October 7th, 2023 was far and away the worst day in memory for the State Israel. It has certainly been a national turning point, as neither the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), nor anyone in the government anticipated the fury and wrath of the raw enmity that produced the horrific attack resulting in the death of 1,200 hundred Israelis and the taking of over 200 prisoners. What’s worse, Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t articulated any clear plan to address how a future attack of this type might be prevented. The reason he has failed in this regard is simply because it is not in his political interest to do so. Herein lies the greatest tragedy of the ongoing and seemingly endless strife between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s failure to strategize is not by accident. He has spent his entire political career marginalizing the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, and convincing his own Jewish people that peace and prosperity can in fact prevail without coming to terms with the Palestinians. What’s worse is that he has sold his people the fluff that Israel can continue to maintain its posture in the occupied territories without international repercussions; how desperately wrong the events of October 7th proved that proposition to be.

Israel can no longer be waltzed down a path believing that the consequences of occupation will go without radical and violent response. Despite an atrophied peace process, and the failure of countries like the United States to be more resolute in insisting its ally Israel follow the dictates of International Law, the Palestinian people have kept their cause very much alive and in the face of all the world to see. Clearly, for many Israelis, the events of October 7th have forced them to realize that the events of that day are a central threat to their national identity and existence, and the continued effort to sidestep Palestinian national aspirations, expand settlements, and wage a relentless war that is killing large numbers of civilians in Gaza, is going to contribute little to their lasting peace or security.

The war has come to Israel at a bad time in its history. Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts at undermining democratic institutions as well as instituting a theocratic ultra nationalistic autocracy has derailed any effort to pursue a meaningful and lasting peace.

Regardless of who the prime minister is, Israel has decidedly made a marked move to the right, and with the preoccupation of the United States of America with developments concerning China, endless military involvement in Ukraine, and Presidential politics, any immediate effort to reengage the parties of reason to seriously find ways to end the conflict between Israel and Palestine are just not on the horizon.

Moshe Dayan, no lover of terrorists, or of the Arab nationalist aspirations he was instrumental in helping defeat during the 1948 War and again in 1956, gave a funeral oration in the village of Nahal Oz, where on the previous night, a 21-year-old man named Roi Rotberg was murdered by two Palestinians while Rotberg was patrolling on horseback near the Kibbutz he resided in. Dayan said, in speaking of Rotberg’s two murderers, “For eight years, they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and villages where they and their fathers dwelt into our estate.” Dayan was alluding to the displacement of the Palestinian people. He was sounding a warning, though one hardly anybody believed would manifest itself with the fury of October’s onslaught. If present day Israelis and their government leadership fail to heed the words of one as hardcore as Moshe Dayan, there will be a solid future of many more funerals yet to be attended on both sides.