As Israel prepares for its first election since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacres in Israel, it is critical to understand the mindset of many Israelis.
Most will never again vote for a two-state solution, not because they hate peace, but because they now understand that creating a Palestinian state was never a realistic path to it.
Two reasons guide this view. The first is historic: Jews have been indigenous to this land for over 3,000 years. The evidence: our language, our Bible, our kingdoms, our ruins, our prayers, and our continuous presence are here.
The people called “Palestinians,” marketed to the world as a separate ancient nation, have no indigenous claim to the land. They are Muslims from surrounding Arab countries and local Arab clans, many of whom arrived hundreds of years ago, while most came at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
As the Soviet dissident Lt.-Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, acting chief of Romania’s foreign intelligence service, exposed years ago that the “Palestinian” national identity was invented by the Soviet Union in the 1960s as a political weapon to deny Jewish sovereignty, legitimize terror against Israel and the Jews, and weaken the United States.
Our names say it all. Jews are from Judea; Arabs are from Arabia.
The second reason is both theological and strategic. Peace, in the Western sense – a final and sincere end of claims and acceptance of a legitimate Jewish state that is here to stay – is impossible under the Islamic doctrine that formed this conflict.
In Islam, Muhammad permitted temporary treaties when Muslims were weak, as in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah.
Those agreements were instruments of delay, not reconciliation: a way to regroup, deceive an enemy, and return to war when stronger.
Anyone who studies the Quran and the life of Muhammad knows that a central theme of Islam is jihad: the drive to conquer in the name of Allah and bring other peoples into submission.
Not every Muslim follows this; many want quiet, spiritual lives based on Islamic teachings. But that does not change Islam’s jihadi doctrine.
There isn’t a separate, peaceful “Islam” waiting to be discovered by diplomats. There is one Quran, one Islam, and its political doctrine does not allow for peace with any non-Muslims.
October 7 was not a breakdown of that worldview. It was its true expression. The massacres, rapes, abductions, and public celebrations in Gaza and the region were not the result of “despair over settlements.” They were the result of an Islamist jihad that cannot accept Jews as sovereign anywhere, including Jerusalem, Judea, or Samaria.
Every Israeli withdrawal was followed not by moderation but by more rockets, tunnels, and monuments to terrorists. The concept of “land for peace” and 30 years of adhering to the Oslo “peace” process have only resulted in land for jihad, and pushed peace further out of reach.
Israelis who had hopes for Oslo have since experienced the Second Intifada, decades of suicide bombings, bus explosions, and daily terror attacks. They watched Israel’s disengagement from Gaza and saw the world demand yet another experiment after our children were burned alive.
They will not vote to recreate the conditions of October 6, 2023. A two-state formula that requires Israel to shrink, reward a neighboring jihadi entity with the prestige of statehood, and call that “peace” is not diplomacy.
It is suicide with better stationery.
Acting like a Jewish nation
And yet the future of the Jewish people in our God-given, indigenous, ancestral homeland is bright. Each day, more Israeli Jews are discarding the Western fantasy that if only we speak softly enough and appease more, the other side will turn into a neutral, Sweden-like entity.
They are returning to a simpler, older truth: we are the Jews, this is our land, and weakness, as seen in the Muslim Arab Middle East, only invites war. Even the Quran, in verses our enemies prefer not to quote, records that this land was assigned to the children of Israel.
When a Jewish nation acts like a Jewish nation, rooted, unapologetic, unwilling to outsource its survival to foreign capitals, the Muslim world understands the language. It will not love us.
But it will respect our strength, both spiritual and physical. Strong, identity-based deterrence is not a slogan. It is the only way for our jihadi enemy to conclude that attacking us is not worth the price.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has begun the turnaround. After decades of Oslo’s appeasement, after years of denying we are in a war against jihad and treating an invented “Palestinian people” as the key to history, he has started to lead from Jewish strength rather than fear of international scolding.
But that process is incomplete. Too many of our political, organizational, and rabbinic leaders are still thinking like it’s October 6. Too many still treat the Palestinians as a permanent diplomatic sacrament.
The direction has changed, with the Israeli public leading ahead of the old elite. Perhaps this is why almost none of Israel’s left-wing parties are campaigning as proud leftists.
Instead, they are trying to outflank Netanyahu from the right, even though their actions and statements during the war remained stuck in October 6 thinking: end the fighting with negotiated deals, without destroying the military threats of Hamas or Hezbollah.
As one political strategist, Ronen Manelis, asked US pollster Arthur Miller in a recorded meeting with Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot: “How do we convince the public we are Right, not Left?” They understand that the generation that fought this war is not going back to the way things were.
True peace will never come from giving away land or creating a Palestinian state; it will come only through strength, by reinforcing Israel as the Jewish homeland.
As Prof. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University often states: “If Israel wants short-term peace, [it has to] be invincible in the short term. If Israel wants long-term peace, [it must] be invincible for the long term.”
That is the peace worth seeking, not the Western idea of peace based on slogans. October 7 buried all of that.
The upcoming election will test how many Israelis see through slick campaigns, Left and Right, that ignore these truths while trying to outflank Netanyahu.
The writer hosts The Pulse of Israel, a daily video podcast, and is the CEO of the 12Tribe Films Foundation, which produces media content highlighting Israel’s biblical, historical, and strategic importance to the Jewish people and the world. He is the 2025 recipient of the Ari Fuld Project’s Lion of Zion Award.