In politics, preferring intentions over outcomes, and action - any kind of action - over thinking, and choosing the noisy and tumultuous over the calm or measured, are among the defining characteristics of a romantic mindset.
We thus see, for instance, that the call for establishing a "Palestinian state," which the Palestine Liberation Organization advocated after realizing that violent methods were a dead end, and which was later endorsed by Arab and international states and institutions, did not become a popular slogan that spoke to and stimulated the popular imagination. This slogan has always seemed insufficient for alleviating the masses’ accumulated frustrations. Moreover, it does not turn attention away from genuine concerns in the countries around Palestine, concerns that some regimes in our region were keen on turning attention away from. Consequently, the slogan of a "Palestinian state" is a "dwarf" compared to the "giant" that is "liberating Palestine from the river to the sea,annihilating Israel," or "liberating Al-Aqsa." That is part of a robust tradition of Arab political culture: even Gamal Abdel Nasser, who is not generally associated with workable strategies, could not make his famous yet modest slogan of "removing the effects of aggression" popular, unlike almost everything else associated with the Egyptian leader.
However, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his friends on the furthest end of the Israeli right, thought differently: they knew that the “giant” slogan did not scare them, and that, in the end, it was hot air that would vanish in the heat of the Arab streets. If it did scare them, they could dispel their fears through their military and technological superiority and their infinite capacity for killing Palestinians. When Iran became the region's largest giant slogan factory, the Israelis became more convinced that the real issue was not the slogans but the specter of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. As for the slogans, they are frail to an extent that has rendered them a game Tehran uses.
Netanyahu and his political school were and remain consistent on one matter: they are afraid of seeing this Palestinian state that has failed to capture our collective imagination come to light, as the emergence of such a state is feasible in principle. Moreover, the unequivocal justness of this demand undermines the narrative that Netanyahu and his allies have been using to blackmail the world: Israel’s existence is constantly questioned and threatened. On the other hand, such a state fulfills both Arab and international demands, paving the path for its legitimation.
This awareness led Netanyahu to bet on killing it, sometimes through procrastination and evasion, breeding despair among Palestinians and leaving the world disillusioned, and at others through direct violence, which began with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by an extremist right-winger (a move that found a partner in Arab and Iranian rejectionists, albeit from opposite position), and thirdly, by supporting Hamas. Since October 7, Israeli and international media outlets have been brimming with reports about the Israeli leader's facilitations to the Islamic movement, be it by allowing the entry of Qatari aid into the Gaza Strip or consistently giving Gazan workers preferential treatment. This support aimed to foster a distinct entity in Gaza that encouraged independence from the West Bank.
With a Palestinian state seemingly the only possible theoretical solution, Netanyahu's war on the Oslo Accords continues. He recently called it the founding father of the October 7 attack and took a hard line in opposing the return of the “Ramallah Authority” to Gaza.
The fact is that Israel can, as we are seeing today, retaliate to the Hamas attack with security and military operations, and by ratcheting up its genocidal brutality, which is helped by the fact that Hamas is a non-state actor. On the other hand, the attack helps strengthen the hateful ideology of the extreme right - the Likud's bloc also calls for a state “from the river to the sea,” as well as reinforcing accusations of anti-Semitism, which are brandished with or without reason to blackmail others. In addition, the October 7 attacks could be used as a pretext for bringing the global far-right together in backing a universal war against “ISIS terrorism,” as Netanyahu called it, and in the meantime getting away with paying the massive debt the Israelis owe the Palestinians. As for a legitimate Palestinian state, it is the only thing that could undermine this extreme right ideology and its raison d'etre, deny Netanyahu the talking points that Hamas provides him with, liberate the Palestinian cause from the clutches of Iranian-Israeli competition, and end wars instead of fanning their flames in perpetuity.
In this sense, two wars are being fought today: a destructive one, the Gaza war, and a political one, the Palestine war. While some have claimed that October 7 “put Palestine on the table,” the total opposite seems to be true, unless the Gaza war manages to find shade under the Palestine war and the forces of Gaza can stand behind the forces of Ramallah. That is perhaps precisely what is being engineered today in Cairo and Doha, and perhaps elsewhere as well.
However, the theoretical solution, the Palestinian state, will not emerge unless we see shifts in Palestine itself, as well as Israel. Besides the Israelis removing Netanyahu and his ilk and showing genuine readiness to resolve the settlement issue (there are 750,000 of them) in a way that paves the way for a Palestinian state, what is required, above all else, is sharpening a Palestinian political instrument and rendering it vigorous and dynamic, qualities that do not apply to the current Ramallah authority. Although bringing about this happy eventuality will not be simple, easy, or swift, its slow emergence late on certainly remains better than its non-occurrence.
