A report published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz examined the positions of Israeli leaders, including Gadi Eisenkot, whom the newspaper describes as the frontrunner in the elections and head of the Yashar party, on the establishment of a Palestinian state. Yet it argues that this issue has become secondary compared with what it sees as the more immediate danger: the threat to the very existence of the Palestinian people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
According to the newspaper, the Israeli and international debate over a “two-state solution”, a single state or a federal model has increasingly become theoretical, because there is no agreement on the nature of the fundamental problem itself. It argues that large sections of Israeli Jewish society have been conditioned to view the very presence of Palestinians on this land as the problem.
A Question Beyond Palestinian Statehood
Gadi Eisenkot, the frontrunner in the elections and leader of the Yashar party, holds a position on Palestinian statehood that, in the end, has become almost secondary. What is now at stake is not a “diplomatic solution”, but the continued existence of the Palestinian people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Israeli forces seeking to “erase them”, the report argues, recognise neither borders nor restraints, while their supporters are too numerous for Palestinians to rely solely on the resilience and resistance of a people that has already endured Israeli plans of expulsion.
The world stands by, while the Israeli left is a weak minority whose warnings have grown faint from repetition. The anti-Netanyahu opposition, meanwhile, fluctuates between downplaying the danger, showing indifference towards it and openly supporting displacement.
The scattered condemnations, mostly issued in response to a post by the US ambassador on X, are of little practical value. Settler militias continue to attack relentlessly and in numerous locations, not only in Qusra.
When the Palestinian Presence Becomes the “Problem”
The debate over one state, two states or a federal arrangement has become more theoretical than ever. Any agreed solution would first require recognition of the problem and agreement on what that problem actually is.
The report argues that a very large number of Jews in Israel have been conditioned to believe that the problem is the existence of the Palestinian people themselves on the land, a people with deep roots, historical and economic continuity, cultural capital, material assets, a rich agricultural heritage and a profound attachment to their homeland.
“Erasure”, it says, has become the nightmare solution being written into policy and transformed into reality every day.
Knesset legislation, politicians’ statements, military orders, school textbooks and what the report describes as religiously motivated real estate battalions operating in Gaza, the West Bank and the Negev are all, collectively and individually, advancing this “solution” seriously and without fear of international condemnation.
Making Palestinian Life Unbearable
Israeli policy, according to the report, is moving towards making life intolerable for Palestinians wherever they live, so that their displacement can later be portrayed as an act of free will.
Inside Israel itself, the authorities are accused of allowing Arab criminal gangs to arm themselves and kill Palestinian citizens in their own homes.
In the West Bank, the same Israeli authorities give what the report calls “God’s battalions” broad freedom to arm themselves, kill and displace Palestinians, while the regular army continues raids around the clock.
In devastated and thirsty Gaza, the government and army sponsor armed militias made up of criminal collaborators, while Israeli pilots continue launching what the report describes as missiles of revenge and retaliation, killing more children.
These manifestations, fuelled by violent forms of masculinity, are presented as interconnected rather than isolated developments.
Destroying the Ability to Survive Economically
At the same time, Israel is destroying or severely restricting Palestinians’ ability to earn a living.
In Gaza, the report argues that this task has effectively been completed. Two million people are crowded into roughly 150 square kilometres of scorched land, reduced to what it calls the “living dead”, dependent on aid and carrying the burden of approximately 74,000 new graves, together with the families and memories left behind, lost talents and professions, and savings that have disappeared.
Creativity, survival strategies and mutual aid, it says, are dwarfed by the scale of destruction and by Israel’s prohibition on reconstruction and recovery.
In the West Bank, the Israeli Finance Ministry’s financial pressure is tightening around nearly three million Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority.
The systematic seizure of revenues is compounded by military destruction campaigns in cities and refugee camps, along with other methods used to prevent Palestinians from cultivating and developing their land, including military checkpoints, bureaucratic restrictions, fences, Israeli shepherds and Jewish settlers.
Inside Israel, the policy of “Judaising the Galilee and the Negev” has long been, and remains, a symbol of the seizure of land and resources from Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Discrimination in allocations, subsidies and employment, along with construction bans and demolitions, has also long occupied a prominent place in official policy within the Green Line.
The Threat of Another Mass Displacement
The report reiterates that the very existence of the Palestinian people between the river and the sea is now in imminent danger.
It identifies a large number of forces contributing to this threat: Israel’s military capabilities and power; the sanctification of military service under any government and in all circumstances; obedience as a supreme value; weapons and military attacks as the default mode of action; the normalisation of post-traumatic stress among soldiers and soldiers’ suicides; the attraction of military careers and the opportunities they create; and the appeal of obtaining an affordable villa in an exclusionary settlement community in the Galilee or a settlement suburb in Samaria.
It also points to official and unofficial propaganda, indifference towards the hell Israel has created in the Gaza Strip, denial of 60 years of occupation and coercive rule, the automatic response of “but October 7”, and the synergy between the army, government, rabbis and kippah-wearing militias in the West Bank.
Other factors include indifference towards the destruction of Lebanon, acceptance of the occupation of additional parts of Syria, the normalisation of displacement rhetoric, justice and education systems contaminated by secular and religious racism, and what the report describes as an army of prison guards abusing thousands of Palestinian prisoners, both under orders and by choice.
Together, these forces and others like them are creating the material, ideological and psychological infrastructure within Israeli Jewish society for another mass displacement of Palestinians, potentially accompanied by large-scale massacres.
Settler Militias and the Search for a Spark
The “heroes” of the settler militias openly declare that displacement is their objective.
They are fully aware, according to the report, of the readiness of broad sections of Israeli Jewish society to participate in carrying it out, whether actively or passively, directly or indirectly.
Through daily provocations and crimes committed in broad daylight, made possible only by institutional support, settler militias continually seek to provoke a sufficiently angry and retaliatory Palestinian response that can then be exploited as the spark for a new holy war.
The Jewish settler militias and the right-wing organisations that sustain them are counting on broad mobilisation, including leaders, voters and supporters of the Yashar and Free Democrats parties, for a war that could already be given the slogan:
“One people, one army, one land free of Arabs.”
