In and outside of Israel, radicalization runs both ways

A common refrain about the war in Gaza is that Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas is counterproductive, because it will only create more terrorists and further radicalize Palestinians. 

But if the world is truly concerned about peace in the Middle East, it should be concerned about how Israel — and Jews around the world — will emerge from this war.  

We ignored Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri when in 2007 he explained the group’s strategy. “Our job is to keep Palestinians radicalized,” he told a reporter from London’s Times, “Most of them would settle in a moment for peace, some deal that will let them get on with their lives. We need to keep them angry.”

What Hamas succeeded in achieving, however, is radicalizing Israelis. Polls since last Oct. 7 have regularly revealed that some two-thirds of Israelis now oppose a Palestinian state. Nearly three-quarters believe that if one existed, terrorist attacks on Israel would only increase. In the wake of the recent cold-blooded execution of six hostages, those sentiments have likely hardened. 

This has been the pattern of Israeli public opinion for decades. But with Gaza, it may have passed the point of no return. 

The cratering of Israel’s once-dominant Labor Party is a case in point. In 2000, Yasser Arafat walked away from the best chance for a two-state solution to end the conflict. The Camp David Summit was the culmination of the Oslo Accords and a process of many years to broker peace. 

The resulting agreement, offered by Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak, would have had Israel return 96 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, with land swaps making up for the rest, and shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel and lasting peace. Arafat’s refusal to make peace is one of the greatest failures of leadership in the last hundred years. The consequences proved tragic. 

As shocked as the Israeli public was by Arafat’s refusal to make peace, more shocking was the violence of the second intifada that followed. For the next five years, Palestinian suicide bombers deliberately targeted Israeli citizens, almost paralyzing daily life. Approximately 1,000 Israelis were killed after Arafat’s abrupt departure from Camp David. 

Barak’s left-wing Labor Party, and the Israeli peace movement generally, nearly evaporated in 2000 as a result. How could any Israeli peacenik explain why Palestinians refused so generous a deal, after years of good-faith negotiations, and instead responded with constant suicide bombings? 

The center of Israeli political life had already been lurching rightward with Benjamin Netanyahu’s first electoral victory in 1996. With few brief interludes, that did not change. 

And, despite corruption and other scandals, Netanyahu not only became the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history but has also produced the government in power today that includes fringe extremists like Bezalel Smotrich and even convicted terrorists like Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Despite the rightward drift of the Israeli polity, creative attempts to achieve peace continued despite the Second Intifada. Likud Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s peace plan in 2008 was even more generous than the one offered at Camp David, but it too was ultimately rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 under a hawkish leader, Ariel Sharon, was another attempt to figure out a way to coexist with its Palestinian neighbors. In return, Gazans elected Hamas and a new reign of terror — of missiles and rockets — followed to plague Israel.

A breaking point is being reached today, both within Israel and among the diaspora. Israel is being torn apart by the strains of war and the desperate yearning to bring home the hostages remaining in Gaza. Judaism is a humanist religion with a unique value assigned to each human life — a stark contrast to Hamas’s cult of martyrdom and its ghoulish fetishization of death. 

Its leader, Yahya Sinwar, thus watches with satisfaction as terrorism achieves its preeminent goal of undermining trust in a country’s democratically elected leadership and drives deeper wedges of division and friction in Israeli society. 

What is Israel to do? It has tried repeatedly to negotiate peace and has been rebuffed. Israel has left occupied territory unilaterally only to see an even more malignant and even more consequential form of terrorism emerge. 

Israel sees itself as defending itself against a monstrous enemy but is condemned across the globe with accusations that echo the blood-libel Jews have struggled against for centuries. Meanwhile, Israel’s patience and tolerance for outside diktats diminishes. What if the Israeli security establishment determines that there is no future for the country unless it is rid of Arab populations in Gaza and the West Bank, which must be annexed, along with southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah sits like a coiled snake, ready to strike? 

Israel, already something of a pariah state, may decide that prioritizing its security in this way is the strategic choice it must make to survive. A two-state solution remains the only reasonable option, but Israel is increasingly being forced into a corner.  

The situation for Jews elsewhere is strikingly similar. How much longer will they tolerate those marching in the streets, holding the flags of our enemies, pledging to pursue a genocidal agenda masked by clever colloquialisms like the ”river to the sea” chants? 

Will we continue to shrug our shoulders at the bigoted graffiti going up in our neighborhoods? Our religious institutions under threat? Our young people being intimidated as they strive for education?

There may soon come a time when Israelis and Jews everywhere tire of forced compromises and hollow pleas for moderation. This would result in a very different political and geo-strategic dynamic — one that could potentially doom any hopes of peace.   

Bruce Hoffman is a senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council of Foreign Relations, a professor at Georgetown University, the author of “Inside Terrorism,” and a member of Interfor Academy. Jeremy Hurewitz is the head of Interfor Academy and the author of the book “Sell Like a Spy.”