In 1956, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, in a famous remark made to the Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann, provides a clear understanding of the core of the Israel-Palestine conflict:
Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out (cited in Goldmann, 1978, p. 99).
Thus, Ben Gurion acknowledges that the invocation of religion (God) for claim to the land was illegitimate so that the de jure and moral arguments were entirely in favour of the Palestinian Arabs, whose land/country the Zionists had taken (the Nakba), and which seizure had been sanctioned by the victors of the Second World War through their partitioning (under the auspices of the newly founded UN) of Palestine without Palestinians’ consent. This was highly unjust and indeed could be considered criminal.
Ben Gurion was close to being correct when he thought that the Arabs ‘may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time’ as almost the entirety of the Arab regimes did precisely this. Thus, a generation later, Egypt, the largest Arab country, did forget when it signed up to the Camp David Accords in 1978. An even greater act of forgetfulness was the Oslo Accords which led by Yasser Arafat and the PLO to abandon struggling for the Palestinian cause. Indeed, the Palestine Authority that was established was a quisling body designed to police and enforce the occupation. And in 2020, a little over two generations later, the Abraham Accords resulted in the normalising of relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Hence, the Palestinians (who are overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs) have been forgotten and abandoned by Arab countries (who are also overwhelmingly Sunni) resulting in their immense isolation.
But Ben Gurion was not entirely correct as some Arabs, albeit a small percentage of the Arab population, did not—in fact refused—to forget and are almost in their entirety Islamists: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Kata’ib Hizballah. They, under the leadership of the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran, describe themselves as “the axis of resistance” to Israel and the USA.
Nevertheless, such an axis of resistance has failed to improve the situation of the Palestinians so that the condition of those under occupation has steadily deteriorated; and for Gazans, more than a hundred thousand of them have been killed or injured and their land reduced to rubble. The two-state solution was always a chimera and remains so, especially given that the number of Jewish settlers in the West bank and East Jerusalem increases year on year and is now over 700,000—we can be certain that they will not be leaving or driven out from these illegal settlements.
7 October 2023 and its aftermath
Throughout the Gaza war, a geopolitical equilibrium has been sustained. On the one hand, the Arab countries did not lift a finger to help the Palestinians as they were being mercilessly attacked (and indeed also in parts of the West Bank) while on the other, the west—above all, the US—has typically steadfastly supported Israel (both militarily and diplomatically). It is worth exploring this equilibrium.
The Arab regimes could have taken actions that would have applied pressure on Israel to cease its assaults and a signal to the Palestinians that they had not been abandoned by their fellow Arabs. The simplest—albeit symbolic—course of action would have been for Egypt and Jordan to annul their treaties, and the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco to have annulled the Abraham Accords. Real pressure could have been applied by the Gulf states through their halting of exports of oil and gas: this would have had an immediate impact as prices would have risen sharply which, in turn, would have hit hard many countries still recovering from the pandemic. This has a precedent, the 1973 OPEC oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel during the 1973 October (Yom Kippur) war.
Contrast this with those non-Arab states who did offer solidarity and expressed outrage at Israel’s assault. The following countries, including several Latin American states, cut off diplomatic ties with Israel: Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, South Africa, and Turkey. In May 2024, three European countries, Spain, Norway, and Ireland formally recognised a Palestinian state.
Most important of all, South Africa brought a charge of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice—unsurprisingly, this attracted enormous global attention and was highly embarrassing for Israel and its western allies. Indeed, in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) considered “plausible” that Israel was in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and is investigating this charge (ICJ, January 2024). Relatedly, in March 2024, Nicaragua filed a case against Germany for providing military support, including both weapons and other military equipment, to Israel in 2023 and 2024, thereby in breach of the Genocide Convention. However, the ICJ ruled against it (ICJ, April 2024).
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants of arrest for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity (ICC, 2024).
