How to Free Palestine

Unsolicited Advice From Your Khazar Cousin

Hebrew is Palestine’s ancestral alphabet. Source: The Palestine Poster Project Archives

In 2025, Peter Beinart, the Jewish-American opponent of Zionism, publicly apologized for speaking at Tel Aviv University, declaring that “I let my desire for that conversation override my solidarity with Palestinians, who in the face of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide have asked the world to boycott Israeli institutions that are complicit in their oppression.” Beinart’s principle is that the most radical Palestinian activists should determine the nature and tactics of the Palestinian national movement. The role of Palestinian sympathizers—especially guilty-by-proxy Jews—is to shut up and listen. On the contrary, I’d argue that since the Palestinians on their own have been unable to achieve their goals and Palestinian identity is itself a response to Zionism, Jews have a sacred obligation to give them unsolicited advice. After all, Zionists have a better track record of achieving sovereignty than Palestinian nationalists. If David Ben-Gurion had led the PLO, there would have been a Palestinian state decades ago. Moreover, Jews everywhere are now constantly told to “Free Palestine,” which indicates a personal responsibility for the Palestinians’ fate. I take these catcalls seriously, if for no other reason than I want to stop hearing them. So let the armchair nation-building begin.

First, let’s take it as a given that, from the radical Palestinian perspective, the ideal scenario is the destruction of Israel, the expulsion (at minimum) of its Jews, and the reconquest of the entire Holy Land for Islam and the Arabs. The rub is that Arab attempts to vanquish Israel on the battlefield during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the 1967 Six-Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War all ended in failure. The Iranian project to build a “ring of fire” around Israel and defeat it via terrorist proxies is also in shambles. Hamas wreaked havoc in southern Israel for one day on October 7, 2023, but now Gaza is in ruins, Hezbollah has been decimated in Lebanon, and the Iranian regime itself, though still standing, has been weakened by successive Israeli and American strikes. The radical Palestinian dream is unrealizable in practice. Over the long term, the trend is toward Israel’s regional integration instead. In 1967, the Arab League formally adopted the Three Noes: no peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel, no recognition of Israel. Since then, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Bahrain have all established ties with Israel; most Arab countries have ended their secondary boycott; and Saudi Arabia has endorsed the prospect of normalization. Israel has also developed diplomatic relations with non-Arab Muslim countries from Europe to Africa to the Caucasus and Central Asia. In 2026, for the first time in history, an Arab Muslim nation even fought with Israel against a common foe.

On the other hand, to use Donald Trump’s immortal framing, the Palestinians still have cards to play. Their cause has popular, often fanatical, backing throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. Because of mass Muslim immigration, that fan club now also extends to the West. Even more significantly, as a result of anger over the war in Gaza and progressive Third Worldism, the Palestinians also have a large non-Arab, non-Muslim constituency. In 2002, 16% of Americans sympathized more with the Palestinians and 51% with the Israelis. In 2026, 41% of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36% with the Israelis. A record 57% of US adults now say they support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Large majorities in many countries have increasingly negative views of Israel. Popular sentiment has political consequences, as does the rise of Muslims as a significant Western voting bloc. European countries like France, the UK, and Spain (plus Canada and Australia) have symbolically, if meaninglessly, recognized Palestinian statehood. An increasing number of Democrats are voting against aid and even arms sales to Israel, while refusing money from AIPAC is becoming a litmus test for the left. Even authoritarian Saudi Arabia pays attention to public opinion, and is predicating normalization with Israel on an “irreversible pathway” to Palestinian statehood.

But how will the Palestinians play their cards? Islamists, settler-colonial theorists, and unabashed antisemites favor fighting Israel to the last Palestinian. Former Iranian president Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani put this camp's true nature on display in 2001: “If one day the Islamic world is reciprocally equipped with the weapons that Israel has, on that day the Arrogance’s strategy will reach a dead end, because the use of one atomic bomb in Israel leaves nothing left, but in the Islamic world, there will only be damage.” Needless to say, nuking Tel Aviv would also annihilate Ramallah. But what are Palestinian lives compared with the glory of the Islamic world (or the righteousness of decolonization)? Similarly, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar thought Israel might use nuclear weapons in response to October 7—but proceeded with the attack anyway. The actual track record of anti-Zionist intransigence is one of escalating Palestinian loss. Their leadership rejected the 1922 Legislative Council proposal, which would have given them a representative body under British imperial authority; the 1937 Peel Commission, which would have given them ~80% of the Holy Land; the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would have given them ~43%; and even alternative proposals for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” with Jewish autonomy. The West Bank and Gaza—the current Arab-majority Palestinian territories—only fell under Israeli control because Jordan and Egypt, which previously controlled them, attacked Israel in 1967.

