Of the many attempts in the past seven decades to negotiate an end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, none has borne fruit. To Haviv Rettig Gur, this futility results from the inability of leaders of both sides, as well as of such third parties as the United States, to grasp the truth about their predicament:

The peace process was forged by a class of individuals possessing an exceptionally well-developed capacity for selective blindness. Some Israeli leaders—Yitzḥak Rabin, for instance—believed they could forge with Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the sort of cold but dependable standoff Israel had maintained with each Egyptian dictator since Anwar Sadat. Other Israelis—[the hard-left journalist and politician] Yossi Beilin is one example—believed they were negotiating a real reconciliation, apparently because they themselves yearned for it so intensely that they could not really fathom that it might not be reciprocated by the other side.

Both sorts of Israelis were determined to ignore the domestic Palestinian discourse advanced by Arafat and others that resisted reconciliation, elevated the ideological rejection of Israel to the level of civic religion, and openly glorified brutality against Israelis—and this was in the happy early years of Oslo peacemaking, the mid-1990s, to which more than a few of today’s despairing progressives look for inspiration.

The Palestinian side, too, was gripped by a strategic blindness that transformed peacemaking efforts into a recipe for permanent war. The PLO turned to peace talks after the first Gulf war, when American power in the region was ascendant. It was a strategic concession, not a historic turnaround. The fundamental Palestinian predicament, even today, is not in any simple sense the specific Israeli presence in the West Bank. Fatah, [the PLO’s dominant faction], was founded in 1964, not 1967, and saw its mission as addressing a deeper and older problem: . . . the problem of a nation dispossessed of its homeland whose very identity had coalesced around that loss. It is Israel itself, invasive, Jewish, a standing reproach to Arab powerlessness and decline—and, more galling, to Muslim incapacity in defending the shrines at Jerusalem’s sacred center. . . .

One can murder colonists until they return to their home country or tyrants until they abandon their unjust oppression. But how does one terrorize a nation with nowhere else to go? The Israelis are no more capable of resolving the Palestinians’ primordial predicament of displacement—for example, by fulfilling their redemption fantasy of return across the Green Line—than the Palestinians are of leaving this land quietly to the Jews.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.