The Cost of October 7 and everything that followed

 

The Cost of October 7 and everything that followed

The Extraordinary Asymmetry in Costs and Results

R.M. Westerink; October 2026 

 

In brief. Violence was cheap to start and extremely expensive to answer.
The October 7 attack probably cost Hamas millions to tens of millions of dollars.
Israel’s war has cost about $100 billion, the United States has committed tens of billions more, rebuilding Gaza is estimated at $71.4 billion, and more than 74,000 Palestinian deaths have been reported.
Three years on, only 27% of Israelis say Israel has won the Gaza campaign. The figures measure different things and should not be added together; their message is about scale. Escalation multiplies costs, and spending does not by itself buy security or a political settlement.

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. It required years of preparation: training, weapons, rockets, drones, explosives and vehicles. Yet its direct financial cost appears to have been small, probably millions or perhaps tens of millions of dollars, although no authoritative public accounting exists.

Three years later, the consequences are measured on a different scale. The Bank of Israel estimates Israel’s war-related fiscal cost for 2023–2026 at about NIS 350 billion, roughly $100 billion. The United States has supplied tens of billions in military assistance and spent billions more on related regional operations. Gaza has suffered massive loss of life, displacement and destruction, and its recovery and reconstruction needs are estimated at about $71.4 billion.

That contrast is illuminating: violence can be cheap to initiate and extraordinarily expensive to respond to, survive and repair. But the figures should not be collapsed into one grand total. Military spending, destroyed property, humanitarian aid, future reconstruction and human lives are different things.
The useful question is not “What is the final bill?” but what the attack set in motion, and how its costs multiplied.

The Asymmetry at a Glance

The table below summarizes the main figures used in this article. They measure different things (costs, damage, needs and lives), so they are shown side by side and not added up.

Stage	Scale	Who carries it
Planning and launching the attack	Roughly millions to tens of millions of dollars (an estimate; no audited figure exists)	Hamas
Human toll of the attack	About 1,200 killed; 251 taken hostage	Israel
Israel’s war effort, 2023–2026	About NIS 350 billion (roughly $100 billion) in fiscal cost	Israel
Recovery program for southern Israel	About NIS 17.5 billion (roughly $5 billion) over five years	Israel
US support, October 2023–September 2025	$21.7 billion in military aid, plus $9.65–12.07 billion for related regional operations	United States
Reported Palestinian deaths in Gaza	More than 74,000 by October 2026	Gaza
Physical damage in Gaza	About $30 billion (assessed as of October 2024)	Gaza
Gaza recovery and reconstruction needs	About $71.4 billion	Gaza and international donors
Humanitarian appeal for the occupied Palestinian territory, 2026	About $4.06 billion, against a few hundred million dollars a year before the war	International donors

The Hamas figure is an analytical order-of-magnitude range. No authoritative audited cost of preparing and executing the attack is publicly available.

A Comparatively Inexpensive Attack

The weakest number in this account is the one that might seem simplest: what did Hamas spend on October 7? The evidence shows a sophisticated operation prepared over a long period. Thousands of fighters took part, using rockets, drones, explosives, bulldozers, motorcycles, vehicles, boats and powered paragliders. Training and intelligence preparation also cost money.

But Hamas did not buy a new military organization for one morning. Much of the infrastructure, weapons production, tunnel systems, personnel and command structure already existed. Separating the extra cost of October 7 from the continuing cost of maintaining Hamas’s military capability is therefore impossible from public information.

An early CSIS assessment concluded that the operation clearly cost more than $1 million and stressed how hard its full preparation cost is to calculate. No later authoritative audit appears to have solved that problem.[1] The defensible conclusion is deliberately broad: the attack probably required resources measured in millions, perhaps tens of millions, rather than billions.

That uncertainty does not weaken the central observation. Even if the true figure were several times higher, it would remain tiny compared with the military, economic and reconstruction resources spent afterward.