Absence of Palestinian leadership
It is clear that all Palestinian groups, including Hamas and the PLO and Fatah, its largest bloc, have failed to provide effective leadership. In 2001, Edward Said wrote that the Palestinians were a people in need of leadership: “[a]s for the Oslo ‘peace process’ that began in 1993, it has simply repackaged the occupation, offering a token 18 per cent of the lands seized in 1967 to the corrupt Vichy-like Authority of Arafat, whose mandate has essentially been to police and tax his people on Israel’s behalf” (Said, 2001, p. 28) (emphasis added).
Eqbal Ahmad (an ally of Edward Said) following meetings in the mid-1970s observed: “[t]hey [the PLO leadership] listened respectfully ... Some gave lectures that were essentially ignorant ... I had seen enough. They defeated themselves more than the Israelis did.” Some 20 years later in 1996, following the Oslo Accords, Ahmad came to a similar judgement as Said’s: “Arafat and the people around him are thugs collaborating with Israel” (Ahmad, 2000, pp. 33, 34, 36) (emphasis added).
So, the PLO moved from one disastrous, self-defeating extreme—terrorism—to another equally disastrous, self-defeating extreme—collaboration. Thus, the Palestinians were trapped in the orbit of two ruinous political forces—collaborators and Islamists—so their continued and worsening subjugation was thereby inevitable.
The leaderships have never campaigned against the apartheid that exists in Israel and the occupied territories (B’tselem, 2021; Amnesty International, 2022; Human Rights Watch, 2021) and nor have they systematically lobbied Arab states for support—competent leaders would have made regular visits to Arab capitals to encourage their leaders to take the sort of solidarity actions suggested above.
The elephant in the room: the Israel Lobby
So why does the west provide unstinting support to Israel, the second part of the geopolitical equilibrium? The question especially applies to the USA where both the Democrats and Republicans—who barely agree on anything—are resolutely united in their pro-Israel stance. The US has provided Israel economic and military aid totalling $310 billion (Council on Foreign Relations, 2024) and on the diplomatic front, it has used its veto power against Israel-related UN Security Council draft resolutions 49 times (Middle East Eye, 2024). As Mearsheimer and Walt (2007) have stressed, there is no appreciable gain to the USA from this massive support to Israel.
The reason for this extraordinary largesse is in large part because of the work of the Israel Lobby. For example, regarding Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in May 2011 when he was given 29 standing ovations, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist asserted: “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby”(Friedman, 2011) (emphasis added).
So, the Israel Lobby—which includes AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), ADL (Anti-Defamation League), DMFI (Democratic Majority for Israel) UDP (United Democracy Project), and wealthy donors funds politicians from both parties. What is required of them is straightforward: support for Israel. Those who do not will face an opponent who unequivocally does, funded by the Lobby. For example, AIPAC, the most powerful Israel Lobby group earmarked $100m in the run up to the 2024 election against members of Congress critical of Israel.
When Trump took over, he soon began to pay back the Israel Lobby. His first foreign guest was Benjamin Netanyahu who, we can surmise, made numerous demands as part of the payback, including acting against all those who opposed Israel and supported the Palestinians. Trump dutifully obliged as attested by the following actions he took.
Israel broke the terms of the ceasefire with Hamas and resumed its murderous assault with Trump’s backing. He went after immigrants who took part in pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses by seeking to strip them of their legal status and deport them. Relatedly, Trump announced that he would cancel approximately $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” (Marquez, 2025) and followed this up by freezing more than $2bn in federal funds and tax-exempt status for Harvard University for its “tolerance of antisemitism” (BBC News, April 2025). These are trumped-up allegations that violate the First Amendment and ignore the fact that many Jewish staff and students on US campuses also protested against Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
Like Biden, Trump was hostile to the ICC arrest warrants, denouncing its lawyers and preventing them from entering the USA. He sent a menacing letter to Iran demanding negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme and attacked the Houthis. He also threatened South Africa for filing a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (BBC News, February 2025).
