To Begin With: Scale
A Country Smaller Than New Jersey
Before anything else, grasp the geography. The entire argument is about a piece of land most Americans could drive across before lunch.
You can drive across Israel in roughly 20–25 minutes at its widest point. At its narrowest — the so-called "narrow waist" near Tel Aviv, where the majority of Israel's population and infrastructure is concentrated — the country is nine miles wide. A person with a rifle standing on a hilltop in the West Bank can see Ben Gurion Airport. This geography is not an abstraction: it means Israel has no strategic depth. Every security decision the country makes is shaped by the fact that a single breach anywhere on its perimeter puts its population center within minutes of attack. No other democracy in the world operates under this constraint.
"We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise."
— Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel — on Israel's existential reality
Ancient History & The Modern Movement
A People's Unbroken Bond to a Land
The Jewish connection to the land of Israel is not a modern political invention. It is one of the most documented relationships between a people and a territory in human history.
The Jewish people have maintained a continuous presence in the Land of Israel for over 3,000 years. Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish prayer and identity throughout the entire Jewish diaspora — mentioned three times daily in Jewish prayers, oriented toward in synagogues worldwide, invoked in every Passover Seder with "Next year in Jerusalem." Jewish communities survived in Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and Jerusalem itself through centuries of Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Mamluk, and Ottoman rule. The connection was never broken.
The modern Zionist movement arose in the late 19th century directly in response to relentless, violent persecution of Jews across Europe — pogroms in Russia killed tens of thousands; governments stripped Jews of rights; mobs burned Jewish neighborhoods. Theodor Herzl, a secular Jewish journalist, concluded after witnessing the Dreyfus Affair — in liberal France — that Jews would never be truly safe without their own state. The Holocaust, which killed six million Jews just decades later, proved him right. Zionism was not a colonial project in search of resources. It was a survival project by a people who had been told, for centuries, they did not belong anywhere.
"I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation."
— John Adams, 2nd President of the United States — letter, 1819, eighty years before modern Zionism
1920–1947
The British Mandate: Building a Nation Before a State
Jewish pioneers legally bought land and built the full infrastructure of a state — universities, hospitals, courts, an orchestra — before Israel existed. Britain, meanwhile, blocked Jewish refugees from entering even during the Holocaust.
In 1917, Britain's Balfour Declaration committed to "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Under the subsequent British Mandate, Jewish immigrants legally purchased land, established Hebrew University, built hospitals, founded newspapers, and created a symphony orchestra — essentially constructing a functioning civil society from scratch. The land was purchased, not seized. Many sellers were absentee landlords; much of it was arid scrubland that Jewish settlers made productive.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
— Arthur James Balfour, British Foreign Secretary — the Balfour Declaration, November 2, 1917
As Jews fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s and 1940s, Britain sharply restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine under Arab political pressure — including during and after the Holocaust. Ships carrying Jewish survivors were turned away or intercepted; survivors were interned in camps in Cyprus. The most famous was the Exodus 1947 — carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors — which was boarded by British forces and its passengers returned to Germany. Tens of thousands of Jews who might have been saved could not legally reach the land the British had promised them. This history is why Israelis view outside pressure on their security policies with profound and earned suspicion.
"Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion."
— Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem — Nazi radio broadcast from Berlin, March 1, 1944. He met Hitler in 1941 and worked to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East.
The original British Mandate included land on both sides of the Jordan River. In the early 1920s, Britain carved off the entire eastern portion — roughly 77% of the original Mandate territory — and gave it to the Hashemite royal family. This became Jordan in 1946. An Arab state had already been created from the large majority of British Mandate Palestine. The remaining land west of the Jordan River — the contested sliver — was what the 1947 UN partition plan proposed dividing further between Jews and Arabs.
1947–1949
Israel's Birth — and the War to Destroy It
Three years after the Holocaust, Jewish leaders accepted a UN compromise. Arab states declared a war of extermination. Israel survived. No Palestinian state was created — and it was the Arab states, not Israel, that prevented it.
In 1947, the UN proposed dividing the remaining land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Jewish leaders accepted. The Arab League rejected it — not to negotiate better borders, but because they refused to accept any Jewish state of any size anywhere. The Arab League Secretary-General stated publicly they would wage "a war of extermination and momentous massacres." This was not a dispute about boundaries. It was a refusal to accept Jewish self-determination in any form.
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel. The next day, the armies of five Arab nations invaded. Israel was barely organized, outnumbered, and arms-embargoed by the West. It survived anyway. After the armistice, Israel controlled more land than the UN had allocated. Egypt seized Gaza. Jordan seized and later annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem. No Palestinian state was established — and it was Arab armies, not Israel, that occupied what might have been Palestinian territory. Jordan did not offer the West Bank's Palestinians a state; it annexed it.