Israel Mobilizes, and the Scale Changes

The immediate Israeli cost was first of all human: about 1,200 people killed and 251 abducted. Communities near Gaza were attacked, homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed, and large populations were evacuated.

Israel then created a large program to recover and develop the affected southern communities. The Tkuma program has a five-year budget of NIS 17.5 billion, roughly $5 billion, and by May 2026 billions of shekels had been allocated to rehabilitation, reconstruction and temporary housing.[2] This is not simply a repair bill for October 7, because it also covers longer-term development. In that sense it resembles, on a much smaller scale, the reconstruction program now envisaged for Gaza.

The far larger number is the cost of the war that followed. The Bank of Israel estimates its fiscal cost at approximately NIS 350 billion over 2023–2026, excluding the separate 2026 Iran campaign.[3] In broad dollar terms, that is around $100 billion.

Defense spending accounts for roughly NIS 243 billion of this; damage compensation, civilian expenditure and additional interest account for much of the rest.[3] The Israeli response thus turned an attack whose direct preparation cost was probably measured in millions into a state war effort measured in tens of billions of dollars.

What the War did to Israel’s Finances

Israel showed that it could absorb an extraordinarily expensive war, but not without changing its public finances. Public debt stood at about 60.5% of GDP before the war and rose to 68.5% by the end of 2025. The Bank of Israel forecasts about 69% for the end of 2026. Roughly half of the estimated NIS 350 billion cost was financed through additional debt; taxes and other fiscal adjustments covered part of the rest.[12]

This does not make Israel financially weak by European standards: its debt ratio remains below that of several major European economies. But the war was not “easily” absorbed. It used up fiscal space built before October 7 and left Israel with structurally higher defense and interest spending.
Israel could afford the war, but only by reprioritizing national resources and accepting a weaker public balance sheet.

America enters the Account

The United States makes the picture larger but more complicated. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that the United States provided $21.7 billion in military assistance to Israel between October 2023 and September 2025. It estimates another $9.65–12.07 billion for related US military operations in Yemen, Iran and the wider Middle East in the same period.[4][5]

These numbers should not simply be added to Israel’s roughly $100 billion. American military assistance finances part of Israel’s war effort, so adding it again would double count. The cost of US regional operations, however, is an additional American commitment generated by the widening conflict.

This is another form of asymmetry. The financial consequences of October 7 did not stay between Hamas and Israel. They were passed outward to the United States and, in different forms, to European and Arab governments and international organizations.

Gaza Pays the Other Bill

On the Palestinian side, the consequences are overwhelmingly human and physical.
By the third anniversary of the attack, more than 74,000 Palestinian deaths had been reported in Gaza. The figure comes from Gaza health authorities, and the precise composition and circumstances of casualties remain contested, but the scale of loss is not.[6] Large parts of the population have also faced repeated displacement, injury, the loss of family members, interrupted education and the destruction of homes and livelihoods.

Two financial estimates describe the destruction. A World Bank, United Nations and European Union assessment put physical damage at about $30 billion by October 2024.[7] The updated assessment published in 2026 puts recovery and reconstruction needs at about $71.4 billion.[8]

These two figures measure different things. Physical damage estimates the value of the assets destroyed. Recovery and reconstruction asks what it will cost to rebuild housing, health services, agriculture, businesses, infrastructure and social systems. Rebuilding a functioning society costs considerably more than the assessed value of what was destroyed.

The largest recovery needs are about $16.2 billion for housing, $10.5 billion for agriculture and food systems, $10 billion for health and $9 billion for commerce and industry.[8] The bill therefore extends well beyond replacing buildings: it includes rebuilding people’s capacity to live, work and earn an income.

Gaza was Not Starting From Normal

One qualification is important: it would be misleading to blame all of Gaza’s present dependence on external support on October 7 and the war that followed.

