WHY PEACE BY FORCE WILL NOT WORK IN THE MIDDLE EAST / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Why Peace by Force Will Not Work in the Middle East

It’s unlikely to resolve a conflict that has endured for over a century.

By: Hilal Khashan

The Gaza ceasefire deal stipulates that a lasting peace is one in which both Palestinians and Israelis can thrive, protect their fundamental human rights, ensure their security and preserve their dignity. 

It emphasizes that a new chapter has opened in the region, one in which future disputes can be resolved through diplomacy rather than conflict.

The problem with the agreement is that it traces the origins of hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians to Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, ignoring the fact that the conflict actually began with the 1897 Basel Program. 

That document was the outcome of the first Zionist Congress held in Basel, Switzerland, and called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, which had a population at the time of 600,000 people, 95 percent of which was Arab. 

The deal struck in Sharm el-Sheikh last week is fundamentally flawed because it relies on an approach of peace by force – highly unlikely to resolve a conflict that has endured for 128 years and whose underlying causes have survived in the collective consciousness of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims around the world. 

This paper argues that the peace plan will not work, and that Israeli territorial expansionism will continue beyond Gaza and the West Bank.

Obsession With Power

Israel has long sought to achieve political ends through military might. 

Zeev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, said that there can be no return to the “promised land” or to a pure Jewish state without violence and usurpation. 

Menachem Begin, who was a prominent member of the Irgun terrorist organization before becoming prime minister in 1977, said that establishing Greater Israel “can only be achieved by crushing others, for it is absurd to speak of participation and coexistence.” 

Earlier this month, the pro-Israel Middle East Forum wrote: “Real peace will only come after Israel achieves a clear victory … after the complete defeat of its enemies.” 

Former Mossad agent Avner Avraham admitted that Israel constantly searches for new enemies. 

According to him, Israeli decision-makers perceive peace not as an objective but as a strategy for further territorial expansion.

In his speech before the Knesset in Jerusalem, U.S. President Donald Trump said Israel achieved victory by force. 

He also said the U.S. has provided Israel with weapons so that it can impose its own vision of peace on the Middle East. 

Through these comments, Trump is redefining what peace means in the region, making it synonymous with domination and oppression rather than justice and values.

Immediately after the ceasefire in Gaza was implemented, the Israeli military activated an alleged secret clause that allows it to open fire if it detects a threat from Hamas fighters. 

As a result, dozens of Palestinians were killed. 

To be clear, both sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefire, but the incident indicates Israel’s willingness to achieve its desired ends through force rather than diplomatic means, revealing its aim to reshape the region based on its overwhelming military superiority. 

Indeed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters are redefining modern Jewish identity on the basis that land is an indivisible historical right and that the Jewish community is constantly under threat and in need of preemptive protection.

The resumption of Israeli airstrikes also highlights the similarities between the situations in Gaza and Lebanon. 

Last week, Israel ignored Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s offer to negotiate an end to the two countries’ conflict. 

Since then, Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have only intensified, sending a clear message that Israel plans to use force to establish a fait accompli on the ground, achieving what the ceasefire signed last November hasn’t thus far. 

The Israeli government’s objective is evident: force Lebanon to adhere to Israeli terms and complete the disarmament of Hezbollah, even without an agreement on border demarcation.

Netanyahu’s absence from the Sharm el-Sheikh summit revealed his desire to distance himself from any commitment to end the war or launch a political process with the Palestinians – which would anger his right-wing base. 

He accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement by failing to return all the bodies of kidnapped Israelis and emphasized that he would take firm action on this issue. 

Hamas, however, says it lacks the equipment needed to remove the rubble under which the bodies are trapped. 

(In fact, the bodies of thousands of Palestinians are also still trapped under the rubble because Israel destroyed the machinery needed to recover them.) 

Turkey offered to send 80 debris removal experts to assist in recovering the remains, but Netanyahu declined, asserting that Hamas could manage the task on its own. 

In response, Egypt’s foreign minister said Hamas was committed to the terms of the Gaza agreement and needed more time to complete its mission.

Living in Denial

Israel’s stance on peace with the Palestinians is clear: It categorically rejects the idea of a Palestinian state, despite the fact that this issue is at the heart of its broader conflict with the Arab world. 

Jordanian King Abdullah has warned of a bleak future for the Middle East without the establishment of a Palestinian state. 

Similarly, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has made peace in the region contingent on Palestinian statehood.