About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees during the 1947–1949 war — an event Palestinians call the Nakba. They left for mixed reasons: some fled fighting, some were expelled by Israeli forces, some left at Arab leaders' urging expecting a quick Arab victory and a return. Arabs who stayed became Israeli citizens with full voting rights. Today one in five Israeli citizens is Arab. Contrast this with the Arab countries, which expelled or caused the flight of approximately 850,000 Jews from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Morocco, and elsewhere — mostly in waves of state-sponsored persecution after 1948. Those Jews received no UN refugee agency, no "right of return" resolutions, and little international sympathy. Most came to Israel.
Both refugee crises were real. Only one has received sustained international attention.
"This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacres which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
— Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, Arab League Secretary-General — on the declaration of war against Israel, May 15, 1948
1949–1967
No Peace, No Recognition, No Access
For 19 years Israel lived inside its armistice lines — boycotted, blockaded, and raided — while Jordan denied Jews access to their holiest sites and the PLO was founded to destroy the country entirely.
From 1948 to 1967, Jordan controlled East Jerusalem and barred Jews from the Western Wall — the holiest accessible site in Judaism — and from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, where dozens of ancient synagogues were demolished. Egypt used Gaza as a launchpad for terrorist raids into Israel. Arab states maintained a total boycott of Israel and blockaded Israeli shipping. No Arab state recognized Israel's existence. During these 19 years, Israel controlled no West Bank, no Gaza, and no settlements — yet was still given no peace.
The PLO was founded in 1964 — three years before Israel captured the West Bank or Gaza. This fact is crucial: its stated goal was not to liberate the West Bank or Gaza, which were under Arab control, but to eliminate the State of Israel. The PLO founding charter explicitly denied Jewish peoplehood and called for Israel's destruction. The organization was not a response to occupation. It was a response to Israel's existence.
1948–1967
Arab Political History of Gaza and the West Bank
Before 1967, neither Gaza nor the West Bank was Palestinian-governed land. Both were controlled by Arab states — neither of which used that control to create a Palestinian state.
Part A
The Political History of Gaza
400 Years: Ottoman Rule
Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 until WWI. No Palestinian state. No Palestinian sovereignty. Gaza was a provincial backwater of a vast empire that stretched from Istanbul to Arabia.
1917–1948: British Mandate
Britain took control after defeating the Ottomans in WWI. For 30 years Gaza was administered as part of Mandatory Palestine. Still no Palestinian state — the British repeatedly delayed and ultimately abandoned any resolution.
1948–1967: Egyptian Military Occupation
When Egypt invaded in 1948, its forces seized the coastal strip and simply stopped where Israeli forces halted them. The 1949 armistice froze that line. Egypt ruled Gaza for 19 years as a military zone. Palestinians there received no Egyptian citizenship, no rights, no passports, and no path to statehood. Egypt made no attempt to create a Palestinian state — it treated Gaza as occupied enemy territory.
1967: Israel Takes Gaza from Egypt
In the Six-Day War, Israel captured Gaza from Egypt — not from a Palestinian state. After the war, Israel offered to return Gaza to Egypt as part of a peace settlement. Egypt refused. Israel was not choosing to keep Gaza. Egypt was choosing not to take it back.
1979: Egypt Gets the Sinai — Not Gaza
At Camp David, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for peace. Israel offered Gaza too. President Sadat explicitly declined — Egypt did not want responsibility for Gaza's population. Israel was left holding territory that its former occupier had abandoned twice. Gaza was not stolen from Palestinians. It was abandoned by Egypt.
2005: Israel Withdraws Entirely
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon removed every Israeli soldier and all 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 — against fierce domestic opposition. Gaza was handed to the Palestinian Authority. Two years later Hamas seized it by force, executing Fatah officials in the streets. The territory that Egypt didn't want and Israel vacated became the world's first elected terrorist state.
Part B
The Political History of the West Bank
400 Years: Ottoman Rule
Like Gaza, the West Bank was part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. The region encompassing Judea and Samaria was administered as Ottoman Syria — never as a distinct Palestinian entity.
1917–1948: British Mandate
Britain administered the territory under the League of Nations Mandate. The 1947 UN partition plan proposed dividing it into Jewish and Arab states. Jews accepted. Arabs rejected it and went to war.
1948–1967: Jordanian Annexation
Jordan invaded in 1948 and annexed the West Bank in 1950. It was Jordanian territory — plain and simple. Jordan granted Palestinians full Jordanian citizenship. They held Jordanian passports, voted in Jordanian elections, and served in the Jordanian parliament and military. The annexation was recognized by almost no one internationally, but it was the practical reality for 19 years.