But let’s be fair to the Arabs. From their perspective, it was reasonable to wager, in turn, that the nascent Zionist enterprise would fail, that five Arab armies could annihilate fewer than a million Jews in the 1940s, and that Soviet backing would win them their revenge in the 1960s and 70s. History, however, proved the prophecy of Arab League secretary-general Azzam Pasha—that the defeat of Israel would be “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades”—wrong. Since the Arab defeats, Israel has grown in economic, military, geopolitical, and demographic stature. Only fanatical Iran and its terrorist proxies still have the appetite to wage open warfare on the Jewish state, while the Soviet Union has disappeared as a superpower benefactor. At the same time, Israel’s very strength has helped shape an image of Palestinian victimhood. When the dominant framing was the “Arab–Israeli conflict,” Israel played the plucky David against the Goliath of hostile Arab states. But since Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, along with their sizable Arab populations, the “Arab–Israeli conflict” gradually transformed into the “Israeli–Palestinian conflict.” Now Israel is seen as Goliath, and the Palestinians as David, even though, in reality, the Palestinians still claim the allegiance of vast Arab and Muslim populations. The Palestinians can’t defeat Israel on the battlefield, but they can help delegitimize it in the eyes of much of the world.

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Or they could make an offer. The Palestinians can’t rely on the fickle sympathy of their Western admirers to last forever. The war in Gaza is over, and other conflicts will inevitably grab the world’s attention, just as Gaza itself stole the spotlight from the war in Ukraine. Who, after all, speaks today of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts? Or remembers the Zapatistas? Having achieved peak victimhood, and temporarily captured Greta Thunberg’s attention, now is the perfect time for Palestinians to cash in their chips. In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a state covering Gaza and more than 94% of the West Bank, with territorial swaps making up the difference, and a capital in East Jerusalem. This followed previous Israeli offers of Palestinian statehood in 2000 and 2001. In large part due to Palestinian terror and rejectionism, the Israeli public has turned against the idea of territorial withdrawals in exchange for peace. But the Palestinians also have more to offer—and, given the growth of the Israeli settler movement, more to lose—than they did in previous decades. Palestinian buy-in could expand the Abraham Accords to include, per the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, the entire Arab League and beyond, with transformative implications for Israel’s economy and security. A resolution to the Palestinian issue would also delegitimize anti-Zionists in the West, who would be put in the absurd position of going against the wishes of the people they claim to represent. Contra Beinart, a Palestinian leader should lead the charge by promising that a Palestinian state would not only oppose BDS, but actively broker ties between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds.

To assuage Israeli security fears and for its own survival, this pragmatic Palestinian state would need help to maintain order and avoid a terrorist takeover. Fortunately, a neighboring country has a proven track record of both crushing Palestinian militants and governing a Palestinian majority while maintaining peaceful ties with Israel: Jordan (ie, historical Eastern Palestine). The confederation of the West Bank and Gaza with Jordan (ie, the reunification of the West and East Banks) would provide plentiful land for refugee resettlement, fulfill the vision of Palestinian icon Yasser Arafat, and re-create the proven political structure that existed prior to 1967. The contours of the grand bargain are as follows: Israel receives regional normalization and an internationally backed security arrangement in exchange for territorial withdrawal, following the precedent of Sinai under the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. (The involvement of a responsible state actor is to avoid the precedent of Gaza, which fell to Hamas after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal.) The Palestinians receive political separation from Israel and additional land in exchange for renouncing irredentist claims and pledging fealty to King Abdullah II. And Jordan receives its own demographic and territorial expansion, including a Mediterranean outlet via Gaza, in exchange for helping to resolve the Palestinian issue. Ample Gulf Arab funding could help underwrite the logistics and grease the wheels. After all, regional stability (and access to Israeli arms, technology, and capital) is in their own self-interest. Notably, Emirati-based Jordanian-Palestinian billionaire Hasan Ismaik and influential Saudi operative Ali Shihabi already endorse the idea of a Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.¹

Jordan formally renounced its claims to the West Bank in 1988, recognizing the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Thus the re-engagement of Jordan would require petitioning by the Palestinians themselves. The 1948 Jericho Conference, during which Palestinian notables formally requested Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, provides historical precedent. Trilateral negotiations between the Palestinians, Jordan, and Israel could then establish a pathway for an eventual Jordanian-Palestinian confederation. This pathway should include confidence-building measures to ensure that the new state doesn’t descend into chaos or fall under Islamist control. (Though the existing presence of American bases in Jordan is a good backstop.) For example, Israel could gradually relinquish security control over the West Bank to joint Jordanian-Palestinian forces. At the same time, Jordan could begin providing West Bank Palestinians with citizenship and parliamentary representation, as was the case from 1950 to 1988, to legitimize its security role. Far-flung Jewish settlements would be presented with the choice of either accepting Jordanian-Palestinian suzerainty or being dismantled. As with earlier peace negotiations, this arrangement presupposes land swaps that allow Israel to keep contiguous settlement blocs while compensating the Palestinians with equivalent territory. Eventually, the Jordanian-Palestinian confederation would also assume responsibility for rebuilding the Gaza Strip and disempowering its former Hamas rulers. Significantly, Jordan has already outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, a ban that would extend to its Palestinian branch.

