In Netiv HaAsara, a moshav in southern Israel, written in Hebrew, English and Arabic in large letters is “נתיב-לשלום,” or “Path to Peace.” After the devastating attack this moshav suffered on October 7th, where 17 civilians were killed by three Hamas terrorists, part of the larger 1,200 Israelis who were killed, this sign, facing Gaza, seems incredibly ironic.
Nearly two years have passed since October 7th. In response, Israel declared war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which continues, amassing casualties on both sides. According to Reuters, 454 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat, and 2,840 have been injured. On the Palestinian side, it is difficult to gauge exactly how many have been killed. The Palestinian Health Ministry has reported over 60,000 Palestinian deaths, 30% of which have been under the age of 18, although their figures do not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel has cast doubt on those figures, and claimed in January 2025 that it has killed over 20,000 terrorists.
In addition to deaths, of the 251 hostages taken into Gaza by Hamas on October 7th, 50 remain. It is unclear how many of those remain alive.
It remains unclear for how much longer the war will continue, or how exactly it will end. A recent poll by Israeli news media outlet Channel 11 shows that 74% of Israelis support a deal to end the war in exchange for releasing the hostages. More than anything, Israelis are tired. Tired of seeing their sons and daughters die on the battlefield, tired of the economic effects of the war, tired of the government, and desperate to see the hostages returned home. But also tired of temporary ceasefires that lead to more rockets and massacres.
The Middle East needs a path to peace that lasts, not empty words on mural on the path used by terrorists to infiltrate and massacre a moshav community (מושב).
This war, part of the broader Israel-Palestine conflict, seems unwinnable. Hamas will not surrender, but Israel cannot accept an end to the war that leaves them in power, licking their wounds and planning their next attack, so the war continues. Even if Israel did accept this end to the war, it would only be temporary.
The broader Israel-Palestine conflict itself is intractable because it is ultimately a conflict of contradictory ideas, the nation of Israel and the nation of Palestine, fought and paid for with guns and blood. Israel emerged in 1948 as the result of Zionism. It is an idea that has emerged as a nation, no longer operating in the abstract.
Palestine, on the other hand, is not and has never been a nation. Palestinians had never had borders, never had a country, and before the Oslo Accords and the recognition of the Palestinian Authority by Israel, it never had a government. Palestinians are Arabs who conquered and colonized Jerusalem and the broader Levant in the 7th century, whose families happened to be in Israel or the Palestinians territories in 1948, whose identities were forged in the trauma of the Nakba and all of the other atrocities they have suffered since then based on an idea — the idea of Palestine. There is no Palestinian identity, as distinct from Arab identity generally, that exists without reference to repeatedly losing wars to the Israelis.
The path of peace involves then, some reconciliation between these two competing national ideologies. That was the inherited wisdom that drove the Oslo Accords and the end of Israel’s military occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005. It was this inherited wisdom that inspired the “נתיב-לשלום” mural in Netiv Hasara, and it was this inherited wisdom that failed on October 7th.
Instead, the idea of the Palestinian state needs to be defeated so that the Arabs who identify as Palestinian can give up the dream of an independent Palestinian state.
How, then, do you defeat an idea?
The best example of political ideologies that were effectively defeated and reshaped are Nazism and Japanese imperialism, defeated by the Allied powers in the aftermath of the Second World War. Like in Gaza, Nazism and Japanese imperialism were deeply entrenched and politically popular ideologies. By 1936, about 90% of Germans were supporters of the Nazi regime, to some degree or other. Like in Gaza, surrender was not an option, especially for the Japanese soldiers and civilians, who preferred ritual suicide to surrender. And like what must be done in Gaza, these ideologies were defeated by intense military campaigns that forced civilians to reckon with the consequences of their ideologies, defeat, occupation, and a process of transitional justice, where leaders are tried and executed for their crimes, civilians re-educated, and societies rebuilt.
This process is already underway in Gaza. According to a survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in March 2024, seven months into the Gaza war, support for a two-state solution rose in Gaza by 27 points and remained stable in the West Bank. Support for armed struggle decreased by 17 points in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and support for ending the conflict through negotiations or non-violence both rose by 5 points in both regions.
This data is significant and should guide Israel in its resolution of the conflict. The sad truth is that, just as the Germans came back after WWI with a vengeance because they thought a rematch would be to their favor, ending the current conflict with anything but a decisive Israeli victory will only mean more bloodshed in the years to come. There can be no Palestinian state when Palestinian identity is predicated on an unwinnable, never-ending conflict with Israel.