No Palestinian State in 19 Years
Jordan controlled the West Bank for 19 years and never created a Palestinian state. The PLO was banned in Jordan. Palestinian nationalism was suppressed as a threat to the Hashemite throne. The Arab world's stated commitment to Palestinian statehood did not extend to actually creating one when Arabs held the land.
1967: Israel Takes the West Bank from Jordan
In the Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan — not from a Palestinian state. Jordan had attacked Israel first. Israel took Jordanian territory in a defensive war. The framing of "Israel occupying Palestinian land" erases the fact that the land was Jordanian the day before.
1988: Jordan Walks Away
In 1988, King Hussein formally renounced all Jordanian claims to the West Bank and revoked Palestinian Jordanian citizenship. Jordan simply abandoned the territory and its people. The West Bank went from being Jordanian land to disputed territory — with no sovereign, no state, and no resolution — in a single announcement.
June 1967
The Six-Day War
With Jordan in full control of the West Bank and Egypt in full control of Gaza — and Israel just nine miles wide at its narrowest point — the stage was set. Surrounded by mobilizing armies and explicit promises of annihilation, Israel struck first and won in six days — then immediately offered to trade the captured land for peace.
In May–June 1967, Egypt expelled UN peacekeepers, blockaded the Strait of Tiran (an internationally recognized act of war), massed 100,000 troops on Israel's border, and broadcast explicit threats to annihilate Israel. Jordan and Syria mobilized. Arab radio crackled with promises of a war to "push the Jews into the sea." Israel — nine miles wide at its narrowest — launched pre-emptive strikes. In six days it destroyed three Arab air forces, defeated three armies, and captured the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
"This is the first war in history in which the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender."
— Abba Eban, Israeli Foreign Minister — on the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War
For the first time in 19 years, Jews could pray at the Western Wall. In a gesture of religious pluralism rarely noted by critics, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan returned administrative control of the Temple Mount — Judaism's holiest site — to the Islamic Waqf authority. Israel declared Jerusalem open to worshippers of all three Abrahamic faiths — a promise Jordan had explicitly denied when it controlled the city. Israel immediately signaled willingness to return the captured territories in exchange for peace. The Arab League responded at Khartoum: "No peace, no recognition, no negotiations."
"No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel."
— The Khartoum Resolution — Arab League Summit, September 1, 1967, in response to Israel's offer to return captured land
1973 · 1982 · 2006
The Wars That Followed: Yom Kippur, Lebanon, and Hezbollah
Beyond 1948 and 1967, Israel has fought multiple major wars for survival — each revealing something important about the nature of the conflict and its neighbors.
The Yom Kippur War — October 1973. On the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, while Israelis were fasting and synagogues were full, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on Israel. Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal; Syrian tanks poured into the Golan Heights. Israel suffered devastating early losses — over 2,500 soldiers killed. It recovered, pushed back both armies, and crossed the Suez Canal itself. The war ended in ceasefire after 19 days. It came perilously close to an Israeli military collapse in the first 48 hours. The United States airlifted emergency supplies that likely saved Israel. The war shattered Israeli overconfidence from 1967 and ultimately led to the Egypt peace deal — Sadat concluded that war could not destroy Israel and chose negotiation instead.
The First Lebanon War — 1982. After years of PLO rocket attacks on northern Israel from Lebanon and an assassination attempt on Israel's ambassador in London, Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy PLO infrastructure. Israel reached Beirut. The war became deeply controversial — the Sabra and Shatila massacre, carried out by Lebanese Christian militias while Israeli forces controlled the area, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians. An Israeli government inquiry found Israeli leaders bore indirect responsibility. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resigned. The episode remains one of the most painful in Israeli history — cited by Israelis themselves as a moral failure. Israel eventually withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1985, maintaining a "security zone" in the south until 2000.
The Second Lebanon War — 2006. After Israel's full withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah — an Iranian-backed Shia militia designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU — built a massive rocket arsenal along the border. In July 2006, Hezbollah crossed into Israel, killed eight soldiers, and kidnapped two. Israel launched a 34-day war. Hezbollah fired over 4,000 rockets into northern Israeli cities, forcing over one million Israelis into shelters or evacuation. The war ended in UN ceasefire with Hezbollah still standing — which Hezbollah declared victory. In the years that followed, Iran rearmed Hezbollah to over 150,000 rockets — the largest non-state arsenal in history — all pointed at Israeli cities.
