The Collapse of a Paradigm
How the Israeli right's "managing the conflict" concept failed on October 7—and what needs to replace it.
October 7 changed Israel and the Middle East forever. It shattered illusions and forced everyone to reassess their previously held positions, assumptions, and analysis.
In response, an old word re-surfaced in the Israeli public discourse: “conceptzia,”which loosely translates as “paradigm.” The word has echoes of the Yom Kippur War five decades ago when Israel was trapped in a way of thinking that led the leadership to miss signs of a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria.
But what exactly was the paradigm that had collapsed on October 7? And who was responsible for it?
The Israeli right immediately took advantage of the public shock to fortify a new narrative around this amorphous but widely accepted idea that “the concept had failed.”
They aren't entirely wrong. There were fatal flaws in the Israeli approach to the Palestinians. Too many in Israel believed that we were buying security, when in fact Hamas was buying time. The inevitable state committee of inquiry will have to examine the intelligence, analytical, policymaking, and leadership failures to explain why we got things so wrong.
But these economic measures were only a tool, a small part of the actual paradigm that disintegrated before our eyes amidst the death and destruction in southern Israel on October 7. Allowing Gazan workers into Israel wasn't Israel's national security strategy; it was a tactic, but by no means the strategy.
The real paradigm that failed on October 7: managing the conflict
The concept that failed on October 7 was devised and executed by the Israeli right, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, over the past two decades. According to this paradigm, there can never be a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians and so managing it—preferably on the lowest possible flame—is the best we can do. The way to manage the conflict is a combination of economic incentives and a limited use of military power. As long as violence is kept to a minimum, Israel can continue to prosper, expand our relations with the world, and develop our economic strength.
Israel's future depends on the understanding that managing the conflict was and remains destined to fail. Even if we benefit from periods of relative calm, we will ultimately pay a terrible cost in human life. After October 7, we understand that that cost is unacceptable.
The reason "managing the conflict" failed as a concept is because it started with the wrong end goal. Security objectives became subservient to the ideological ones. Netanyahu, the Israeli right, and his successive governments stopped asking the most fundamental question: what is the best way to keep Israel safe? Instead, they focused on increasing Israeli control over the West Bank, growing the settler population, and preventing any possibility of a Palestinian state. The prism through which security decisions were taken became clouded and distorted by ideological considerations.
The wrong questions led to the wrong answers. These answers led to a loss of focus on the fundamental necessity to protect Israel from enemies in the region who still seek its destruction. It diverted resources and attention from even greater threats, predominately Iran, which has spent the past months driving its nuclear program forward and strengthening its relationship with proxies in the region. At the same time, pursuit of this paradigm has chipped away at our strategic relations with the United States.
But managing the conflict could only ever be a tactical step towards a longer-term strategic goal. It was bound to fail as a strategic imperative of its own.
That is the paradigm that has collapsed. That is the one we must move beyond. That is the one to which we must articulate an alternative.
What's also clear is that an attempt to force a rapid two-state solution on the region will also fail. October 7 only pushed us further away from a solution to the conflict. It was a blow to the hopes for peace, not an opportunity.
Those of us who reject the annexationist fantasies of the far right—and that includes the majority of Israelis—have to be clear about our strategic vision for the future. A two-state solution is not around the corner, but nor should we accept the far right’s attempt to drag us into a one-state nightmare. That future vision must be based on securing Israel as a liberal democracy that is deeply integrated into the region and maintains its unique relationship with the United States—and that requires a diplomatic horizon with the Palestinians.
The lessons we have learned from October 7 are beginning to crystallize. To move towards a sustainable peace, we need real change in the region that comes before a political settlement—these are not preconditions, they are prerequisites. The fundamental approach to any future settlement depends on deep and genuine changes that are outlined below: Israel needs to be even stronger than before, Palestinian society must be both demilitarized and de-radicalized and new leadership is needed among Israelis and Palestinians that is able and willing to drive these changes. Without these changes a sustainable peace and a solution to the conflict will remain elusive.
Israel will need to be stronger than ever to restore both our objective security and our sense of security. Our army will grow in size, our defenses will be strengthened, and all our basic security concepts will be examined from top to bottom.
The first lesson is that the West Bank needs to be demilitarized. If the international community wants to avoid this being done by Israel, it should start to craft a serious plan to do it in other ways. This clearly isn't a job for the United Nations, which has neither the capability nor the trust of Israelis to take this on. The same regional and international powers (the United States, Europe, and the Gulf Arab states) pushing for an end to the conflict should take the lead in close coordination with Israel's security services. It will by no means be an easy process, but it is a necessary one.
The only way Israelis will feel safe after October 7 is if those who hate us don't have the means with which to kill us. That means there can be no more armed militias in Nablus, no more terrorist cells in Hebron, no more weapons dumps under mosques in Jenin. One Palestinian security force for internal security, with one clear chain of command. Anything else is a recipe for continued chaos and further violence.
The second is that we need a fundamental change in the narrative. We have work to do to defeat extremist ideology in Israel, but with the tools at our disposal we can and will do that. We will defeat them electorally by winning the arguments and rallying the broad liberal camp in Israel. Those changes were already in motion before October 7 and opinion polls in Israel show a significant majority for moderate, pragmatic forces if an election were held today.
On the Palestinian side, the challenge is far greater. Hatred and incitement and radicalization in Palestinian schools, mosques, and media has to stop. Here, too, the interested regional actors can and should take the lead. We shouldn't accept antisemitism in textbooks or incitement to violence in mosques. Just as other Arab countries have ensured that their teachers and leaders promote tolerance and coexistence, we should require the same from the Palestinians.
A core part of this change is the acceptance that Israel is not a colonial enterprise but a natural part of the Middle East. That narrative, which is echoed by anti-Israel activists in the United States and Europe, remains a barrier to any solution. It creates the utterly mistaken belief among Palestinians and their most radical supporters that Israel, like the colonial powers who ruled the area before, will one day disappear. It encourages rejectionism and terrorism in the hope that enough violence and pressure will push the Jews out of the region. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of Israel, Israelis, and the idea of a Jewish homeland.
And finally, it's time for new leadership. On the Palestinian side, there’s a need for political leadership that is pragmatic and moderate but most of all brave enough to face its own people and reverse years of bad policy. The Palestinian people need a leadership that can provide not only competence but a vision for economic prosperity, greater regional integration, and a hopeful future.
In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been busy blaming the security establishment for both the creation and implementation of the conflict management paradigm. But it is his failure—the prime minister and the government set the strategy, they determine goals, they give the directives. A prime minister who after two decades tries to argue that he had no impact on national security policy is a prime minister admitting to such inexcusable weakness that he has no place leading a country.
The future leadership of Israel must be willing to lay out a strategic vision, otherwise it will simply restart the clock until the next catastrophe.
Yair Zivan is diplomatic advisor to former Israeli prime minister and current leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid. He has worked with Mr. Lapid since 2014 and previously served as international media spokesperson for Israeli President Shimon Peres.
He writes in his personal capacity and the views expressed here are his alone.
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