A Reckoning is Coming in Israeli Society

What I learned from 10 days in Israel and the Palestinian Territories

I had the opportunity to spend 10 days in Israel and the Palestinian Territories recently as part of a J Street delegation – the first of what I expect will be many such trips. What was most striking was that in all of my years of visiting the region I had never seen Israeli society so unmoored and untethered. It was in many ways depressing but I also came away hopeful.

The first thing that struck me is how different this J Street trip was then one I participated in six years ago (I’ve been to Israel and the West Bank many times since in different capacities). A key purpose of the trip is to expose participants to both sides of the conflict and the multiple narratives. In 2019, the ultimate message from Israeli society and leadership was – “sure we’d like peace. But we have no partner on the other side and we can basically just manage the conflict and not worry about what is happening just miles away in the West Bank or Gaza.” We also heard from a vocal Israeli minority who warned that continuing to muddle along was unsustainable – a position that J Street wholly endorsed. In the second half of the trip we went to the West Bank, learned from Palestinians about the challenges of living under occupation, saw the expansion of the settlements, and where the occupation was really at its worst in Hebron. The dichotomy of one side suffering while the other kept moving along and thriving was jarring, but it was the reality of the conflict.

Tragically this dynamic no longer exists. Those who were warning about the unsustainability of the previous status quo were right. We spoke with hostage families at hostage square in Tel Aviv, visited one of the communities on the border that suffered horribly from the Hamas attacks on October 7th and paid tribute to the victims at the site of the Nova music festival. We heard about the privations of the occupation from Palestinians, and now they also spoke of loved ones lost in Gaza or just trying to survive, and about an extremist Israeli government that had embraced previously problematic behavior and put it on steroids. I had a chance to visit the northern West Bank, and the pace of growth of illegal farming outposts and the associated land grabs enabled by this Israeli government are stunning. And we didn’t even visit Gaza - a whole other layer of pain and horror that is ongoing. The bottom line is that now when you go on a J Street trip now, you see two societies living in trauma, which is the new reality of the conflict.

At the Nova music festival site, which has become a memorial to the victims.

Something else that I found on this visit was an Israeli society that was at the beginning of a deep reckoning, with conflicting and contradictory views. On two things Israeli society is clear. First, they don’t like Netanyahu and this government and poll after poll shows it. Second, 70% of the population supports ending the war. They believe that this is the best way to get the hostages out, and that for them is the first priority, which was evident by the pictures of the hostages that we saw everywhere. They are also deeply skeptical of Netanyahu’s pronouncements that total victory is right around the corner, having heard that for more than a year, and then watching their loved ones who serve in the reserves going back to war again and again and again and fighting again and again in the same Gaza neighborhoods, which were supposedly cleared months ago.

However, when you start to talk about what needs to happen after the war ends and the hostages come home things get much more confusing. I saw some polling that showed that 60% of Israelis were willing to pursue a strategy that included a proposal by President Trump to end the war, get the hostages out, get a deal with the Arab states that includes integration into the region with Saudi Arabia and others, and as part of that support a demilitarized Palestinian state. That seemed too good to be true. Separately, a poll released while I was in Israel found that 82% of Israelis support expelling Palestinians from Gaza. That seemed too bad to be true. But really what it shows is how fluid the moment is in Israeli society and how people are so undecided about where to go that asking the question a certain way can lead to such wildly different results.

There was also an increasing awareness of the suffering in Gaza, though this was still only a very small part of the news and conversation. But leading voices are starting to speak out and the debate in Israel is changing. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert writing about his belief that Israel is committing war crimes. Former Defense Minister in a Netanyahu government Boogie Yaalon raising concerns that Israel is conducting ethnic cleansing. Former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan, the head of the Democrats party and one of the heroes of October 7th who got up that day and drove south as a civilian to save Israeli civilians, raising the alarm about the terrible civilian death toll.

Meanwhile, you would also hear from Israelis that they were disillusioned and deeply distrusting of Palestinians. A long time believer in peace told me that he was questioning things not because of the Hamas attacks on October 7th, but because of the wave of Palestinian civilians that came after the Hamas fighters to loot and pillage. He said that broke his belief that while the leadership on both sides was rotten the people were ready. But he also acknowledged that just trudging along with the status quo also didn’t make sense either.

The debate in Israel reminded me of where we were in the U.S. in 2006 with the war in Iraq and the aftermath of 9/11. But in Israel the whole process is happening faster because everything is so much closer. And because as opposed to the U.S. where only a tiny portion of the population serves in the military, in Israel it’s almost everyone who is feeling it. The country is turning against the war. The rally around the flag effect is over. A real reckoning is coming in Israeli society. But the ruling government is still all in on the war and the society feels trapped by their government, which will continue to cling to the strategy of perpetuating the war until it is voted out of power.

And so despite the fact that things may be as bad as they’ve ever been, I come away from this trip with some optimism precisely because everything right now feels so fluid and unclear. We talked a lot during the trip about key pivot moments in the conflict, and how out of horrible events often came some good. The Yom Kippur war caused a reassessment of Israeli strategy and society that ultimately led to the Camp David Accords. The First Intifada led to the Oslo Accords. The Second Intifada and Gaza Disengagement led to the 15 year period of apathy and conflict management that was ultimately punctured on October 7th. Now Israelis are unmoored. They are reevaluating. They are all over the place. It is a moment that could lead to a deep hardening of views, which only makes the conflict more intractable. But it is also a moment that could lead to a real shift in a more positive direction.

In these critical pivot moments, what is most necessary is leadership. It was true with Camp David and Begin and Sadat, and Oslo would have never happened without Rabin’s leadership. And while Israelis are currently stuck with this current government, help is on the way even if elections may be 12 to 18 months away though hopefully much sooner. And in conversations with opposition officials and leaders I found a group of people who learned a lot from the one year of power that they had in 2021-22 and the mistakes they made in not being ready. That won’t happen again. They are planning seriously and thoughtfully for their moment - their own Project 2026 - but in a good way. The primary effort will be around protecting Israeli democracy and democratic institutions, but there is also a lot of thinking about how to end the war, get the hostages out, and use that moment to begin serious efforts to start Israel down a better path in the Middle East and with the Palestinians. When that moment does come and this government is finally gone, there is a real opportunity to put Israeli society and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a much better trajectory.