1968–1993
The PLO's Global Campaign of Terrorism
The Munich Massacre — September 5, 1972. PLO-affiliated Black September operatives broke into the Olympic Village in Munich, murdering two Israeli athletes immediately and taking nine more hostage. All nine were subsequently killed in a botched rescue attempt. Eleven Israeli athletes and coaches died in total, in front of a global television audience of hundreds of millions. Black September operated with PLO leadership's knowledge; its operational commander, Abu Iyad, was a senior Fatah official. The world watched Jewish athletes die at the Olympics — 27 years after the Holocaust.
The Coastal Road Massacre — March 1978. Eleven Fatah terrorists — Arafat's own organization — landed on an Israeli beach, murdered an American nature photographer, hijacked a bus, and opened fire on civilian cars along Israel's main coastal highway. In total, 38 Israeli civilians were murdered, including 13 children. It remains one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Israeli history. Arafat's Fatah carried it out directly. It was not a rogue operation; it was PLO policy in action.
The Ma'alot Massacre — May 1974. PLO-affiliated terrorists crossed from Lebanon, murdered an Arab Israeli family in their home, then seized a school in Ma'alot and took more than 100 Israeli schoolchildren hostage. When Israeli forces attempted a rescue, 22 children and 3 adults were killed. The attack was specifically designed to murder children — it was not collateral damage. It was the goal. Arafat's PLO praised the operation.
The Achille Lauro Hijacking — October 1985. PLO-affiliated Palestine Liberation Front terrorists seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro with over 400 passengers. They singled out Leon Klinghoffer — a 69-year-old Jewish American confined to a wheelchair — shot him in the head and chest, and threw his body and wheelchair overboard into the sea. PLO chairman Arafat initially refused to condemn the attack. He subsequently sheltered the mastermind, Abu Abbas, in PLO-controlled Tunis for years.
Dawson's Field and the birth of modern hijacking. The PFLP — a PLO faction — hijacked three commercial airliners simultaneously in September 1970, diverting them to a Jordanian desert airstrip. After transferring the 310 passengers, they blew up all three jets on live television for maximum global impact. This single operation invented modern aviation security worldwide. Every security checkpoint, every X-ray machine, every rule about liquids you have ever endured at an airport traces directly back to PLO tactics.
Lod Airport Massacre — May 1972. Three Japanese Red Army terrorists, recruited and dispatched by the PFLP/PLO, opened fire with automatic weapons and grenades in the passenger terminal at Tel Aviv's Lod Airport. 26 people were killed and 80 wounded — including Puerto Rican Christian pilgrims and a prominent Israeli scientist. The attack illustrated PLO strategy: recruit international proxies, maintain plausible deniability. Arafat ran a global terror franchise decades before Al-Qaeda.
These are only a fraction of PLO operations. The PLO also murdered U.S. diplomats in Sudan (1973), carried out car bombings across Europe, machine-gunned passengers at Rome and Vienna airports (1985), and blew up a Swiss airliner (1970). Despite all of it, Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 after signing Oslo — a decision that remains deeply controversial. His later return to violence after Camp David 2000 vindicated the skeptics. The PLO pioneered modern international terrorism as a political instrument, and the world largely accommodated it.
The PLO is not the Palestinian people. Many Palestinians opposed PLO violence and corruption. But the PLO claimed to speak for all Palestinians and was recognized as their representative by the Arab League and the UN — meaning its choices shaped Palestinian fate.
"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."
— Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, 1969–1974
1978–2001
The Peace Offers — and Their Rejection
Israel has made genuine, painful concessions for peace and had them accepted by Egypt and Jordan. Every Palestinian leadership has rejected a negotiated state. This is the documented record.
The Camp David Accords (1978) prove that peace is possible when a partner is willing. Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula — larger than Israel itself, including oil fields — to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty. Egypt's President Sadat was assassinated by Islamists for making it. Israel kept every commitment. Peace with Jordan followed in 1994. Both treaties have held for decades. Israel is not congenitally incapable of returning land or making peace. It has done both when the other party was willing to actually end the conflict.
The Oslo Accords (1993) were the closest Palestinians ever came to a state. Israel recognized the PLO; the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist; the Palestinian Authority was created; Arafat returned from exile to govern. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin paid with his life — assassinated by a Jewish extremist who believed he was conceding too much. Rabin's murder stands as proof that Israel's peace movement was real, and that it has paid a price for seeking peace.
