been about Israel’s survival. But to say “yes” without conditions would be to invite disaster. The “yes, but” is not a rejection of peace; it is the only path toward it.
The Arab–Israeli conflict has never been about the absence of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the refusal to accept a Jewish one. Only when Palestinians are prepared to see a future state as their home — rather than a launching point for renewed struggle — will peace be possible.
Israel must be ready to say “yes” to a Palestinian state — but only if that “yes” finally buries the dream of Israel’s destruction, not the hope of peace.