OPINION: Israel must think beyond the current crisis

Israel is one of the most militarily powerful countries in the Middle East. But military strength alone cannot guarantee a country’s long-term security.

That is the difficult question Israel now faces.

The Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, demonstrated the reality of Israel’s security concerns in horrific fashion. Israelis have every right to expect their government to protect them from attack.

These concerns also exist within a much longer history. Centuries of persecution of Jews in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, help explain why many Israelis and Jews throughout the world consider a secure Jewish state essential to their survival.

That history must be taken seriously.

But another question must be taken seriously as well: Can Israel achieve lasting security primarily through military power while remaining in seemingly permanent conflict with millions of other people who share the Levant?

Two Israeli historians, Ilan Pappé and Omer Bartov, have offered answers to that question that many will find deeply troubling.

Both served in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Both have subsequently become prominent critics of Israel, although their arguments and political perspectives differ considerably.

According to Britannica, Zionism is a “Jewish nationalist movement with the goal of the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine.” It should be noted, however, that Christian Zionists far outnumber Jewish Zionists.

Anti-Zionism is growing in the global Jewish community, and Pappé is an outspoken anti-Zionist. In his recent book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence, he predicts that Israel’s existing Zionist political order will eventually collapse and be replaced by a different political arrangement.

Of course, to Zionists, this is an extraordinarily controversial prediction.

Many Israelis would see the end of a Jewish state not as liberation but as an existential threat. One cannot predict Israel’s future with certainty, but the warning underlying Pappé’s argument deserves consideration.

Countries can win wars while failing to resolve the political problems that produced them. Military superiority can defeat armies and destroy weapons, but it cannot by itself reconcile peoples who must eventually find a way to live alongside one another.

That is where Pappé’s warning becomes important, regardless of whether one accepts his proposed solution.

Israelis and Palestinians are not going to disappear.

Omer Bartov raises an even more contentious warning.

Bartov is an Israeli-born historian and a leading scholar of the Holocaust and genocide. He has become increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct and in 2026 he published Israel: What went wrong? Bartov argues that his country is engaged in genocide and will face consequences for its actions.

That conclusion is fiercely disputed by Zionists. The International Court of Justice will likely come out with a definitive ruling in 2028; however, the court has already ordered that Israel must take all possible measures to prevent acts as outlined in Article 2 of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Israel maintains that its military campaign is directed against Hamas, which carried out the Oct. 7 attack and took hostages, rather than against the Palestinian people. Israel has rejected allegations of genocide and defended its military campaign as an exercise of its right to protect its citizens.

Bartov’s characterization cannot be presented as settled fact simply because he is an eminent historian specializing in genocide.

But neither should his warning be dismissed simply because it is disturbing.

The question Israelis ultimately have to consider is not only whether their country’s military actions can be defended today, but what kind of country and security environment those actions are creating for the next generation.

History provides no simple answer, but it does offer hope.

Historian Ussama Makdisi has written extensively about coexistence and sectarianism in the Ottoman Empire. His work challenges the idea that conflict among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the region is somehow inevitable.

Those who followed the same religion as the Sultan were given preferential treatment, but all others who lived in the Ottoman Empire were “separate, unequal and protected.”

The lesson is not that the past offers a political system that can simply be recreated today.

It is that perpetual conflict is not inevitable.

The same principle should guide how we think about international law.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. It also issued a warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif. The court also issued applications for two others, Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, however they were killed by the Israeli military before the arrest warrants could be given.

An arrest warrant is not a conviction. But the principle behind international criminal law matters: alleged crimes should be judged according to law rather than according to which side committed them.

That principle must apply to Hamas as surely as it applies to Israel.

The deliberate killing or kidnapping of civilians cannot be justified by Palestinian grievances. Nor should legitimate Israeli security concerns provide unlimited justification for the treatment of Palestinian civilians.

If international law means anything, it cannot change according to whose flag is flying over the battlefield.

The greater danger for Israel may therefore be believing that military superiority can substitute indefinitely for a political settlement.

Israel has demonstrated repeatedly that it possesses enormous military capabilities. What remains uncertain is whether those capabilities can produce the lasting security Israelis desire.

Pappé believes they cannot and predicts profound political change. Bartov believes Israel’s conduct in Gaza will carry lasting moral and historical consequences.

Their arguments should be challenged, and valid arguments against them deserve to be heard.

But the questions they raise should not be ignored.

Can the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain unresolved for another generation?

What happens if Israelis and Palestinians increasingly see security as something that can only be achieved at the expense of the other?

What happens to Israel itself if permanent war becomes normal? What happens if Israel loses the support of powerful allies?

I believe in respect for all human life and the consistent application of international law. Israelis have a right to security. Palestinians have a right to security, dignity and political freedom.

Neither people should have to surrender those rights for the other to possess them.

That may ultimately be the most important warning Israel can take from its critics.

Israel’s greatest long-term challenge is not simply defeating its enemies. It is helping create political conditions in which another generation of Israelis does not have to fight the same wars.

Military power can protect a country from immediate threats.

It cannot, by itself, build the peace necessary to secure its future.