Oslo did more than create the Palestinian Authority on paper — it physically divided the West Bank into three zones, an arrangement still in force today. Area A (~18% of the West Bank) is under full Palestinian civil and security control — the eight major Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, Jericho, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, and Hebron H1, plus surrounding territory. Israeli citizens are legally barred from entering Area A; red warning signs at the borders make this explicit. Roughly 55% of West Bank Palestinians live in Area A, governed by Palestinian courts, Palestinian police, Palestinian schools, Palestinian ministries, and Palestinian taxes. Area B (~22%) covers most rural Palestinian villages — Palestinian civil control with joint Israeli-Palestinian security. Together, Areas A and B account for about 40% of the West Bank and contain roughly 90% of its Palestinian population. Area C (~60%) remains under full Israeli control and contains nearly all Israeli settlements, the Jordan Valley, and a sparse Palestinian population of roughly 150,000–300,000. The common framing that "Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation" is accurate for Area C but inaccurate for Area A, where Palestinians have governed themselves for over thirty years. Whatever the merits or failures of PA governance, it is Palestinian governance. The arrangement was meant to be a five-year transitional step toward a final-status agreement; it froze in place when those negotiations collapsed in 2000 and again in 2008. Honest caveat: the IDF does conduct security raids inside Area A, particularly in Jenin and Nablus, when it judges that Palestinian security forces will not or cannot act against militants planning attacks on Israelis. This is a real limit on Palestinian sovereignty in Area A, and worth naming.
Camp David 2000 — Arafat Rejects a Palestinian State. U.S. President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state covering approximately 94–96% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem — including sovereignty over the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City. It was the most generous offer any Israeli leader had ever made. Arafat said no. He made no counteroffer. President Clinton was furious and publicly blamed Arafat for the failure. Barak's chief negotiator said Arafat "never had any intention of ending the conflict." Clinton then offered the "Clinton Parameters" — an even more detailed framework — and Israel's government accepted it as a basis for negotiation. Arafat rejected that too. Arafat's response was not a counter-proposal. It was the Second Intifada.
The Olmert Offer, 2008. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an even more generous offer to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: 97% of the West Bank, a land-swap for the remaining 3%, half of Jerusalem, and an international committee to govern the Old City. Abbas has acknowledged receiving the offer and not responding to it. As of today, he has still given no formal answer. This was not the PLO rejecting a state — it was the supposedly "moderate" Palestinian Authority rejecting one.
The pattern is consistent: 1947, 2000, 2001, 2008. Every time a Palestinian state was on offer, Palestinian leadership declined it.
"You have lost many chances. You have been here fourteen days and said no to everything. These things have consequences."
— President Bill Clinton (D) to Yasser Arafat — Camp David Summit, July 2000, after Arafat rejected a Palestinian state
The Palestinian Leadership Question
How Palestinian Leaders Failed Their Own People
A genuinely sympathetic account of Palestinian suffering must grapple with a difficult truth: Palestinian leaders have consistently prioritized the destruction of Israel over the welfare of Palestinian people — and enriched themselves in the process.
Arafat stole billions from his own people. IMF and EU audits found that Arafat diverted at least $900 million to $1 billion in Palestinian Authority public funds between 1995 and 2000 alone into personal accounts he controlled. Arafat's financial adviser Mohammed Rashid was later convicted of embezzling $33.5 million from Palestinian public funds. Time magazine documented Arafat skimming $2 million per month from the Palestinian gasoline trade. Total estimates of Arafat's personal fortune at death range from $1.3 billion to as high as $6.5 billion — while Palestinian civilians lived in poverty and international donors poured in aid that vanished. His wife Suha and daughter lived in a Paris palace spending an estimated $50,000 per day.
Corruption did not end with Arafat. His successor Mahmoud Abbas — now in his 21st year of a 4-year term, having cancelled all elections — enriched his family in parallel. His two sons, Tareq and Yasser, built a business consortium called Falcon with an estimated worth of over $300 million, operating with monopoly privileges under Palestinian Authority protection. The EU determined the PA mismanaged 2 billion euros in European aid between 2008 and 2012. In a poll of 1,200 Palestinians, 95.5% — nearly everyone — agreed the PA was rampantly corrupt. Hamas, meanwhile, diverted billions in aid into its tunnel network rather than civilian infrastructure.
Palestinian poverty and suffering are real. A significant portion of their cause is Palestinian leadership, not just Israeli policy.
It is worth asking directly: do Palestinian leaders actually want a Palestinian state? The historical record gives reason for doubt. A Palestinian state would require compromise — accepting Israel's permanent existence, giving up the "right of return" as a practical matter, and building functional governance. Each of these things threatens Palestinian political elites more than continued conflict does. Continued conflict maintains external funding, preserves victimhood as political currency, and avoids the accountability that statehood demands. Arafat was offered a state and said no. Abbas was offered a state and didn't answer. Hamas's charter explicitly calls for genocide, not statehood. This is not the behavior of movements that want a state. It is the behavior of movements that want to destroy the one next door.
"Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world."
