David Hermelin says Israel’s decades-long search for peace has repeatedly been sabotaged by Iranian-backed terror forces.
In his NEWSRAEL briefing, Hermelin argued that Israel tried three major peace doctrines: step-by-step negotiations through the Oslo Accords, final-status offers, and unilateral withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza. Each, he said, ended not in peace, but in violence, terror, and Iranian influence on Israel’s borders.
Hermelin said the key lesson is that as long as the Islamic Republic of Iran remains active in the background, any Palestinian statehood proposal becomes not only dangerous, but irrelevant. In his view, the October 7 massacre was designed to destroy the emerging Israeli-Saudi normalization process, and the world must not reward that attack by reviving the Palestinian state idea.
He argued that Israel should now tell Arab states, Europe, and the wider international community that Palestinian statehood is “off the table forever.” According to Hermelin, the price for future normalization with Saudi Arabia should not be Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state, but Saudi recognition that such a state will never be demanded as part of peace.
