The Choice Is Between ‘Resistance’ and Peace
The Choice Is Between ‘Resistance’ and Peace
When anti-Zionists claim endless violence is necessary—every pro-Palestinian demonstration has embraced the concept of “resistance”—so-called supporters of the Palestinian cause sound a lot like the famous line from The Simpsons, “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
Israel has peace agreements with plenty of Arab countries, including neighbors with whom it has fought several wars. Those wars, in fact, convinced the leaders of those states to finally agree to the offer of peaceful coexistence that Israel put on the table immediately upon its founding and never removed. Not only is “resistance” not justified, it’s unnecessary. Anyone fighting a war with Israel is doing so because they want to fight a war with Israel.
The fatalism about the Palestinian cause is, thus, completely unwarranted, and I reject it unreservedly.
The idea that it is difficult to make peace with Israel has been tested and disproved. Not only that, but this current war started because peace with Israel had such magnetic pull that war was required to stop it. Which is what Hamas did by invading Israel. Its fans around the globe are supporting that: the violent prevention of peace.
In fact, the choice is between resistance and peace. And it has been that way all along.
What was the deal under discussion that was so violently interrupted by Hamas’s pogromist rampage one year ago? Israel would be rewarded for facilitating the creation of a Palestinian state; Saudi Arabia would be rewarded for underwriting much of that state, and the United States would be rewarded for shepherding the deal across the finish line.
Saudi Arabia’s rewards would include long-sought security guarantees from America. Israel’s rewards would include recognition by Riyadh. In other words, for enabling Palestinian sovereignty, the U.S. would be a guarantor of peace. And that peace would also be America’s reward.
The deal, it’s worth noting, would be all reward for the Palestinians. It would take work, of course—Israel was a viable nation-state because the Zionist movement spent half a century building civic institutions, and the Palestinians would have to do the same—but we should stop indulging those who see effort as oppressive.
If this process sounds familiar, it should. This is the road map set down by the Abraham Accords.
Although it has become convenient for some parties in the conflict to forget, the Palestinians were the Abraham Accords’ first beneficiaries. “The truth is that the Abraham Accords were about preventing annexation,” explained United Arab Emirates ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba back in 2021. “The reason it happened, the way it happened, at the time it happened was to prevent annexation.”
Otaiba should know: It was he who penned the op-ed in an Israeli newspaper that set in motion the public moves that had only been talked about privately at that point. Fears that Israel would annex West Bank land motivated Otaiba’s country to do more than just talk about normalization with Israel. As more countries joined the Abraham Accords, it became clear just how easy it is to make peace with Israel.
That’s the model. It proved infinitely superior to the previous academic model of peacebuilding, which could be summed up as: Maybe the Jews will eventually just get tired and die.
Indeed, in the annals of peacemaking, it’s hard to describe just how much of an anomaly this is. Historically, has there ever been a more painless way to improve the relative security of one’s country than by saying “I admit the Jews exist”? You have to really not want peace with Israel to not have peace with Israel. It takes a staggering amount of effort and determination.
Last year, the Abraham Accords process was apparently so close to its goal that Iran and its militia that runs Gaza had to start a regional war. The many thousands stomping around U.S. cities and campuses with Hamas target triangles, with paraglider art, with “resistance is justified” signs believe that every death since Oct. 7 was worth it in order to prevent the existence of peace.
That was the choice on offer: peace with Israel and Palestinian statehood or death and destruction. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t hopeless unless you want it to be.
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