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — address to the Rabbinical Assembly, March 25, 1968, ten days before his assassination
Israel's Character
The Only Liberal Democracy in the Middle East
Arab citizens of Israel have rights that Arab citizens of surrounding Arab countries do not. This is not propaganda — it is measurable, documented fact.
Arab citizens of Israel — approximately 2 million people, 21% of the population — have full voting rights, serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, practice medicine and law, and serve as diplomats. One fifth of Israel's doctors are Arab Israelis. Arab political parties have participated in governing coalitions. An Arab judge, Salim Joubran, helped convict a former Israeli president of rape — a demonstration that no one, regardless of ethnicity, is above Israeli law. This level of legal equality for Arab citizens does not exist in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or any other state in the region.
Israel has full freedom of press, religion, and assembly. Israeli newspapers and television harshly criticize the government daily. Massive anti-government protests — including against judicial reforms — are routine and entirely protected. Mosques, churches, synagogues, Druze shrines, and Bahá'í temples all operate freely. LGBT rights in Israel are among the most advanced in the world — Tel Aviv is ranked one of the world's most LGBT-friendly cities — while homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death in Gaza under Hamas, and by imprisonment in much of the surrounding Arab world.
Israel's Druze and Bedouin Arab citizens serve voluntarily in the IDF, often in elite combat units, and have died defending the country. Circassian Muslims also serve. Opinion surveys consistently show that Israeli Arab citizens, while identifying strongly with Palestinian culture, prefer to live under Israeli law rather than Palestinian Authority or Hamas governance — a telling measure of what Israeli democracy means in practice. Discrimination against Arab citizens exists and Israeli civil society actively fights it, including through Arab-led political parties and Israeli courts.
The Ingathering of Exiles
One of the Most Diverse Nations on Earth
Israel has absorbed immigrants from over 100 countries across six continents — in a territory the size of New Jersey. Its diversity rivals the United States and exceeds virtually every other nation. It is a feat achieved not by immigration policy but by survival necessity.
Walk down a street in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and you will hear Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Amharic, French, Yiddish, and Spanish within a single block. Israel's Jewish population includes people whose grandparents came from Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Ethiopia, Russia, Ukraine, France, Argentina, India, China, and the United States — each bringing their own cuisine, music, religious customs, and linguistic traditions. No country of comparable size has absorbed this diversity and forged it into a functioning democracy. The United States is the only peer comparison, and it is 40 times larger.
Operation Magic Carpet (1949–1950) airlifted nearly 50,000 Yemenite Jews — members of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, living in Yemen for over 2,500 years — to Israel. Many had never seen an airplane. Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991) airlifted tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews — the Beta Israel — from famine and civil war. Operation Solomon alone moved 14,325 people in 36 hours using 35 aircraft, with babies born midflight. It is one of the only times in recorded history that a country has airlifted Black Africans not into slavery but into full citizenship.
Today, Ethiopian-Israelis number over 160,000. They face real challenges including discrimination — which Israeli civil society, Arab and Jewish alike, actively fights. But Ethiopian-Israelis have also been elected to the Knesset, served as IDF officers, won Israel's national talent competitions, and in a single generation gone from famine-struck villages in the Horn of Africa to one of the world's most advanced technology economies. Israel also hosts the ancient Bene Israel Jews from India, Bukharan Jews from Central Asia, Kaifeng Jews from China, and Romaniote Jews from Greece — communities maintained for over a millennium before coming home.
"I had faith in Israel before it was established. I believe it has a glorious future before it — not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization."
— President Harry S. Truman (D) — first world leader to recognize Israel, May 14, 1948
The Most Complicated Chapter
Israeli Settlements in the West Bank
Settlements are where the pro-Israel case becomes genuinely difficult. The facts are contested, the legal arguments are real on both sides, and the trajectory is troubling even to many Israeli supporters.
Why This Is Complicated
Most of the pro-Israel case rests on firm moral and factual ground: Israel accepted partition plans that Arabs rejected; Israel is the only democracy in the region; Palestinian terror has been systematic and deliberate; peace offers have been refused. On settlements, the picture is harder. There are legitimate arguments on multiple sides, and honest Israel supporters — including many Israelis — acknowledge this.
Here are the facts as they stand in 2026, presented as clearly as possible.
The scale: Approximately 750,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem across roughly 160 officially recognized settlements and nearly 200 unauthorized "outposts." This represents growth from near zero in 1967 to a population larger than Washington D.C. The pace has accelerated: the current Israeli government has approved more settlement units than any in the country's history — approximately 48,000 units since 2022. Israel's Finance Minister has publicly vowed to double the settler population.
The legal question: The international community — including the United States, European Union, United Nations, and the International Court of Justice — considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on transferring civilian population into occupied territory. Israel disputes this interpretation, arguing the West Bank is not "occupied" in the legal sense since it was never a sovereign Palestinian state, and that Jews have historical and legal rights to build there. This is a genuine legal dispute, not just politics.
