Before shedding light on the implications of this title, I will travel back in memory to 1992, when signs of positive developments were beginning to appear on the horizon as an extension of the Madrid Peace Conference.

 

At the time, the late Al-Sayed Yassin, Director of the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, invited me to participate in a seminar on developments in the peace process. As the debate intensified, and shortly before a break, I said to Mr. Yassin: What if we shifted the discussion to the political, legal, and cultural foundations of the issue? Are we entering a phase of genuine change that could help answer the question: Are we moving toward peace because we are unable to liberate Palestine and end Israel’s existence, or because we have come to believe in the principles of peace, after our rejection of UN Resolution 181 produced no result, followed by our acceptance of Resolutions 242 and 338, which entail accepting Israel’s continued existence in return for applying the principle that territory may not be occupied by force, a principle that emerged from the setback of June 1967?

 

Mr. Yassin asked me at the time not to raise the subject, fearing that it might inflame the discussion at a moment he was certain was inappropriate.

 

Less than two years later, the outcome of the Madrid Conference was the Oslo Accords, followed by the Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty.

 

On the surface, the picture suggested that the most important achievement was the cultural change that had done away with the idea of an existential civilizational conflict. The Israeli political decision to recognize Palestinian political rights, coupled with the Palestinian national movement’s acceptance of the historic solution, with UN Security Council Resolution 242 as its reference, appeared to be paving the way toward a state of peace whose benefits would extend across all components of the Middle East.

 

Few understood the full meaning, implications, and consequences of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. In 1995, Israeli Zionist extremism chose to assassinate an Israeli prime minister who had achieved more through the Oslo Agreement than Menachem Begin, with the immediate significance being a retreat from the path of cultural extremism.

 

Although the 1996 elections brought Benjamin Netanyahu to the premiership, he was not yet able to cast off all the masks concealing positions fundamentally at odds with the concepts of peace and the agreements concluded with the Palestinian side. Peace at the time was still fresh and promising. This was evident even on the Palestinian side, where a majority across the political spectrum supported the direction pursued by the late President Yasser Arafat and the course of the political process, reaching 95 percent according to the results of the 1997 elections.

 

The policy of the Israeli far right, which privately did not believe in the outcomes of the peace process on the Palestinian track, began pursuing policies that indirectly fed a state of extremism on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. This ultimately produced a natural outcome that became clearly evident in the January 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories.

 

It was equally natural for Israeli extremism to continue growing until it culminated in the Netanyahu–Ben-Gvir–Smotrich equation.

 

By this brief account, I do not mean to oversimplify political realities of extraordinary complexity, given the nature of both the Israeli and Palestinian political landscapes and the character of regional developments. Foremost among these, in my view, was the “Arab Autumn,” alongside the gradual departure from the principles of peace and the repeated assaults on the broader framework of international law, until it became easy prey to the law of force.

 

All the painful developments that followed October 7, 2023, have been unable to change certain objective facts and questions confronting both Palestinian and Israeli public opinion. They are the same questions I raised and that preoccupied me in 1992.

 

If Palestinians, Arabs, and even Muslims are expected to accept the conviction that, after nearly eighty years of Israeli political existence, there is no objective basis for contemplating the end of Israel’s political existence and the existence of seven million Jews, and if this has become a legal and humanitarian reality, then by the same rules and the same logic, the existence of more than seven million Palestinians who have lived between the river and the sea for hundreds of years cannot be ended either. The same applies to the other requirements relating to refugees’ rights under international legitimacy and the provisions of the Oslo Accords.

 

Any imbalance between these two convictions will not produce a victory for one identity at the expense of the other.

 

We have long said that peace, and the Israeli citizen’s ability to sleep safely and soundly, cannot forever be secured beneath the cover of warplanes patrolling the skies, whether those aircraft are Israeli or belong to an international strategic ally.

 

But if your neighbour believes in your existence and your right to a secure life, and you reciprocate those same fundamental and human principles, then that is the least costly foundation for security.

 

I know full well that the logic of optimism may seem like fantasy, particularly amid regional and international chaos and wars that are shameful to our humanity, from which no one has benefited more than the titans of the military-industrial complex.

 

Yet the beginning of positive change lies in refining political thought, and then in harnessing democracy to choose a sound political decision-maker and place them at the helm of government.

 

My reading of the upcoming Israeli elections is that they offer an opportunity to pave the way for a return to the approach of Yitzhak Rabin, and here I am not referring to Israel’s partisan divisions. They could mark the starting point of a phase of real and inevitable change, so that what comes next will be Israel’s spring, not its autumn.

 

Force will not create lasting peace. This is a lesson we have learned from history.

 

In the upcoming elections, it is in the hands of the Israeli voter to lay the foundations for the sustained building of genuine peace. Otherwise, future generations will not forgive.

 

In that case, Israel’s autumn would mark the autumn of its life, not merely the autumn season.