Before the war, Gaza already suffered from high unemployment and poverty, inadequate electricity and water systems, restrictions on movement and trade, and heavy dependence on international assistance. UN humanitarian requirements for the occupied Palestinian territory were typically a few hundred million dollars a year: $348 million in 2020, $510 million in 2022, and an original 2023 plan of $377 million. UNRWA alone spent approximately $568 million in Gaza in 2022.[9][10]

October 7 therefore did not turn a normally functioning economy into an aid-dependent one. Gaza was already structurally dependent on external support.
What changed after October 2023 was the scale and function of that support.

Humanitarian requirements rose from hundreds of millions to several billion dollars a year. For 2026, the UN appeal for the occupied Palestinian territory is about $4.06 billion, with Gaza driving the overwhelming emergency requirement.[11] International assistance increasingly stopped supplementing a weak economy and began substituting for functions that households, businesses, utilities and governments normally provide: food, drinking water, shelter, healthcare, fuel and basic services.

The Second Asymmetry: Destruction and Reconstruction

The financial numbers reveal another imbalance. Destruction can happen quickly, while reconstruction is slow, expensive and institutionally demanding.

A house can be destroyed in seconds and take months or years to replace. A damaged water system needs engineering, materials, energy and institutions to operate it. Destroyed businesses do not return merely because their buildings are rebuilt; capital, employees, customers and confidence must return too. The same is true of agricultural land, hospitals and schools.

This is why Gaza’s $71.4 billion recovery requirement should not be read simply as a bill for war damage. Part of it restores what existed. Part compensates for economic and social losses. And part replaces inadequate pre-war systems with something that can function more sustainably.

Simply recreating Gaza as it existed on 6 October 2023 would recreate many of the weaknesses that already made large-scale international assistance necessary.

The Human Asymmetry

The human figures should be kept apart from the financial account. About 1,200 people were killed in the October 7 attack and 251 were abducted. In the war that followed, the reported Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose above 74,000 by October 2026.[6] Many more people on both sides have been wounded, disabled or psychologically affected.

These numbers should not be given monetary values. Nor does their asymmetry by itself settle questions of intent, responsibility, military necessity or proportionality. Those require separate legal, moral and political analysis.

But the human asymmetry is part of the chain of consequences and cannot disappear behind financial figures. The attack caused catastrophic immediate Israeli losses. The prolonged response caused vastly larger Palestinian casualties and destruction.
The financial and human asymmetries point in the same general direction: escalation multiplies consequences far beyond the resources required to initiate it.

The Bill is Still Running

None of these accounts is closed. Israel will keep carrying defense, veteran, health, compensation and security costs. The United States continues to finance Israeli defense and maintain forces in the region. Gaza still needs large-scale humanitarian support before reconstruction has even reached its eventual scale, and rebuilding could take many years.

Nor have we tried to put a price on everything. Lost Israeli and Palestinian economic output, foregone investment, disrupted education, long-term disability, psychological injury and the opportunity cost of military spending would make the economic consequences larger still.

For that reason, adding the figures into one dramatic grand total would give more apparent precision but less understanding.
What matters are the orders of magnitude and how the burden shifts as the conflict progresses.

How do Israelis Judge the Result?

Money spent does not answer the more important question: what did the expenditure, mobilization and sacrifice achieve? Israeli public opinion is an unusually relevant indicator here. The people judging the result are the society that experienced October 7, supplied the reservists, suffered military and civilian casualties, financed the government and lives with the security consequences.

Three surveys by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) show the picture:

Survey	Question	Result
INSS, September 2026 [13]	Did Israel win the Gaza campaign?	27% said yes
INSS, October 2025 [14]	Were the war’s objectives achieved?	44% said completely or to a great extent; 46% said only slightly or not at all. Half said neither Israel nor Hamas had won
INSS, June 2026 [15]	How is Israel’s national-security situation?	20% rated it good or very good; 42% rated it bad or very bad. Only 29% reported a high sense of personal security

 

In short, few Israelis describe the outcome as a victory, opinion is split on whether the war’s goals were met, and only one in five rates the national-security situation as good. These findings coexist with continued strong support among many Israelis for military action against perceived threats. Dissatisfaction with the outcome therefore does not necessarily mean rejection of military force; for some Israelis it can instead mean that the threats have still not been eliminated.

