Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) brings together more than 550 former senior officials from all Israeli security agencies: the army, Mossad, Shin Bet, the police, as well as high-ranking diplomats (1). They represent the overwhelming majority of the country’s security elite and have accumulated more than 20,000 years of experience in national security. Their expertise and credibility are therefore unparalleled.
Their message is clear: in order to preserve the Zionist dream – that is, the existence of a secure, democratic State of Israel with a strong Jewish majority – it is essential to separate Israelis and Palestinians, with the eventual establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Why is separation indispensable?
The CIS’s reasoning is based above all on security considerations.
Locally, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River live just over fourteen million people, divided equally between seven million Jews and seven million Arabs. Either these two peoples separate into two sovereign states, or they ultimately form a single state. In the latter case, if Palestinians were granted equal rights, including the right to vote, they would become the majority, meaning the emergence of the twenty-third Arab state in the region and the end of the Zionist project. Conversely, if these rights were to be denied to them, the CIS foresees that they would continue to fight to obtain them. Israel would then be neither secure nor democratic, likewise bringing about the end of the Zionist ideal.
The two-state solution would therefore allow Palestinians to realize their right to self-determination, while enabling Israelis to safeguard Israel as a secure, democratic state with a Jewish majority. From a regional perspective, small Israel, with its ten million inhabitants, borders 350 million Arabs and ninety million Iranians. As demonstrated by the twelve-day war with Iran last June and the two barrages of hundreds of Iranian rockets and drones launched at Israel in 2024, without the regional security architecture forged by the United States, the damage could have been colossal. Israel must therefore continue its regional integration, which will contribute far
more to its security than the occupation of the West Bank.
Is the two-state solution achievable?
The CIS’s answer is unequivocally yes.
The generals know that the process will be long and complex. The brutality of Hamas on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war caused many to lose faith. Israelis no longer believe in the two-state solution, fearing that a Palestinian state would become a terrorist base, as happened with Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal of 2005. They also recall Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and the consolidation of Hezbollah that followed. For their part, Palestinians have ceased to believe in it because, marked by nearly sixty years of occupation, they are convinced that Israelis will never leave the West Bank.
The CIS strives to remind Israelis of the difference between the two unilateral withdrawals, from Gaza and from southern Lebanon, which left the field open to terrorist groups. By contrast, the two withdrawals negotiated under the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have held firm for decades. Israelis had never imagined that such effective security cooperation would develop with these two countries. The CIS also seeks to demonstrate to political leaders and to Israeli public opinion that a security-focused process of separation from the Palestinians could reverse the current slide toward a one-state reality on the brink of explosion. Such a process, they argue, would strengthen Israel’s security, particularly through regional integration.
It is worth recalling that in every negotiation the Palestinian side has recognized Israel and accepted that the State of Palestine would be demilitarized. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority is aware of the need for profound reforms, particularly in financial accountability and in school curricula. In a recent letter to President Macron and to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Palestinian president pledged to carry out these reforms.
Beyond the local and regional demographics that make the two-state solution essential for Israel, a third consideration is often seen as insurmountable: the repatriation of Israeli settlers to Israel. It is important to dispel this myth: of the 700,000 settlers living beyond the 1967 borders, around 80% reside in areas that would be annexed to Israel as part of a territorial exchange accepted by both sides. There would therefore remain 160,000 settlers – some 40,000 families – to be relocated. Given that implementing an agreement would take years, the repatriation of a few thousand families per year is not an impossible challenge for a wealthy country like Israel. One need only recall that Israel, then far less wealthy, welcomed nearly a million Jews from the former USSR in the 1990s – people who knew neither the country nor the language nor the culture. Furthermore, polls conducted in the West Bank show that only a small minority of settlers would be prepared to resist evacuation orders from the army by force.
Today, the situation is highly paradoxical: on the one hand, with what is happening in Gaza and the tensions in the West Bank, peace still seems a long way off; on the other hand, the prospects for regional integration have never been so tangible. Through the New York Declaration, signed on 12 September by 142 countries, a powerful Arab-Muslim coalition is offering Israel a safe way out of Gaza, the guarantee of a future without Hamas, assistance in reforming the Palestinian Authority, the normalization of relations, and regional integration within a coalition capable of confronting Iran and its proxies while promoting the well-being of all its members. President Trump’s twenty-point plan moves in the same direction.
But these Arab states are making all this conditional upon the launch of a process, however gradual and lengthy, towards resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, leading to the creation of a Palestinian state. In his most recent statements condemning any attempt to annex the West Bank, President Trump seems intent on preserving this possibility.
This is the path of reason. Let us follow it.
(1) en.cis.org.il/members/