The Palestinians won’t get all their desired land in this scenario. But they won’t get all their desired land in any plausible scenario. They can comfort themselves with the knowledge that they’ve tried every violent, maximalist alternative, culminating in the futile massacre of October 7, and have more than earned the right to cut their losses against a superior (and nuclear-armed) foe. Mexico isn’t getting California back, Germany isn’t getting East Prussia back, Serbia isn’t getting Kosovo back, and the Arabs aren’t getting all of Israel back. Nor will the children of displaced Hindus be returning to Pakistan, displaced Greeks be returning to Turkey, displaced Jews be returning to the Arab world, or displaced Arabs be returning to Israel. As recently as 2023, over 100,000 ethnic Armenians were expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh when Azerbaijan conquered the region. Yet Armenia has accepted its defeat, absorbed the refugees, and is discussing peace with Azerbaijan, which would also entail normalizing ties with Turkey. Were each of these territorial losses and population displacements, to which we could add a textbook’s worth of further examples, just? No, but we must all eventually negotiate our acceptance of reality. The Palestinians, despite losing every war they’ve ever started, still have the chance to peacefully gain land they could never take by force of arms. Indeed, through confederation with Jordan, they could claim more than 80% of the original British Mandate of Palestine, instead of just a micro-state in the West Bank and Gaza. The Tamils, Kurds, and Tibetans would thrill at the chance for sovereignty over even parts of their homelands. Make your play, Palestine, while the world’s still in love with you.

By proposing this plan for the Palestinians, I’m working under the assumption that they actually have agency. This is an assumption, in fact, shared by Hamas, which bragged that its campaign of terror was “one of the chief factors leading to the blow-up of the normalization process presented through the Arab Peace Initiative.” But if the Second Intifada shifted Israeli politics to the right, a peaceful Palestinian separatist movement could push it back towards the center. Here, Palestinians should learn from Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who said that the “problem was not the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories but the psychological barrier that prevented them from releasing their grip on these territories,” and, accordingly, “sought to eliminate the psychological barriers to establish the climate necessary to conduct meaningful negotiations.”² The Palestinians now have record-high levels of support globally, except where it matters most for their future: in Israel. Why not leverage performative activism for practical political gains? Why not trade discredited accusations that Jews are Khazars for appeals to actual Jewish-Palestinian kinship? In the 1990s, before they were subject to constant suicide bombings, most Israelis supported the Oslo Accords, which established Palestinian self-governance. These are the influencers that the Palestinians need to rally, not Marxist teaching assistants at Columbia University. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the principle of Palestinian statehood as recently as 2009, as did a majority of Jewish Israelis until 2015.³ The tangible prospect of partition isn’t ancient history. Nor is the pragmatic Palestinian leadership of former prime minister Salam Fayyad. Seemingly simple gestures like not financially rewarding terrorists, habitually denying the Holocaust, or teaching antisemitism in schools would go a long way towards rebuilding trust with Israelis. Call it the anti-Beinart principle: the Palestinians need better advice, not virtue-signaling solidarity with their worst impulses.

1. Other options for the country’s new name are the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Palestine (wordy, but so is Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the United Kingdom of Greater Palestine (a worthy homage to the former colonial masters who helped draw the Middle East’s arbitrary borders in the first place).

2. We should add that Sadat also broke through the psychological barrier that prevented Arabs from normalizing their own geopolitics. As Hussein Aboubakr Mansour writes:

Sadat was not only negotiating borders, security, normalization, and the return of Sinai. He was staging Egypt’s exit from the theater of revolutionary inevitability. His journey to Jerusalem was a symbolic assault on the prevailing structure of Arab political meaning. For decades, the region’s public language had been organized around refusal: refusal of Israel, refusal of Western tutelage, refusal of compromise, refusal of the ordinary limits within which states must live. Sadat violated that physically by boarding the plane to Israel. To defeat revolutionary politics and restore ordinary national life, he had to shatter the sacred consensus of the Arab world. He understood that a theatrical gesture would be necessary to free Egypt from its theatrical view of its role in the world.

The obvious rejoinder is that Sadat, who became the first Arab leader to visit Israel, was assassinated by Islamist militants angered at his conciliatory efforts. True, but Sadat was still politically successful: he won back the Sinai through American-mediated negotiations with hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and signed a peace treaty that has held fast for decades. A Palestinian leader willing to risk personal safety in exchange for normalizing his own people as well as Israel would do well to learn from Sadat’s example—and to hire better bodyguards.

3. According to a 2025 survey, only 15% of Israeli Jews now support “two states for two peoples.” However, 39% support “separation from the Palestinians,” meaning that a minimum of 54% of Israeli Jews are potentially amenable to a grand bargain with the Palestinians. That number rises to 65% if we include the “Don’t knows” and the 1% of Israeli Jews who favor a single binational state, and to 70% if we also include Israeli Arabs.