Israel and the Strategy of the "Impossible Partner"

For over three decades, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has engaged in a peace process in the hope of achieving an independent state that lives peacefully alongside Israel. The organization made deep concessions that no liberation movement has made before: it recognized Israel, abandoned armed struggle, annulled central clauses of its national charter, and engaged in a prolonged negotiation process despite the imbalance of power.

However, Israel - instead of treating these concessions as the foundation for a political partnership - exploited them to dismantle Palestinian sources of strength and transform the national authority into a besieged civil administration, while it expanded settlements and the transitional phase faded away, replaced by a permanent reality based on unilateral control.

Over time, it has become clear that the problem for Israel has never been the name of the Palestinian faction or its methodology. It rejects Hamas because it resists and rejects the PLO because it negotiates. Benjamin Netanyahu's statements revealed the truth clearly: there is no place in his vision for any Palestinian entity that possesses real authority, regardless of its form or leadership.

After the last Gaza war, this approach appeared more clearly than ever; the "Trump’s last plan" which initiated the cease-fire framework became the American reference for Gaza’s future and the “next day.” However, the plan, in all its stages, ignores the existence of a political issue altogether: there is no mention of a two-state solution, nor Palestinian state borders, nor recognition of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The plan presents merely security and administrative engineering.

Yet, Palestinians are asked to "disarm" or "remove Hamas from the scene," while no one acknowledges their right to a state. How can they be asked to abandon their means of power while their right remains unrecognized?

While the world was preoccupied with the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its residents, the West Bank was witnessing an unprecedented escalation in settlement expansion and systematic assaults from settler groups, as land was being seized at a pace that cannot be separated from a deeper political project: gradually emptying the land of its rightful owners and permanently closing the door on a Palestinian state.

However, what Israel and the United States must understand is that the existing policies - from stripping Palestinian recognition, besieging the authority, and leaving Gaza devastated and without a horizon - do not create stability but rather widen the conflict into a larger circle than Palestinian geography, opening up possibilities that no power can control.

Major historical attacks do not always originate from a single source and do not confine themselves to specific geography. When the occupied land is Palestine, and when Jerusalem and its Al-Aqsa Mosque - the first of the two qiblas and the third holiest site - are part of the belief of more than a billion Muslims, any outbreak of conflict will not remain confined within the borders of Gaza or the West Bank but will always carry the possibility of extending at any moment to an Arab and Islamic space that stretches from the Atlantic to the Gulf, and from within the Muslims and the free people of the world in Europe to America and China.

And if the events of October 7 came out of Gaza, there is no guarantee - should the political horizon remain closed and rights be disregarded - that tensions or operations will not erupt from other regions in the area, whether from the northern or eastern borders of Palestine or even from broader areas of the Islamic world that see Palestine as an integral part of their religious and political identity.

These are not security predictions but a realistic reading of what the accumulation of frustration, the absence of a diplomatic path, and the disregard for the feelings of a billion Muslims who view Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque as part of their belief entail, not as a "foreign issue."

Israel’s disregard for this truth and its neglect of the deep spiritual and historical connection between Arabs and Muslims with Palestine places it before a threat that is not linked to a direct action but to the outcomes of the policies it creates: a state that acts as if it can live on sacred land belonging to a billion people without respecting them, while simultaneously trying to erase the people who live on that land. This is a recipe for an unending conflict, not for lasting security.

From a purely strategic perspective, it must be stated clearly to decision-makers in Tel Aviv and Washington:
A state that denies the existence of the people under its control is denying the moral and political justification for its own existence.

Attempts to erase the Palestinians - politically or demographically - do not lead to Israel's security but to its isolation, threatening its status and undermining its legitimacy in front of the world.

This is not a call or emotional wishes but a truth repeated in history:
No entity can stabilise while acting as if the denial of the other is a guarantee of its survival.

Therefore, recognizing an independent Palestinian state is not a gift to the Palestinians but a condition for the continued existence of Israel itself.

And if the United States is truly concerned about Israel's security, the mission is not to protect Israel from the Palestinians, but to protect Israel from itself, from its extremists, and from the illusion that its survival can be built on denying their right or exterminating them.

For acknowledging the right is the path to security, while denying it is the path to an escalating existential threat, politically, morally, and strategically.

If Israel does not realize today that ending the occupation and granting the Palestinians their state is its vital interest before being a Palestinian right, then the question in the future will not solely be: "Where do the Palestinians go?"
But: "Where will Israel go in a world that no longer accepts the existence of a state that acts outside the law, rights, and human conscience?".