Palestinian suffering also occupies a different place in Israeli public debate than it does internationally. Israeli society is not unaware of Gaza’s destruction, but October 7 remains a powerful frame through which many Israelis understand the war and responsibility for its consequences. Outside Israel, the same events are increasingly viewed through the scale of Palestinian casualties and destruction. That divergence in interpretation is itself part of the unresolved political outcome.

The cost account can now be brought back to a simple question. After roughly $100 billion in Israeli war-related fiscal costs, tens of billions in American military assistance and regional operations, more than 74,000 reported Palestinian deaths, massive destruction and a $71.4 billion Gaza recovery requirement, has a durable strategic result been obtained? Israeli public opinion does not answer with victory. Three years after October 7, most Israelis do not describe the Gaza campaign in those terms.

This does not prove that the military spending was unnecessary or that it brought no security benefits. Capabilities destroyed, attacks prevented and deterrence restored are hard counterfactuals to measure.
But it adds a final asymmetry to the account: the gap between the scale of resources consumed and the uncertainty of the strategic result obtained.

The Economics of Escalation

October 7 exposes a brutal characteristic of modern conflict. A non-state actor can mount an operation at a cost that is small compared with what a state must spend to respond. The response can then produce destruction whose reconstruction costs are larger again. Meanwhile, humanitarian systems spend billions merely sustaining people while political and military decisions prevent normal economic life from returning. The numbers support three findings.

1. Cheap to start, costly to answer.
The Hamas attack appears to have required millions or perhaps tens of millions of dollars. Israel’s war-related fiscal effort is around $100 billion and has helped push public debt from about 60.5% of GDP before the war toward 69%. The United States has committed tens of billions more in military assistance and regional operations. Gaza now faces a $71.4 billion recovery and reconstruction requirement, while humanitarian needs continue to run into billions annually.

2. The costs spread.
The burden did not stay between the two main parties. It passed to the United States, to European and Arab governments and to international organizations, while Gaza faces both the largest human toll and the longest road to recovery.

3. Spending is not the same as success.
Three years after October 7, only 27% of Israelis surveyed by INSS say Israel won the Gaza campaign. Even overwhelming expenditure and military superiority do not automatically buy a durable political settlement or a lasting sense of security.

What the numbers do not show.
They do not establish a simple chain in which every later decision follows mechanically from the original attack.
Hamas chose to launch October 7.
Israel chose the scale and methods of its military response.
The United States chose the extent of its military support and regional involvement.
Hamas and other regional actors made further choices that prolonged and widened the conflict. 

Violence can be comparatively cheap to initiate, vastly more expensive to fight, and more expensive still to recover from. Behind every financial figure lies a human cost for which no reconstruction budget can provide compensation.

References

[1] Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), expert assessment of the preparation, material requirements and intelligence implications of the October 7 attack, October 2023.

[2] Government of Israel, Tkuma Directorate, five-year recovery and development programme for communities affected by October 7; programme updates through 2026.

[3] Bank of Israel, Annual Report 2025 and fiscal assessment of the 2023-2026 war costs: approximately NIS 350-352 billion, excluding the 2026 Iran campaign.

[4] Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War, US Military Aid to Israel, October 2023-September 2025: estimated $21.7 billion.

[5] Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War, US military operations in the wider Middle East, October 2023-September 2025: estimated $9.65-12.07 billion.

[6] Reuters, 7 October 2026, third-anniversary reporting: approximately 1,200 killed and 251 abducted in the October 7 attack; more than 74,000 Palestinian deaths reported in Gaza by October 2026.

[7] World Bank, United Nations and European Union, Gaza and West Bank Interim Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, February 2025: approximately $30 billion in physical damage measured through October 2024.

[8] World Bank, United Nations and European Union, Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment update, April 2026: approximately $71.4 billion in recovery and reconstruction needs.

