Does the Gaza War Produce the Palestinian State?

A journalist and writer specializing in international affairs, and a researcher in issues related to justice and armed conflicts.

After every major war, the old question returns in a new guise:
Will what happened in Gaza inevitably lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state?
The question seems logical on the surface, but it hides a dangerous assumption: that wars automatically produce political solutions. Recent history, both Palestinian and regional, tells a completely different story.
The recent Gaza war did not end the conflict, nor did it bring its conclusion closer, but it did something else far more important: it exposed the illusion of conflict management. Israel, with all its military power and broad international support, was unable to achieve "decisiveness." In turn, the resistance was unable to transform military steadfastness into a comprehensive political gain. The result was an open cycle of violence without a clear horizon.

In this context, the idea of a Palestinian state has returned to international discourse, not as a moral entitlement or a delayed recognition of Palestinian rights, but as an emergency solution aimed at containing the explosion and preventing its regional expansion. The West is less afraid of injustice than it is of chaos, and it is not motivated by justice but by cost.

The paradox is that the most extremist Israeli government in the history of the Hebrew state, despite its explicit hostility to the two-state solution, may - without intending to - be one of the factors bringing this solution back to the table. The expansion of settlements, exclusionary rhetoric, and systemic violence are all elements that are no longer marketable internationally as they once were. The extremism of the authority does not create a Palestinian state, but it removes masks, embarrasses allies, and opens the door for political pressure.

As for the bet on the Israeli street leading itself towards the acceptance of a Palestinian state, it is a long-term gamble. The Israeli society today is more fearful and more closed off, not less. Peoples do not change their moral convictions in the wake of shock, but they change their calculations when they discover that permanent security is impossible without a political solution. This shift - if it happens - will not be the result of one war, but rather the outcome of a long-term depletion and an internal conflict between the logic of a security state and the logic of a natural state.

In summary, the Palestinian state is not an inevitable result of the Gaza war, but it is no longer a deferred idea that can be easily buried. If it comes into being, it will not be out of sympathy or due to a sudden moral awakening, but as a result of a belated international, regional, and Israeli realization that the cost of denying its existence is higher than the cost of recognizing it.

In politics, rights do not win alone; they win when the cost of denying them becomes unbearable. And Gaza, despite the open wound, has brought the world a step closer to this realization... without guaranteeing arrival.