Different types of settlements: Not all settlements are the same. Some — like the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, rebuilt after Jordan's destruction of it — have strong historical and moral justification. Others are large suburban cities near the Green Line, where residents are simply living in affordable housing close to Jerusalem. Still others are ideological outposts built deep in the West Bank by religious-nationalist settlers who believe the entire land is biblically theirs. Lumping them together misrepresents the complexity — but the cumulative effect on Palestinian movement and territorial contiguity is real regardless of motive.
The impact on a two-state solution: This is the core problem. Settlements — especially those built in the interior of the West Bank rather than along its edge — physically fragment the territory in ways that make a contiguous, viable Palestinian state increasingly difficult to envision. Israel's approval in 2025 of the E1 settlement project, connecting Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem, would effectively cut the West Bank in two, severing the land connection between Ramallah in the north and Bethlehem in the south. Many Israeli security officials and former prime ministers have warned that continued settlement expansion undermines Israel's long-term security by making a two-state solution impossible and forcing a choice between democracy and Jewish majority.
Notably, the settlers most actively expanding into the West Bank interior are not motivated by security — they are motivated by religious ideology. This is a tension within Israeli society, not just between Israel and Palestinians.
The Settler's Case
The Case for Settlements
It Is Not Sovereign Palestinian Land
The West Bank has never been part of a sovereign Palestinian state. Jordan occupied it illegally from 1948–1967 — an annexation recognized by almost no country on earth. Under international law it is disputed territory, not occupied Palestinian land. There is no legal basis for declaring it off-limits to Jews.
This Is the Jewish Heartland
Judea and Samaria are not arbitrary names — they are where Jewish civilization was born. Abraham walked in Hebron. David ruled from Jerusalem. The temples stood on the Temple Mount. Jews who live in this land are not colonists — they are indigenous people returning to the place their civilization began, thousands of years before the word "Palestine" existed.
Jews Were Ethnically Cleansed From Here in 1948
When Jordan seized the West Bank in 1948, it expelled every single Jewish resident. Jewish communities in Hebron, Gush Etzion, and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem — some with unbroken presence for centuries — were destroyed. The idea that Jews "don't belong" in Judea is not history. It is the legacy of ethnic cleansing.
Hebron: A City of 200,000 Arabs and 1,100 Jews
Hebron is home to roughly 200,000 Arabs and approximately 1,100 Jews — living near the Cave of Machpelah, the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs, one of the holiest sites in Judaism. Abraham himself is buried there. In what vision of a fair and just world is it considered acceptable for a city to be unable to tolerate a little over a thousand Jews within its borders — Jews living next to the burial place of their own ancestors?
There Is Space for Millions
The West Bank is roughly the size of Delaware — with a current population of around 3 million. It is not overcrowded. With development it could support millions more of both peoples living side by side. The argument that Jewish presence is inherently incompatible with Palestinian life assumes Jews and Arabs cannot coexist — a premise Israel itself disproves every day within its own borders.
The Double Standard
Two million Arabs live as full citizens inside Israel's pre-1967 borders — and nobody calls that illegal. But Jewish civilians living in the West Bank are called an "obstacle to peace." A future Palestinian state that requires the ethnic cleansing of every Jew from its territory is not a peace proposal. It is a demand for apartheid.
Between The Two Sides
The Honest Assessment
What Honest Israel Supporters Must Acknowledge
The settlement enterprise — particularly deep-interior outposts driven by religious ideology — is problematic. It creates daily hardship for Palestinian civilians, makes a two-state solution harder, and gives Israel's enemies a legitimate grievance they use to obscure their illegitimate ones. Many of Israel's own most experienced security officials oppose it.
What Settlements Do Not Justify
Settlements do not justify terrorism, suicide bombings, hijackings, the Ma'alot massacre, the Munich massacre, or October 7. The PLO began its terror campaign in 1964 — three years before the first settlement. Hamas's charter calls for genocide of Jews worldwide, not just opposition to settlements. Settlements are a real problem. They are not the root of the conflict.
2005–Present
Gaza, October 7, and the Ongoing War
Israel withdrew every soldier and settler from Gaza in 2005. Hamas thanked them with rockets — and eventually, mass murder.
In 2005, Ariel Sharon made the painful decision to unilaterally withdraw all Israeli soldiers and 8,000 settlers from Gaza — some forcibly evicted from homes they had lived in for decades. It was a genuine sacrifice made in hope. Hamas's response: seize power in a violent 2007 coup, throw Fatah officials from rooftops, and immediately begin firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities. Hamas then diverted billions in international aid into a 500-kilometer military tunnel network built beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques.
