Ross and Makovsky support this line of speculation by pointing to the schadenfreude-laden reactions to Israel’s current internal political turmoil by the likes of Ayatollah Khameini and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. But that turmoil has nothing to do with the status of U.S. aid to Israel. It instead stems from the efforts of the far right in Israel to cement its power.

If U.S. aid to Israel were to be cut off, it is unlikely any of those foreign foes of Israel would change their calculations—Israel would still be by far the most powerful military power in the region. Given Israel’s wealth, it can afford to maintain that superiority by itself. The difference the U.S. aid makes is that American taxpayers rather than Israeli taxpayers pay for some of that military power.

If making U.S. aid conditional were, despite all the indications of Israeli obstinacy, to lead to an end to the occupation and a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, security challenges to Israel from regional foes would not become more likely and probably would become less so. The biggest regional grievance against Israel would be gone, the change would take the wind out of the sails of the Iranians and others who have used the issue to seek influence elsewhere in the region, and the IDF would no longer have the major distraction of administering the occupation.

Ross and Makovsky are right that Palestinian violence does not contribute to a solution to a conflict and has only exacerbated the problem at multiple points in the conflict’s history. But their repeated suggestion that if only Palestinians would act differently then something good “could” happen to them is of a piece with how the whole so-called peace process has understandably become, in Palestinian eyes, a never-ending charade about a promised land that is frequently pledged but never arrives.

The authors state that “a serious Palestinian move to reform the Palestinian Authority or a determined and more public and peaceful form of Palestinian protest against occupation could help stimulate the debate in Israel” about how best to resolve the conflict. But the Palestinian Authority was intended as a temporary transitional arrangement and passed its sell-by date a quarter-century ago. It has become little more than a security auxiliary to the IDF, as such has lost credibility among the Palestinian people, and it will hardly be a needle-mover whether reformed or unreformed.

As for a “more public and peaceful form of Palestinian protest,” consider one of the most time-honored forms of peaceful protest—the boycott—which in the Palestinian case has taken the form of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement. Far from stimulating a constructive debate, let alone any constructive Israeli policy changes, the Israeli response has been a no-holds-barred (and mostly successful) effort, extending into the United States and elsewhere abroad, to extinguish support for any boycott by asserting that the entire movement, not just some elements in it, is an illegitimate and antisemitic campaign to destroy Israel.

Ross and Makovsky also are right about the strength of nationalism among both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and how a two-state arrangement would be the best way of accommodating the nationalist impulses of both. Or make that “would have been” the best way. There was an opportunity to do this, but the policies that have entrenched the one-state reality may mean that the two-state solution will have to enter the history books alongside the U.S. failure to join the League of Nations and other departures that would have been beneficial but never were taken.

Ross and Makovsky present themselves as being on the good side of advocacy in charting a course for Israel and take pains to distinguish themselves from Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and other extremists in the Israeli government. They say they support a two-state solution, but they in effect are advocating a continuation of the current one-state “solution” with unchanged Israeli subjugation of the Palestinians. Too much history has transpired to believe otherwise. It has not only been fifty-six years since the conquest of the West Bank, but also thirty years since the Oslo Accords, which created the supposedly transitional Palestinian Authority. There is no reason to think that the same tired talk of support for a two-state solution and intimations that nice things “could” happen if only the Palestinians would behave better will bring about—absent a fundamental change in U.S. policy toward Israel—any more results than they have in the last several decades. With the political trend in Israel having brought to power those who are more explicit than ever in rejecting any self-determination for Palestinians, there is strong reason to believe that the tired talk will bring about no positive results at all.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as a National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

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