There are moments when speaking about peace sounds naive, disconnected, almost offensive. When missiles are falling, when sirens send families into shelters, when Israel is striking Iran and Hezbollah, when Lebanon is burning again, when Gaza remains shattered and Syria broken, it is easy to say: Now is not the time to talk about peace.
I believe the opposite is true. This is exactly the time to talk about peace – not as a slogan or sentimental wish but as a strategic necessity. If we cannot speak about peace while the missiles are falling, then our enemies will determine not only our security agenda but also the boundaries of our imagination.
Israel has the right and the obligation to defend its citizens. No country can accept missiles aimed at its people. Hezbollah cannot be allowed to turn Lebanon into a launching pad against Israel, and Iran cannot be allowed to surround Israel with proxies and threats of destruction.
But military power alone will not give us that life. Israel has built much of its security doctrine on force, deterrence, walls, intelligence, and air power. All are necessary. None is sufficient. Israel can win battles and still lose the possibility of living normally here.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become a disaster for Israel not only because of his failures of leadership, judgment, and responsibility, but because of the worldview he has imposed on the country. He sees every problem as a nail and forces all of us to live as a hammer. Every challenge is answered with more force, more bombing, more assassinations, and more occupation.
This will not resolve anything. It will not bring real security, defeat the Palestinian demand for freedom, or create legitimacy for Israel. Power without political purpose is not strategy; it is national self-harm. A country cannot bomb its way into acceptance, occupy its way into peace, or hammer its way into a future.
That is why we must speak about peace – with Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.
Peace with Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond
October 7 should have ended forever the illusion that the Palestinian issue can be managed, contained, bypassed, or forgotten. It cannot. We need to understand that there is no military solution to the Palestinian question. There is no democratic future for Israel while millions of Palestinians live without freedom and political rights.
Palestinians need to understand that there is no Palestinian state worthy of the name if it is ruled by armed factions, corruption, dictatorship, or foreign patronage. Both Israelis and Palestinians have to know that the future must be two states: Israel and Palestine, side by side, with secure and recognized borders, mutual recognition, real security arrangements, and regional support.
With Lebanon, we must say what Israelis rarely say clearly enough: Lebanon is not Hezbollah. The Lebanese people are also hostages – to Hezbollah, Iranian influence, state collapse, sectarian paralysis, and wars fought on their land by others. Israel must defend itself from Hezbollah, but it must not turn all of Lebanon into Hezbollah in the eyes of Israelis, or make all Lebanese feel that Israel sees them as targets.
There will be no stable northern border without a strong Lebanese state: an empowered Lebanese army, restored sovereignty, international guarantees, regional backing, and a clear process for removing Hezbollah’s independent military power.
This cannot be achieved only by Israeli bombing. It requires diplomacy, American pressure, French involvement, Arab support, and a real regional arrangement. The people of Kiryat Shmona and Metula deserve to return home in safety, and the people of southern Lebanon deserve to live without being used as strategic depth for Iran.
With Syria, the challenge is different but no less important. Syria has been destroyed by dictatorship, civil war, foreign intervention, Iranian militias, Russian power, Turkish interests, and jihadist movements. Israel cannot pretend Syria is only a military front. For years, Israelis imagined peace with Syria through the narrow lens of the Golan Heights. That question has not disappeared, but today’s immediate interest is to prevent cross-border attacks.
The longer-term interest for Israel, Lebanon, and Syria is a stable Syria, because a neighbor in ruins is never a source of lasting security. The opportunities exist for political-military agreements between Israel and Syria. These require no Israeli military presence deeper into Syrian territory on the Syrian Golan Heights (recognizing that all of the Golan is occupied territory, but for now, it is possible to reach security agreements with the Syrian regime if Israel withdraws from territory it has conquered in the last period).
Beyond Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria stands the broader region. The Arab Peace Initiative from 2002 remains one of the most important documents ever placed on the table by the Arab world. Its message was simple: End the occupation, resolve the Palestinian issue, and Israel can be accepted into the region. That offer must now become an operational regional architecture: security cooperation, economic development, normalization, Palestinian statehood, recognition, and mutual guarantees.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Morocco, and others all have roles to play. Europe has a role. The United States has a decisive role. President Donald Trump has leverage over Israel that no other world leader currently has. If the US, the Arab states, and Europe speak with one voice, no Israeli government can ignore them forever.
But Israelis also have agency. We cannot wait for others to save us from our own lack of political imagination. We need leadership that tells the public the truth: Yes, we must fight those who attack us; yes, we must maintain military superiority; yes, we must protect every citizen. But none of that replaces the need for a political plan. A country that only fights, without knowing where it wants to go, is not being led. It is being managed from crisis to crisis.
That is why the lack of courage among Israeli politicians now seeking power is so dangerous. Too many have decided in advance that peace with the Palestinians is impossible. They offer no vision, no hope, and no serious alternative to Netanyahu’s permanent conflict. They continue to delude the public that more of the same is a strategy: more force, more walls, more waiting for the next war.
Israel does not need a new version of Netanyahu. We must replace him with a prime minister who will make every possible effort to make peace with our neighbors – not someone who runs away from the most important task of any Israeli leader.
Peace does not begin when everyone loves each other. Peace begins when enough people understand that the alternative is unbearable. We are there now. The missiles from Iran, Hezbollah, and Yemen are not proof that peace is impossible. They are proof that the absence of peace is deadly.
We need to speak about peace because our children are tired of sitting in shelters, Lebanese children are under bombardment, Palestinian children are living in ruins, and Syrian children are living in a country that has already lost too much. If all they hear is revenge and fear, the next generation will continue what we failed to end.
Israel’s future cannot be built only by the strength of its army. It must also be built by diplomacy, moral imagination, and the political courage to say, even now: We are here to stay, and so are our neighbors.
The question is not whether we can talk about peace while the missiles are falling. The question is whether we can afford not to.
The writer is the Middle East director of the International Communities Organization and the co-head of the Alliance for Two States.