October 7, 2023. Hamas broke through the Gaza border fence at 30 points simultaneously. Approximately 3,000 fighters attacked 22 Israeli communities, a military base, and the Nova music festival. 1,195 people were killed — mostly civilians. Babies were murdered. Women were gang-raped. Bodies were burned. Families were executed room by room. 251 people — including Holocaust survivors, toddlers, and foreign nationals — were taken hostage into Gaza. It was the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Israel declared war and launched a campaign to destroy Hamas and recover the hostages. Palestinian health authorities report approximately 72,000 deaths since October 2023 — figures provided by Hamas's own Ministry of Health that do not distinguish civilian from combatant deaths. Israel argues Hamas's deliberate embedding of military infrastructure beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques makes civilian casualties unavoidable — a strategy verified by independent journalists and military analysts. The Abraham Accords (2020) — normalizing relations with UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — demonstrated that Arab states can choose peace when they choose coexistence over conflict.
Post-October 7 Reality
What Comes Next
The hostages have been accounted for. The ceasefire is fragile. The fundamental questions remain unanswered.
The hostage crisis is resolved. All 251 hostages taken on October 7, 2023 have been accounted for. 168 were recovered alive; 87 were retrieved deceased. The last living hostages were released on October 13, 2025, as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal. The final hostage's remains were recovered in Gaza on January 26, 2026. For the first time since 2014, Hamas holds no Israeli captives in Gaza.
A ceasefire came into effect in October 2025, brokered by the United States. It is fragile — violations documented on both sides. As of May 2026, the fundamental questions remain entirely unresolved: Who governs Gaza after Hamas? Can a two-state solution survive continued settlement expansion? Mahmoud Abbas, now in his 21st year of a 4-year term with no election held, has no democratic mandate to speak for a post-war Palestinian order. The morning after has no plan.
Israel is a country the size of New Jersey, nine miles wide at its thinnest point, born three years after the Holocaust and immediately invaded by five armies. In the 77 years since, it has built the only democracy in the Middle East, absorbed immigrants from over 100 countries, accepted every partition plan offered, returned the Sinai to Egypt and Gaza to the Palestinians, offered a Palestinian state in 2000 and 2008 and been turned down both times, and survived suicide bombers, hijackers, massacres, and the worst single-day atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust.
Palestinian suffering is real. The people of Gaza have endured immense hardship — a significant share of which traces to their own leaders, who stole billions, rejected statehood, and built war tunnels instead of hospitals.
The question for the future is whether any Palestinian leadership will emerge that chooses its people's welfare over Israel's destruction.
In Their Own Words
America's Founders — Long Before Modern Zionism
"I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation."John Adams — 2nd President of the United States Letter, 1819 — written 80 years before Herzl founded modern Zionism
U.S. Presidents — Across Party Lines
"I had faith in Israel before it was established. I believe it has a glorious future before it — not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization."Harry S. Truman (D) First world leader to recognize Israel, May 14, 1948
"When it comes to Israel, the United States is not a bargainer or a broker: The United States is a friend."Ronald Reagan (R) Remarks to Supporters of Israel at White House Briefing — Reagan Presidential Library, verified primary source
"You have been here fourteen days and said no to everything. These things have consequences."Bill Clinton (D) to Yasser Arafat Camp David Summit, July 2000 — after Arafat rejected a Palestinian state
"What followed was more than the establishment of a new country. It was the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham and Moses and David — a homeland for the chosen people Eretz Yisrael."George W. Bush (R) Address to the Knesset, May 15, 2008 — verified primary source
"Our commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable, and our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring."Barack Obama (D) 44th President of the United States
"Hamas's attack was an act of sheer evil."Joe Biden (D) Address to the Nation, October 10, 2023
Other Voices of Support
"Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world."Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Address to the Rabbinical Assembly, March 25, 1968 — ten days before his assassination
"The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."Abba Eban Israeli Foreign Minister and UN Ambassador
"This is the first war in history in which the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender."Abba Eban On the aftermath of the Six-Day War, 1967
The Enemy — In Their Own Words
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."Hamas Founding Charter Article 1, 1988 — the stated goal is not borders or settlements, but the elimination of Israel
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."Hamas Founding Charter Article 13, 1988
"We love death like our enemies love life."Ismail Haniyeh Hamas Prime Minister and Political Bureau Chief — Hamas TV, 2014
"Today you are fighting divine soldiers who love death for Allah like you love life, and who compete among themselves for Martyrdom like you flee from death."Muhammad Deif Hamas Chief of Staff — Hamas TV broadcast, July 2014