[9] United Nations OCHA, Humanitarian Response Plans for the occupied Palestinian territory, 2020-2023.

[10] UNRWA, Annual Operational Report 2022: approximately $568 million in expenditure in Gaza.

[11] United Nations OCHA, Flash Appeal for the occupied Palestinian territory 2026: approximately $4.06 billion required.

[12] Bank of Israel, Annual Report 2025 and 2026 Research Department forecasts: public debt approximately 60.5% of GDP before the war, 68.5% at end-2025 and around 69% forecast for end-2026; roughly half of war-related fiscal costs financed through debt.

[13] Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Three Years Since October 7 survey, September 2026: 27% of Israelis said Israel had won the Gaza campaign.

[14] INSS, October 2025 public opinion survey: 44% assessed the war's objectives as achieved completely or to a great extent, 46% only slightly or not at all; half said neither Israel nor Hamas had won.

[15] INSS, June 2026 public opinion survey: 20% rated Israel's national-security situation good or very good, 42% bad or very bad, and 29% reported a high sense of personal security.

 

The Right to Leave the Conflict

 

Nobody should be imprisoned by the Israel–Palestine Conflict

R.M. Westerink; October 2026 

In brief. Reconciliation in the Israel–Palestine conflict remains the better future, but it may not arrive in this generation. This article argues that nobody should be imprisoned by the Israel–Palestine conflict: Israelis and Palestinians who want another life should have real possibilities to build one. Europe can help by opening doors without telling anyone where to live. The principle must hold for both peoples, with one safeguard: mobility must never become displacement or cost Palestinians their rights. It is not a substitute for peace, only another human possibility while peace continues to be awaited.

The hope must remain reconciliation.
In our earlier article, Can the Cycles of Conflict Be Broken – Reconciliation [1], we explored what real reconciliation would demand after nearly eight decades of Israeli–Palestinian conflict: recognizing each other's humanity and rights, acknowledging suffering and responsibility, and breaking the cycles of fear, violence and retaliation.

But there is little reason to expect reconciliation soon.
Distrust has built up over generations, extremism has grown, and every new round of violence creates memories and grievances that prepare the next. As discussed also in Beyond Left and Right – Israel's ‘Israel First’ Reality and Its Implications [2] and We Promised “Never Again” [3], there are reasons to take seriously the possibility of prolonged conflict and further radicalization.
We should keep searching for reconciliation. We should also ask a question that gets remarkably little attention:
What choices should people have if reconciliation does not arrive in their lifetime?

Almost every discussion of Israel and Palestine rests on a hidden assumption: that Israelis and Palestinians must solve their futures inside the geography of the conflict. Their children inherit not only their identities and histories but also the place where those histories keep colliding.

That need not be the only imaginable future. Nobody should feel imprisoned by the Israel–Palestine conflict. Israelis and Palestinians should have real possibilities to choose another life if they want one.

For many, staying will remain the obvious choice. Some Israelis will keep working for reconciliation or opposing developments they cannot accept. Some Palestinians will keep struggling for their rights and for a viable future in their homeland. Others may conclude that they no longer want their own lives, or their children's, shaped by a conflict they did not create and cannot end.
They too should have a road available.

Israelis are already considering another future

This point is not hypothetical.
Israeli emigration has risen substantially in recent years. Official Israeli statistics record 59,366 emigrants in 2023, 82,774 in 2024 and 69,542 in 2025 [4]. These figures should not be read as evidence of an approaching mass exodus, but the scale is substantial enough to matter.

Opinion research points in the same direction.
A 2025 Israel Democracy Institute study found that around a quarter of Jewish Israelis were considering living abroad, temporarily or permanently. Among secular Jews the figure reached 39 percent; more than 40 percent of Jewish respondents on the Left and 35 percent in the Center were considering leaving. Among those considering departure, 43 percent preferred an EU country [5]. Most Israelis still want to stay. But a substantial group is asking a question that is more personal than political: Do I still want my family to build its future here?

