What Palestinians and Israelis Have Learned Since October 7th

Earlier this week, Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire that included the release of the twenty living hostages remaining in Gaza and some two thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. The success of the exchange raised hopes that this devastating war was truly coming to an end. President Donald Trump, who took credit for the deal after pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept it, now wants both sides to implement his twenty-point peace plan, which would require Hamas to disarm and Israel to leave Gaza. (Israeli officials told the New York Times that they are now considering punitive measures after Hamas said Wednesday evening that the remains of more than a dozen Israeli hostages – who are also supposed to be returned to Israel – could not be located. Furthermore, Israeli forces still operating in Gaza have continued to kill Palestinians since the ceasefire began.)

I recently spoke by phone with Nathan Thrall, former director of the International Crisis Group’s Arab-Israeli Conflict Project. Thrall, who lives in Jerusalem, is also the author of the book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.” I wanted to talk to Thrall about what the Palestinian national struggle might look like in the future. During our conversation, which was written for length and clarity, we also discussed his fears about what lessons Israel might have learned from the war, why America is so unwilling to use its influence to help resolve a conflict it has exacerbated, and whether Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, was a strategic and moral catastrophe.

Regarding the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what has changed most in your perception of October 6, 2023 compared to today?

The most significant change over the past two years is that the possibility of large-scale ethnic cleansing has become very real. Of course, we have already seen large-scale ethnic cleansing in Gaza. But what I have seen over the past two years is a powerful Israeli society, facing very few obstacles, and which has the capacity and, in the right circumstances, the will, to expel large numbers of Palestinians and, in the view of many Israelis, to resolve the Palestinian question once and for all.

I am talking about the entire territory under Israeli control, therefore historic Palestine. Seventy-eight percent of historic Palestine lies within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. This does not include the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which make up the remaining twenty-two percent. But the West Bank is occupied by Israel, and before October 7, if you added up all of the territory actually under Palestinian control – that is, where the Palestinian Authority controls the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza – that together represented about ten percent of historic Palestine. And of course, Israel continued to launch raids into these areas at will. So we’re talking about Israel directly administering about ninety percent of historic Palestine.

There is a distinction between ethnic cleansing In the occupied territories – what we have seen both in the West Bank and on a much larger scale in Gaza over the past two years – and what could happen next, namely the possible expulsion of large numbers of Palestinians to areas outside historic Palestine. Arab states’ fear of this outcome, and the destabilizing effects it could have on their own regimes, was one reason they united around a deeply problematic Trump plan for Gaza, even though the plan offers no guarantee that Israel will fully withdraw from the territory or cease attacks on Palestinians there.

So in your mind, October 7 and the war that followed changed the idea of ​​what is possible for Israelis, because despite some resistance from the international community and many stories indicating that Israel’s reputation is the lowest it has ever been, the real lesson is that they can do whatever they want?

Yes. And what has really changed is that ethnic cleansing has become part of the mainstream public discourse. This is something I previously thought was not unimaginable, but very unlikely outside of a major regional war. Now it’s discussed. People are asked about this. A poll found that eighty-two percent of Israeli Jews supported the expulsion of Gazans. You can contest this or that poll, but you have clear Israeli Jewish majorities in favor of expelling Palestinians from Gaza. On one level, many Israelis feel that their fundamental predicament, the predicament of Zionism, will not be resolved as long as millions of Palestinians live in the territory under their control.

When you say that this has become part of the dominant discourse, what are you referring to?

I’m talking about media figures, government ministers and Knesset members discussing the expulsion. I’m talking about center-left Israelis who are proposing plans for what they call a voluntary “transfer” from Gaza. Ram Ben-Barak, a centrist Knesset member, was a co-author of one of the plans. It is no longer a marginal notion. And that comes from the fact that the Israelis are not willing to give the Palestinians a state or equal rights. What remains is either the continuation of apartheid or ethnic cleansing – and ethnic cleansing is attractive because it appears to be a solution. While apartheid appears to be durable, it is a non-solution. It seems that the problem is not resolved.

Okay, but why haven’t international condemnation and Israel’s declining popularity touched Israelis and convinced them that they should change course? Why do you think they learned the opposite lesson?

There is a huge difference between a change in public opinion and political changes that actually affect Israelis. And we really haven’t seen the latter. During a genocide, the Israeli arms industry was booming. They were making record profits. And we have at least nearly seventy thousand deaths in Gaza. It took this for the first bills banning products from the colonies to be introduced in certain European countries. But it is still not possible to obtain a ban on products from the colonies on a European scale. It’s a failure. Israelis therefore feel no real consequences.

I agree with everyone on the left who thinks this shift in global public opinion is important, but what it means is too often exaggerated. The United States arms Israel and the Europeans are Israel’s largest trading partner. It is embarrassing how many people are calling this a peace deal – not just Trump but also German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The Europeans will probably reverse their modest measures. The Eurovision Song Contest was due to hold a vote in November on whether to include Israel next year, and that vote has now been postponed. You see headline after headline about how Europe is preparing to re-embrace Israel.