Some Israelis have also noted the importance of the statehood matter. 

In 2017, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said he was waiting for an Israeli leader to emerge who could publicly acknowledge the enormous Palestinian tragedy. 

He considered Netanyahu’s insistence on Israel as a Jewish state problematic and said ordinary Israelis live in denial over this issue, viewing Palestinians as untrustworthy and Palestinian hardship as a security concern. 

In fact, many Israelis, such as former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, say that if Israel continues this way, it could turn into an apartheid state like South Africa, a comparison that underscores the gravity of the situation.

Since its establishment, Israel has not put forward a single peace proposal or agreed to discuss any Arab-proposed peace plans. 

Instead, it has unilaterally pursued peace with individual Arab states. 

It prefers a peace imposed by U.S. power with Arab governments that will give it a degree of influence in a region with which it has no connection.

In 1949, Syrian President Husni al-Zaim accepted U.N. General Assembly resolution 194, which called for repatriating or compensating Palestinian refugees. 

He offered to naturalize 400,000 refugees if Israel agreed to repatriate 100,000 displaced Palestinians, thus ending the refugee question. 

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declined al-Zaim’s offer, claiming that the price for peace was too high. 

In 1981, the Saudi crown prince proposed an initiative to establish peace between Arab nations and Israel in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but Israel declined. 

A year later, members of the Arab League officially adopted the proposal, but Israel again dismissed it, even though Arab nations agreed that the Security Council would establish guarantees for peace between the countries of the region. 

In 1996, the Arab League adopted the principle that just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East was the “strategic option” for Arab countries, on the condition that a Palestinian state could be established. 

However, Israel did not respond to the initiative, which was subsequently readopted at the Arab League summit in 2002.

Arab Public Anger

Anger over this situation has been growing for years across the Arab world. 

In 1997, a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli girls during a tour to a border area, claiming they had mocked him while he was praying. 

Some Jordanians consider him a hero, believing he killed the girls to protest the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel. 

In June 2023, a 20-year-old Egyptian policeman crossed the border and killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded several others. 

The fact that the shooter was born 25 years after the Camp David Accords attests to the deep roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

Arab social media was abuzz with comments hailing the policeman as a national hero. 

A day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, an Egyptian policeman killed two Israeli tourists in Alexandria after they insisted on taking photos with the Israeli flag, in violation of regulations. 

In May 2024, Egyptian and Israeli forces clashed near the Rafah border crossing, resulting in the death of an Egyptian soldier.

Trump has expressed his hope that more countries will join the Abraham Accords, saying that several Arab and Islamic countries had informed him of their willingness to sign peace agreements with Israel. 

He emphasized that if Saudi Arabia signs a peace deal, all Arab and Islamic countries would follow suit. 

The normalization deals are named after Abraham (Prophet Ibrahim to Muslims), a key figure in both the Jewish and Muslim faiths. 

However, what supporters of the accords failed to recognize is that, according to the Torah, God granted Abraham and his descendants eternal ownership of the land of Canaan, which includes, in addition to historic Palestine, Lebanon and southwestern and central Syria, the area into which Israel has been penetrating since the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime in December 2024.

Israel’s rise in the Middle East occurred while the Arab region suffered from a profound structural imbalance. 

The modern Arab state inherited from colonialism a bloated bureaucracy that has exploited society and excluded it from politics and decision-making. 

It has failed to create a modern educational system that transcends indoctrination, inhibiting critical thinking. 

Meanwhile, jurists have been unable to overcome religious stagnation, reducing jurisprudence to rituals and delegitimizing the value of individual character and national identification. 

Society lost the ability to think about a better future and cut itself off from the past, leading to marginalization and detachment from reality. 

National issues faded away, replaced by sectarianism, ethnicity and political incompetence. 

The failed Arab uprisings gave a new mandate to authoritarianism, as opposition movements lacked maturity and achievable objectives. 

The deterioration of Arab societies made it easier for Israel to dominate the region and exploit divisions to promote its regional project.

In 1905, Lebanese Maronite Christian Najib Azoury wrote a book about the awakening of the Arab nation, arguing that the 20th century would witness a massive conflict between the Arabs and the Zionist project, whose goals extend beyond Palestine. 

This initiative, he argued, was designed to engineer the future of the region, exploit its divisions and redefine its borders when opportunities arose. 

The conflict will go on, he said, until one side soundly defeats the other.