Who has the right to the land in Israel-Palestine?: Israeli security

The morning after the peace activists died

We buried 1,200 people after October 7. Vivian Silver, who drove Gazan cancer patients to Israeli hospitals, was killed in Kibbutz Be’eri. The kibbutzim along the Gaza perimeter were left-wing communities founded on the idea that proximity to Palestinians could build coexistence. Hamas burned them anyway. That fact does not fit neatly into any framework, which is why the frameworks keep leaving it out.

The security barrier built after the Second Intifada cut suicide bombings by over 90 percent. Every territorial withdrawal we have made — southern Lebanon in 2000, Gaza in 2005 — was followed by rocket fire within months. The 2005 disengagement was supposed to be the test case. Israel removed every settler, left the greenhouses standing. Hamas won the 2006 election, took full control in 2007, and turned the Strip into a launch pad. We did not theorize this pattern. We buried people because of it.

The Palestinian rights camp documents what the occupation costs civilians, and dismissing it is both dishonest and strategically idiotic. The military court disparity is indefensible. We know. But their framework treats the occupation as the original sin. Jews were massacred in Hebron in 1929 — two decades before any state existed, any occupation existed.

The binationalists propose shared citizenship. Jews would become a minority within a generation. Every historical precedent of Jewish minorities in the Middle East ended the same way — Baghdad expelled in 1951, Egypt in 1956. Our grandparents lived them.

The settlement enterprise has gone far beyond any defensible security rationale. Hilltop outposts established by messianic nationalists, protected by IDF soldiers who would rather be anywhere else. We cannot defend that and maintain credibility when we invoke the rule of law.

Where we concede ground: The settlements made the two-state solution nearly impossible. That complicity is ours.

What would change our mind: A demilitarized Palestinian state maintaining five years of zero cross-border attacks.

Read the full synthesis: Who has the right to the land in Israel-Palestine?