"Israel Is Not Tired of Peace. It Is Tired of Dying for Illusions”

by by Mustapha Ezzarghani , an Arab Muslim, writing for the Facebook page, "Muslims for Israel."

There comes a moment in the life of a nation when yesterday’s language can no longer describe today’s wounds. Words once spoken with hope begin to sound hollow, formulas repeated in conference halls lose their power and promises written by diplomats dissolve before the testimony of the dead. For Israel, October 7 was such a moment. It did not merely destroy homes, separate families, and bury innocent human beings. It shattered an entire political vocabulary.

As Israel approaches its first national election since the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023, those observing the country from afar must understand what has changed within the Israeli soul. Many Israelis will no longer support the creation of a Palestinian state under the conditions imagined by the international community. This is not because Israelis have suddenly become enemies of peace. It is because they have buried too many people in the name of promises that repeatedly produced war.

I write this as a Muslim, an Arab, a Moroccan-American, and a peace activist who has devoted years to building bridges between Muslims and Jews. I believe in reconciliation, but reconciliation cannot be built upon the denial of history. I believe in dialogue, but dialogue becomes theater when one side is asked endlessly to apologize for surviving while the other is rarely required to renounce the ideologies that sanctify its destruction.

The Jewish relationship with the Land of Israel is not a modern public-relations invention. It lives in the Hebrew language, in Jewish scripture and prayer, in ancient kingdoms and

archaeological remains, in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and in a continuous Jewish presence sustained across centuries of conquest and exile. One may debate borders, governments, and policies, but one cannot honestly erase the Jewish people’s indigenous connection to their ancestral homeland.

Many national identities in the modern Middle East were shaped during the final years of the Ottoman Empire and the age of European mandates. Palestinian nationalism also developed as a modern political movement and was subsequently strengthened by Arab regimes, Islamist organizations, and Soviet propaganda as part of the struggle against Israel and Western influence. Recognizing this modern development does not mean denying that Palestinian Arabs are human beings with attachments, memories, and legitimate needs. It means rejecting the politically manufactured fiction that the Jews are foreign trespassers while everyone who fought Jewish sovereignty possesses an unquestionable and ancient national title.

Jews did not borrow their name from Judea. Judea received its name from the Jewish people. The stones remember this even when politicians choose to forget.

History, however, is only one half of the tragedy. The other half is ideological. Western diplomats often treat peace as though it were a document awaiting the correct signatures. They imagine that territorial concessions will naturally produce mutual recognition and that economic opportunity will eventually silence religious fanaticism. But paper cannot restrain an ideology that regards compromise as weakness and coexistence as surrender.

As a Muslim, I refuse to pretend that the problem of jihadist interpretation does not exist. Islamist movements have repeatedly drawn upon religious texts, historical precedents, and the language of jihad to justify temporary truces, strategic deception, territorial conquest, and the subjugation of those they define as enemies. The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, for example, has sometimes been invoked by extremists as a model for accepting temporary agreements while preparing for a later confrontation.

Millions of Muslims do not live according to this worldview. They desire peaceful families, meaningful lives, and honorable relations with their neighbors. I know this because I am one of them. But our peaceful intentions do not abolish the existence of political Islamism. Nor can diplomats defeat that ideology by refusing to name it. Muslims who seek peace have a special duty to confront those who turn our faith into a sword against Jews and then demand that the Jewish people remain defenseless in order to prove their morality.

October 7 was not an argument over checkpoints or a protest against a disputed housing project. Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel to murder, rape, torture, burn, and abduct. The savagery was accompanied by celebrations in Gaza and elsewhere because the attack spoke to something deeper than a disagreement over borders: the belief that Jews must never possess sovereignty, dignity, or military power in any part of their historic homeland.

For decades, Israelis were told that withdrawal would bring moderation. Israel withdrew from territory and received rockets. It evacuated Gaza and received tunnels, kidnappings, and an armed terrorist regime. It participated in the Oslo process and endured suicide bombings, exploding buses, shootings, and waves of incitement. Each concession was presented as a final test of Israel’s commitment to peace. When violence followed, the proposed remedy was invariably another Israeli concession.

