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 \u201creturn\u201d 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 \u2014 at long last \u2014 that Israel is here to stay.<\/p>\n
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 \u201creward\u201d Hamas is to miss the point. Hamas\u2019 war aims were never about sovereignty; they were about Israel\u2019s destruction.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cright of return.\u201d Through UNRWA, the United Nations kept this dream alive, ensuring millions of Palestinians and their descendants remained officially \u201crefugees,\u201d waiting for the day they might return to the homes their ancestors left in 1948.<\/p>\n
If Palestinians were truly ready to accept that their future lies within Gaza and the West Bank \u2014 and not inside Israel \u2014 then Hamas\u2019 October 7th assault would stand as a catastrophic failure, exposing the futility of its cause.<\/p>\n
Yet on campuses and in capitals across the West, the chants of \u201cFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
That is why Israel\u2019s answer must be \u201cyes, but.\u201d Yes \u2014 if the Palestinian state is demilitarized and committed to peace. Yes \u2014 if all refugees and their descendants are resettled within its borders, ending the cycle of statelessness and the perpetual hope of \u201creturn.\u201d Yes \u2014 if its borders are drawn on the basis of the 1967 lines, adjusted by mutual agreement to ensure both security and viability.<\/p>\n
To say \u201cno\u201d outright would only reinforce the narrative that Israel opposes Palestinian independence, when in truth the struggle has always been about Israel\u2019s survival. But to say \u201cyes\u201d without conditions would be to invite disaster. The \u201cyes, but\u201d is not a rejection of peace; it is the only path toward it.<\/p>\n
The Arab\u2013Israeli 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 \u2014 rather than a launching point for renewed struggle \u2014 will peace be possible.<\/p>\n
Israel must be ready to say \u201cyes\u201d to a Palestinian state \u2014 but only if that \u201cyes\u201d finally buries the dream of Israel\u2019s destruction, not the hope of peace.<\/p>\n