Following Israel’s attack on Iran on 13th June 2025, Trump authorised the bombing of three of Iran’s nuclear sites—an act of war opposed by his MAGA base. Netanyahu would doubtless be delighted as all these actions are an impressive payback for the support given to Trump by the Israel Lobby and further pro-Israel actions will continue because without any countervailing force, such as a Palestinian Lobby, support for Israel does not come with any push back. But there is not—and never has been—a Palestinian Lobby.
Just as Palestinian leaders refrain from campaigning against apartheid, they keep silent about the Israel Lobby. This is puzzling and self-defeating as it is such a powerful force in their subjugation.
Future prospects
It is difficult to gauge how long the Israeli assault on Gaza will last. Despite its successes, Israel has been deeply traumatised by 7 October and the subsequent wars with Hamas and Hezbollah; and being bombed by Iran. Following Israel’s attack on Iran, many of the missiles launched by Iran in retaliation penetrated the Iron Dome and caused considerable damage. It cannot pretend to be a western-style democracy.
Our argument is that Hamas—and Islamism of any kind—offers no solution to the Palestinians. The tragedy for the Palestinians is that there is no sign of the formation of a political movement akin to the ANC in apartheid South Africa—which demands for a secular one state solution based on equal rights for all, be they Jews, Palestinians, and others, living in this small tract of land of historic Palestine.
Some relatively stable equilibrium will likely be restored before too long, but the country and its people will take much longer to recover from the trauma that was unleashed by 7 October. However, the International Court of Justice may well adjudge that the destruction of Gaza amounted to genocide and, if so, Israel will be designated a genocidal state. The irony is striking.
This article draws on my 2013 book Dangerous Liaisons: The Clash between Islamism and Zionism, republished in 2024.
References
Ahmad E (2000) Confronting Empire: Interviews with David Barsamian, London: Pluto Press
Amnesty International (2022) February 1, Israel's apartheid against Palestinians - Amnesty International
B’Tselem (2021) January 12, ‘This is Apartheid’, Apartheid | B'Tselem
Council on Foreign Relations (2024) November 13, U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts | Council on Foreign Relations
Friedman T (2011) ‘Newt, Mitt, Bibi, and Vladimir’, New York Times, 13 December, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/friedman-newt-mitt-bibi-and-vladimir.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman
Goldmann N (1978 [1976]) The Jewish Paradox, translated by Steven Cox, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Human Rights Watch (2021) April 27, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution | HRW
International Court of Justice (January 2024) Summary of the Order of 26 January 2024 | INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
International Court of Justice (April 2024) Summary of the Order of 30 April 2024 | INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
International Criminal Court (2024) November 21, Situation in the State of Palestine: ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I rejects the State of Israel’s challenges to jurisdiction and issues warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant | International Criminal Court
Marquez A (2025) NBC News, March 7, Trump administration cancels $400 million in grants for Columbia University
Mearsheimer J and Walt S (2007) The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, London: Allen Lane
Middle East Eye (2024) November 20, The 49 times the US used veto power against UN resolutions on Israel | Middle East Eye
Said E (2001) ‘A people in need of leadership’, New Left Review, vol. 11, pp. 27-33
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Great piece. No slogan or sophomoric student socialist argument can sum this decades old issue up. Its so complex. Historically, psychologically, and presently.
This is a rare piece thats not ideological, slanted or simplistic to the point of silliness.
1 - Hamas and Palestinian leaders should be ashamed of themselves.
2 - Obv, Likud and Netanyahu have gone nuts, but then again, they are kind of angry. What would Jesus do? What WOULD YOU do? Much the same as the IDF I'd imagine...
3 - Islamists worldwide, including those many among us in the West: they caused this rise in violence. Decades of it. Yes you.
4 - Zionists certainly need to think about their abuses of regular Palestinians for decades. I would imagine you can think of some quite recent historical abuses toward your own no?
Like any conflict, it just gets messier as it goes on. The losers will be the worst off: Palestinians, and by association, Muslims in the West. I suggest Muslim leaders in the West and elsewhere start working to find a solution instead of ranting about Colonialism day in day out. That it ain't.