Land for peace became land from which to wage war.

The people of Israel are therefore not preparing to recreate October 6. They cannot be expected to reward an unreformed political culture—one that glorifies terrorists, teaches hatred, and rejects Jewish sovereignty—with an independent state overlooking Israel’s population centers. Granting statehood to a hostile entity before it has abandoned the ideology of war would not be an act of peace. It would be the ceremonial elevation of a threat.

A Palestinian state created under present conditions could acquire borders, diplomatic recognition, weapons, alliances, and greater capacity for warfare without acquiring any genuine willingness to live beside a Jewish state. Calling such an outcome “peace” would not make it peaceful. A beautifully printed agreement cannot protect a child from a rocket.

Yet I do not see darkness when I look toward Israel. I see a nation awakening from the dangerous belief that acceptance must be purchased through weakness. The Jewish people are remembering that survival is not a sin and that sovereignty is not something for which they must apologize.

Israel must act as the nation-state of the Jewish people: rooted in its history, confident in its moral legitimacy, and unwilling to place its survival in the hands of foreign governments. The Middle East may not always reward gentleness, but it understands strength. In this region, weakness rarely inspires compassion; too often, it invites aggression.

This strength must be both military and spiritual. Israel must possess the ability to destroy the forces that attack it, but it must also possess the inner certainty to withstand international campaigns that demand restraint from Israel while excusing the fanaticism of its enemies. Deterrence is not cruelty. When credible and consistently enforced, deterrence prevents wars by convincing an aggressor that violence will bring unbearable consequences rather than political rewards.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has helped move Israel away from the assumptions that dominated the Oslo era. He has more clearly recognized that Israel is confronting not merely a border dispute but a larger ideological war against Jewish sovereignty. He deserves credit for rejecting the idea that international approval is more valuable than national survival. But the transformation remains incomplete, and no leader should be placed beyond criticism or democratic accountability.

Too many political, organizational, and even religious leaders still speak as though October 7 never occurred. They continue treating Palestinian statehood as a diplomatic commandment rather than a proposal whose risks must be judged against experience. Some politicians who once embraced the language of the Left now attempt to present themselves as figures of the Right because they understand that the Israeli public has changed. Yet changing campaign language is not enough. Israel needs leaders who have changed their assumptions.

The election will therefore concern more than personalities. It will ask whether Israelis believe that their country should return to the doctrines of October 6 or build its future upon the lessons of October 7. It will test whether polished slogans can still persuade a wounded nation to ignore what its people have seen with their own eyes.

True peace will not emerge from weakening Israel. It will arrive when Israel’s enemies finally understand that the Jewish state cannot be frightened, exhausted, or negotiated out of existence. Professor Mordechai Kedar has expressed this principle with admirable clarity: If Israel desires peace for the short term, it must be invincible for the short term; if it desires peace for the long term, it must remain invincible for the long term.

Peace is not the silence imposed upon the intended victim. It is the silence that follows when the aggressor abandons the hope of victory.

I still believe that Muslims and Jews can meet as neighbors rather than enemies. Indeed, my life’s work depends upon that conviction. But genuine fraternity requires truth. Muslims must confront the ideologies within our societies that demonize Jews and sanctify Israel’s destruction. Palestinians must build a political culture that values their children more than it despises Jewish sovereignty. The international community must stop rewarding rejectionism while pressuring Israel to gamble with its existence.

And Israel must remain strong enough to survive until that transformation comes.

The Jewish state does not stand between the region and peace. It stands between civilization and those who would turn the region into an altar of endless sacrifice. Israel is not refusing peace. Israel is refusing to die beneath a banner upon which others have written the word “peace.”

The Promises of "Peace in Our Time," aren't worth the pieces of paper they've ever been written on. Appeasement. Never. Works.

And Israel understands that better than most in 2026.