Palestine: a peace hijacked by extremes

Contrary to popular belief, the Palestinian question is not trapped in a stalemate by historical inevitability, nor by an irreconcilable, atavistic hatred. It is methodically neutralized by a convergence of interests between extremes who, while clashing in bloodshed, share a common obsession: preventing the emergence of a political solution based on mutual recognition and equal rights. On one side, an Israeli power captive to an absolute security logic, transformed over the years into a governing ideology. On the other, Islamist movements that thrive on the collapse of politics, the sacralization of violence, and the hijacking of the Palestinian cause for the benefit of regional agendas. Caught in the middle, a population held hostage, and a prospect of peace deliberately sabotaged.

We must start from this point: radicalization is not the primary cause of the conflict; it is a symptom. As leading Palestinian and Arab intellectuals critical of closed nationalism and armed Islamism have long demonstrated, extremism thrives primarily on the absence of a credible political horizon. Where sovereignty is rendered impossible, violence becomes the substitute language. Similar work has been undertaken by enlightened minds in Israel.

However, for more than two decades, the strategy of the Israeli hard right has consisted of emptying any solution based on the existence of two states of its substance. Not by rejecting it outright—which would have a diplomatic cost—but by rendering it materially unfeasible: continuous settlement activity, territorial fragmentation, and the methodical destruction of any Palestinian political continuity. This strategy has a corollary, namely, keeping Palestinians trapped in a deadly binary choice: submission without rights or resistance without a future. In both cases, the Palestinian state disappears as a genuine project. And with it, the possibility of moderate, responsible political leadership, capable of governing, negotiating, and responding to the aspirations of its people in ways other than the sanctification of sacrifice.

It is here that the symmetry of extremes becomes evident, to borrow the frameworks developed by René Girard. Palestinian Islamist movements do not represent a break with this logic: they are its product and, paradoxically, one of its best alibis. By presenting themselves as the sole force of resistance, they hijack the Palestinian cause, delegitimize any political alternative, and offer the Israeli camp the ideal pretext for equating any Palestinian national claim with terrorism. The contemporary Palestinian tragedy lies in this: each extreme camp needs the other to survive politically. One justifies the perpetuation of occupation and domination, the other justifies the perpetuation of war in the name of a liberation without contours or deadline. Peace, for its part, becomes the common enemy. In this hall of mirrors, the figures of peace—those who attempted to conceive of mutual recognition as a historical necessity, not a moral concession—have been eliminated, marginalized, or discredited. The political and symbolic assassination of this generation has paved the way for governance by fear, resentment, and identity-based radicalism.

But let it be clear: pursuing this logic leads to a complete strategic dead end. No people disappears under military pressure, no national identity dissolves by decree, and no lasting security can be founded on the planned erasure of the other. The Palestinian question is not a humanitarian problem to be managed, much less a security anomaly to be contained. It is an unresolved political problem. And as long as it is treated as such, subcontracted to the logic of force, it will inevitably produce only violence, cycles of radicalization, and regional explosions.

The only credible alternative lies in a return to politics. This means recognizing that Israel's security cannot be sustainable without Palestinian sovereignty, and that Palestinian sovereignty can only emerge free from the logic of militias, regional tutelage, and armed messianism. This implies a clear choice: a two-state solution, not as a diplomatic slogan, but as a concrete political architecture. A viable, continuous, sovereign, internationally recognized Palestinian state, led by political forces capable of governing, being accountable, and breaking with the logic of perpetual war. This choice is not a concession to the Palestinians at Israel's expense. It is a condition of political survival for both peoples. The alternative is well known: either a regime of structural inequalities and permanent domination and chronic violence, which amounts to an imperfect, fragile, yet open mutual recognition, suggesting a possible future. International responsibility is central here. The incantatory repetition of international law, without binding mechanisms, has emptied this law of its credibility. Inaction is not neutrality: it is a form of passive complicity with the logic of extremism.

Finally, we must break with the dangerous illusion that time is on the side of the status quo. Historical experience shows the opposite: the more a conflict is frozen in injustice, the more radicalized it becomes, the more it spills over, and the more it poisons its entire regional and global environment. Peace is not a naive ideal. It is a courageous political choice, always a minority one in the short term, but the only one capable of preventing general collapse in the long term. In Palestine, as elsewhere, it begins with a simple truth: no future can be built on the denial of the other. The two-state solution, reiterated by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, is the only non-toxic framework for the future, not only for the Middle East but for the entire world, given how deeply the consequences of the conflict inflame identity and religious passions within every society. The logic that considered the conflict to be geographically "elsewhere," and therefore treatable as a political, diplomatic, security, or humanitarian issue detached from the vital strategic choices of any given country, no longer holds true. The Israeli-Palestinian question now operates like a malignant tumor within national borders. There is a real danger of implosion, no longer confined, as in the 1970s and 80s, to terrorist attacks. The very survival and security of a world that is itself increasingly sliding towards extremism are at stake.

As long as this truth remains unacknowledged by the leaders trapped in these extremes, the region will remain imprisoned in an endless war, and the entire world will be shaken by its consequences, as demonstrated by the recent massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Peace agreements forced upon the Israeli state will not resolve the underlying problem. Fire and bloodshed guarantee no lasting peace. On the contrary, they only fuel an endless prolongation of the conflict.

It is time to break the cycle of violence and take foundational steps toward peace. A first step in the right direction, awaited for decades, was taken on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2025. But it must be followed by concrete action, which means definitively cutting off Iran's influence in the region, but also—and this is the real crux of the matter—ceasing to consider Israel as a privileged state, above international law, enjoying total impunity in defiance of all conventions and general principles, possessing a fantastical claim to a "promised land," and wielding the power of life and death over the Palestinians.

A historic and strategic choice must be made against hatred and the culture of exclusion and death. It is high time to make it, even if 77 years too late. Hundreds of thousands of lives in the region and across the globe have already paid the price of this conflict. This needless bloodshed must end before it engulfs everyone. Isn't it through genuine acts of peace, far removed from trophies and trinkets, that true global leadership is asserted?