Yehuda Kurtzer’s essay, “The Zionist Case for Palestinian Statehood,” presents a seductive proposition: that creating a Palestinian state would not reward Hamas but instead repudiate everything it stands for. It is the kind of line that sounds lofty in a lecture hall or donor retreat. But in the aftermath of October 7, it reads like an abdication of reality. The brutal massacre of Israeli civilians was not a cry for “statehood” but an expression of an ideology that seeks Israel’s eradication. To claim that birthing another Palestinian state alongside Israel is the path to peace is to substitute fantasy for history and illusion for security.
No nation on earth would be asked to create a sovereign neighbor sworn to its destruction. Yet when Jews are involved, the moral calculus is inverted. Resistance to a Palestinian state is branded as cynical or unimaginative. In truth it is the triumph of realism. Jews learned, through centuries of exile and pogrom, that survival depends not on utopian ideals but on facing man’s darker impulses without illusion. Zionism was the assertion of Jewish life, safety, and sovereignty in the face of annihilation. The “two-state solution” has, since the Second Intifada, proven itself not the path to peace but the incubator of more war. To extend sovereignty to people still glorifying the murder of Jewish children is not moral imagination. It is moral abdication.
October 7 was not born of “occupation” or lack of Palestinian dignity. It was born of genocidal ideology and Israel’s indulgence of illusions. A Palestinian state today would not resemble Switzerland. It would resemble Gaza, only larger, closer to Israel’s population centers, and legitimized by the international community. Security “caveats” about demilitarization are laughable. The world cannot (yet) demilitarize Gaza today. Why believe it can enforce it tomorrow in Ramallah? “Recognition of Israel” has been mouthed before in English while maps in Arabic erased the Jewish state. And once sovereignty is granted, Israel’s ability to defend itself will be shackled by international lawfare, not strengthened.
The first obligation of a moral society is to preserve the innocent against the wicked. The innocent here are Israeli civilians. The wicked are Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the culture that celebrates their deeds. A policy that gambles with Jewish lives for the sake of abstract “dreams” is not noble. It is reckless. What Kurtzer dismisses as fatalism is, in fact, sobriety. Jewish history is filled with leaders who preferred hard truth over easy illusion. It is no accident that the Arab world has never produced a Palestinian Mandela. The obstacle is not Israel’s lack of imagination but Palestinian leadership’s addiction to murder as politics.
The way forward is not to create another failed Arab state. It is to strengthen deterrence, dismantle Hamas, and foster genuine Arab normalization. The Abraham Accords showed what is possible when Palestinians are not given a veto over peace. The path to stability runs through Arab capitals that accept Israel, not through Ramallah regimes that dream of its extinction. Zionism was never about indulging the world’s fantasies. It was about securing Jewish survival in an often hostile world. The “visionary” peacemaking Kurtzer urges would, in reality, place a loaded gun at Israel’s temple. Israel does not lack imagination. It lacks the luxury of self-delusion.
Thank you for articulating so well these grave issues.
Wasn't all this imaginative, out-of-the box thinking already tried out with the Oslo Accords and the Peace Now movement?
From there directly to the Second Intifada and Oct 7.
Allowing an autonomous entity on your borders that is opposed to your existence and can smuggle unlimited amounts of weapons is never a good idea.
Unfortunately, the logical inference from this is that a deal to release the hostages but which allows Hamas to remain in Gaza in any form is a bigger risk to Israel than occupying Gaza.