Israel’s leaders talk about security, but what happened to peace? - opinion

For three decades, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken about peace.

The word appeared regularly in his campaign slogans, going back to 1996: “Netanyahu – Peace and Security.” Later, it became “Netanyahu. A Secure Peace.” Peace, whatever his intentions, was part of his political vocabulary.

As recently as September 2023, just two weeks before the Hamas invasion on October 7, Netanyahu stood before the United Nations and spoke extensively about peace, including peace with the Palestinians.

“As the circle of peace expands, I believe that a real path towards a genuine peace with our Palestinian neighbors can finally be achieved,” he said.

In his 2023 UN speech, Netanyahu used the word “peace” 42 times. A year later, the number dropped to 21. In 2025, it fell again, to just 13 mentions, and in his recent speech at the UN in September, he used the word only once. One time.

More significant than the numbers, though, has been the context. In 2023, many of Netanyahu’s references to peace were connected to the Palestinians. In his subsequent UN speeches, he spoke of peace in general terms or in connection with Saudi Arabia, the consequences of the war against Iran, and the possibility of agreements with Syria and Lebanon.

In other words: peace with the Palestinians – out. Peace with almost everyone else – in.

Netanyahu, though, is hardly alone.

Almost no one in the Israeli opposition – including the politicians running to replace him – talks about peace. Naftali Bennett does not speak about peace with the Palestinians. If anything, he emphasizes the opposite: that he will never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief and leading challenger in the polls, recently said that the idea of a two-state solution is “delusional” and a “bitter mistake.”

Even Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats – the latest incarnation of the Labor Party once led by Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin – rarely talks about peace.

Think about that for a moment. The political movement whose leaders won the Nobel Peace Prize for peacemaking with the Palestinians is now led by a former IDF general who prefers discussing tactics rather than explaining how peace can be made.

How did Israel, a country that for decades took pride in saying that its hand was always extended in peace, reach the point where no politician is even willing to say the word when speaking about the Palestinians?

The obvious answer is October 7.

The Hamas assault and the war that followed did more than shatter Israel’s assumptions about Gaza. It changed the way Israelis think about security, territory, deterrence, and risk.

Before October 7, much of Israel’s defense thinking was built around the idea that territory had become less important. Israel could withdraw, rely on intelligence, advanced technology, border barriers, and overwhelming military superiority, and respond from a distance when necessary.

October 7 destroyed that confidence.

Israel views territory as essential

Today, Israel’s security doctrine has moved in the opposite direction. Territory is viewed as essential. Physical control, buffer zones, and the ability to prevent threats from developing on the other side of the border are now considered existential.

You can see that shift in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and Syria, where Israel maintains a presence to ensure that hostile forces cannot establish themselves along the border.

While buffer zones, security perimeters, and military control may be necessary responses to immediate threats, a country must have a political destination.

The disappearance of peace from our language is not merely semantic. Language defines what is politically possible. When we stop saying a word or no longer write songs about it, then we stop imagining it as part of our future. Once that future becomes unimaginable, anyone proposing it can be dismissed as naive or even a traitor.

The failures of previous peace efforts, though, do not prove that peace is impossible, but rather that the way it was pursued was wrong.

Past agreements, for example, lacked enforceable security guarantees, public legitimacy, and accountable leadership. Those failures, especially after October 7, must make Israel more cautious but not defeatist.

As the IDF has repeatedly proven over the last three years, force can destroy weapons and tunnels. But if that same military success is not converted into political outcomes, it will quickly dissipate. Hamas reemerges, Hezbollah rebuilds, and the ayatollahs remain in power.

Peace post-October 7 does not mean returning to the assumptions or hyperbolic slogans of the 1990s. Peace must include verifiable demilitarization, enforceable security arrangements, transformed Palestinian governance, and a universal, uncompromising rejection of terrorism.

It must also require Israel to answer the question its leaders have spent decades avoiding: does Israel ultimately intend to separate from the Palestinians, or permanently rule over them?

If Hamas’s objective was to derail normalization in the region, make coexistence unthinkable, and trap Israelis and Palestinians in a forever war, then removing peace from our vocabulary hands the terrorist group exactly the strategic victory it aspired to achieve.

Peace is not a prediction but a direction. If we stop saying it and abandon it as an aspiration, we risk turning every military success and victory into just another stop on the road to the next war.

Yaakov Katz is a co-founder of the MEAD policy forum, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His newest book is While Israel Slept.

Lt.-Col. (ret.) Peter Lerner is the director-general of International Relations of the Histadrut; he served for 25 years in the IDF as a spokesperson and liaison officer to international organizations.