For the most part, Israel fears a Palestinian state from the standpoint of expanding terrorism. Though such fears are valid, a more existential hazard would lie latent in this new Arab sovereignty. Because “Palestine” could coincide with growing military hazards from enemy states and regional terror groups, the “whole” effect on Israel would be more corrosive than the simple sum of its “parts.”
Among other things, a Palestinian state would impact the continuously changing balance of power between (1) Israel and Iran; and (2) Israel and Iranian state proxies. Regarding potential nuclear surrogates for the Islamic Republic, most plausible would be North Korea or Pakistan. In a markedly worst case, Israel could find itself in direct military confrontation with more powerful adversaries. Prima facie, any such confrontation could be unprecedented and unpredictable.
For the moment, there is no law-based Palestinian state (only a UN non-member observer state), but this is apt to change. Following steady denunciations of Israeli warfare in Gaza, pressures on Jerusalem to accept some form or other of Palestinian statehood have been expanding. This is the case despite the fact that statehood cannot be lawfully created by accumulating acts of recognition.
If at some future date Palestinian statehood and a new war with Iran would coincide, the expected costs to Israel could be “synergistic.” There could also be destabilizing impacts for Israel of variously reconfiguring jihadist terror groups.
In addition to Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, Fatah, and all other “usual suspects,” the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny in Syria resulted in the emergence of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadi organization already displaying clear commitments to law-violating insurgencies. Ironically, at the insistence of American President Donald Trump, HTS was recently removed from the US State Department list of worldwide terror groups.
Tehran's ambitions
In essence, though Iran and its principal sub-state surrogates were substantially weakened by the June 2025 12-day war, Tehran has not abandoned its long-standing nuclear ambitions. If this goal were approached or achieved simultaneous with Palestinian statehood (even a bestowal of sovereignty that failed to meet codified international law prerequisites), the “whole” war outcome would be much greater than the simple sum of its “parts.”
Additionally, “Palestine” would immediately become a belligerent ally of Iran.
For Israel, these issues should also be viewed as an intellectual rather than a merely political problem. A “Two-State Solution” would enlarge not “only” the jihadi terror threat to Israel (both conventional and unconventional), but also the prospects for catastrophic regional war. Even if such a war were fought while Iran was still pre-nuclear, Tehran could still use radiation dispersal ordnance or electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP) against Israel and/or target Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor with conventional rockets.
“Everything is very simple in war,” warns classical Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is still very difficult.” What about North Korea and future war against Israel in the Middle East? Pyongyang has a documented history of active support for Iran and Syria.
On ties with Damascus, Kim Jung Un built the Al Kibar nuclear reactor for the Syrians at Deir al-Zor, which was preemptively destroyed by Israel in its “Operation Orchard” (also known in certain Israeli circles as “Operation Outside the Box”) on September 6, 2007. In the absence of Orchard, new post-Assad jihadists in Syria (organized primarily as HTS) would have inherited an already-existing nuclear weapons option.
Other factors that might shift
What about Pakistan? As a potentially unstable Islamic state with nuclear weapons, the South Asian Islamic republic is continuously subject to coup d’état by assorted jihadi elements and is aligned with both Saudi Arabia and China. At some point, the Sunni Saudi kingdom could decide to “go nuclear” itself, most likely in response to Iran’s “Shi’ite nuclear program.”
Would such a consequential decision by Riyadh represent a net gain or net loss for Israel? It’s not too soon to ask this simple but perplexing question. Derivatively, Jerusalem should consider correlative decisions by Egypt and Turkey. To wit, facing a still-nuclearizing Iran, might Israel be better or worse off with a simultaneously nuclearizing Egypt and/or Turkey?
On such elemental nuclear issues, the truth may be counterintuitive. For Israeli nuclear deterrence to work longer term, Iran will need to be told more rather than less about Israel’s nuclear targeting doctrine and the invulnerability of its nuclear forces/infrastructures. In concert with such changes, Jerusalem will need to clarify its presently too-opaque “Samson Option.” The key objective of such clarification would not be to affirm Israel’s willingness to “die with the Philistines,” but to enhance the “high destruction” end of its nuclear deterrence continuum.
During the next six months, bolstered by world public antipathies to Israel’s policies in Gaza, Palestinian leaders will launch a major effort to acquire statehood. Even if this effort was not founded on legitimate jurisprudential foundations (i.e., on principles of the 1933 Montevideo Convention) and although these antipathies to Israel are generally visceral rather than law-based, Jerusalem will still have to assess re-started nuclear dangers from Iran together with the projected hazards of “Palestine.” Because these latent perils would be “force-multiplying,” Israel will need to blunt all synergistic effects comprehensively and systematically.
The writer is an emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University and the author of many books and scholarly articles on international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism, including Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; second edition, 2018).