The current Israeli government, supported by the Far Right, appears to have decided that the outright annexation of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip is the best way forward for the State of Israel. However, this plan can only lead to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state: the population figures show clearly that such a Greater Israel will soon have more Arabs and Muslims within it than Jews. Therefore, to go down that route is collective suicide, and Israelis need to understand it. I shall discuss all this and offer alternatives in this post.

Since October 7, 2023, the State of Israel has managed to prevail militarily against its many enemies: it is not victory – as victory is always elusive in the Middle East – but it is a remarkable achievement all the same. More particularly, Hamas – a fundamentalist Sunni political movement and a terrorist organization supported by Iran and Hezbollah – has been degraded to an unprecedented degree. The cost, for the Palestinians in Gaza but, also, for Israel, has been very high, however. There has also been a cost for the Jews of the Diaspora, as the Gaza War has undeniably whipped up antisemitism and given it a form of legitimacy, from North America to Europe and Australia.

The problem, now, for Israel as a Jewish state, is to decide what it needs to do next. And this can only be a process of a political nature. The current government in Israel could be described as a right-wing coalition that is supported by the Far Right, i.e. a motley crew of religious right-wing Zionists and parties that are close to the ultra-Orthodox community within Israel. The Left and the centre of Israeli politics appear weak and fragmented. We read that c. 70% of Israelis would like the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to go, and yet it is not clear whether there would be an alternative that could command a majority among Israeli voters. There is little doubt that Israeli public opinion has shifted to the right over the past decades.

In essence, many – probably most – Israelis feel that the peace process was given a chance (cf. the Oslo Accords in 1993-1995), and they believe that this attempt at peace failed because the Palestinians were never negotiating in good faith. It is not a so-called two-state solution (one Jewish state sitting alongside a Palestinian state) that they wanted (and still want), but a one-state solution, i.e. a Muslim/Arab Palestinian state where Jews, at best, would be second-class citizens. The tragedy of October 2023 has reinforced this perception, and understandably so: the Palestinians in Gaza were given the opportunity to run their own affairs and chose to hand over power to Hamas, who, in turn, planned and executed a ruthless attack on the State of Israel, with a view to destroying it. Whether such a narrative (above) is 100% justified and rational, on the part of Israeli Jews, or not, there is little doubt that it has come to prevail in the psyche of the average Jewish Israeli, and who could blame him (or her)? Israelis are, collectively, in a post-traumatic state of mind, to use the language of psychology, in the wake of October 7th, and this is understandable.

As a result, there is little appetite, nowadays, in Israel, for the two-state solution. According to various polls, it would stand at about 25%: in other words, about 75% of Israelis no longer believe the two-state solution is a viable prospect. Meanwhile, the international community, led by entities such as the EU and the UN, continues talking about the two-state solution as if it was round the corner. The international community believes it can work with the Palestinian Authority (PA). In theory, one cannot see why the PA could not be put in charge of a Palestinian state: after all, for all intents and purposes, the PA has renounced violence and co-operated, willy-nilly, with the Israeli authorities, over the years. It may be corrupt and inefficient – this is the Middle East, after all – but it has not, in recent years, adopted a militant and violent approach to its dealings with the State of Israel.

What of the aims of the current government in Israel? There is strictly no doubt, by now, what the plan of the current administration is, in Israel. Fueled by the inflammatory pronouncements of various extremist political figures in Israel........

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