That is a legitimate question. Leaving does not make someone morally superior, and staying does not make someone responsible for everything an Israeli government does. An Israeli who stays, opposes extremism and works for Palestinian rights may do far more to break the conflict than someone who moves to Europe.

But people may also reach another conclusion. They may decide they no longer want their children to grow up with war, military service, recurring fear and political radicalization, or with responsibility for a conflict that has no visible end. They may simply want another life. Choosing it should be legitimate too.

What if those leaving are the liberals?

This creates an uncomfortable paradox.
The Israelis most inclined to consider leaving include many secular, liberal and internationally oriented citizens. They are also among those most likely to resist nationalism, religious extremism and policies that make reconciliation harder. Their departure could make Israeli politics less moderate, not more.

That consequence deserves to be taken seriously, but it cannot become an obligation imposed on individuals. Liberal Israelis cannot be told to stay because their presence offsets the influence of more extreme compatriots. Their lives and their children's futures are not instruments for maintaining Israel's ideological balance.

Some will stay and fight for another Israel.
Others will choose another future. Both choices are legitimate.

If voluntary departure ever changed Israel's political composition, that reality would have to be dealt with as it is. Europe and other democratic partners would still have instruments to respond to policies that violate international law or obstruct peace. They should not rely on liberal Israelis staying indefinitely as the main antidote to extremism.

This also forces a distinction that is too often blurred. Supporting Jewish people, caring about the security and rights of Israeli citizens, and supporting the policies of the Israeli state are three different things, and should be treated as such.

Europe could open a door

Europe should not tell Israeli Jews to leave Israel. European history makes that proposition especially troubling, and there should be no European policy aimed at leaving.

But Europe can offer something fundamentally different: Choice.

Some Israelis already hold citizenship of an EU member state; others have family, professional or historical ties to European countries.
For those who are EU citizens, much of the legal road is already open: EU citizenship includes the right to move to another EU country to live, work, study, look for a job or retire, subject to the applicable residence conditions [6].
Others may qualify through ordinary migration routes. Europe could make these paths easier to understand and use: recognition of professional qualifications, employment opportunities, university access, family relocation, and clear information on citizenship and residence rights. To simply make it easier for individuals who decide for themselves that their future lies elsewhere to act on that decision.

There is also a historical meaning here.
For centuries European societies told Jews they did not belong. European antisemitism culminated in the Holocaust and helped create the circumstances in which Zionism and Israel developed.
A twenty-first-century Europe that tells Israeli Jews who freely choose a European future that they can build their lives here would send a radically different message: If you want, You can belong.

The principle must include Palestinians

The same freedom should be available to Palestinians.
Young Palestinians should have realistic opportunities to study, work, start businesses and build lives elsewhere if they choose. Europe can open doors for them as well.

Here an important safeguard is needed.
Palestinian mobility must never become another mechanism of Palestinian displacement. A Palestinian who studies in Paris, works in Berlin or starts a family in Amsterdam must not be treated as having surrendered property, citizenship, refugee or other rights. Otherwise freedom of movement could become another way of gradually emptying Palestinian territory.

The governing principle is therefore the same for both peoples: mobility should enlarge individual freedom, not change populations against their will. Europe should not decide who belongs in Israel or Palestine. It can help people decide for themselves where to build their lives.

Another road out of the conflict

This adds an overlooked element to thinking about Israel and Palestine.
The movement of people has shaped the conflict from the beginning: Jewish immigration, Palestinian displacement and refugeehood, further immigration, settlement, and restrictions on return all built today's demographic geography. Yet peace discussions generally treat that geography as fixed.

Perhaps it is not.
People keep moving, studying abroad, marrying across borders, acquiring additional nationalities and building careers elsewhere. They can remain culturally Jewish or Palestinian while living somewhere entirely different. Over decades, such movements can matter.

They may also gradually loosen one of the hardest knots in this conflict: the tie between identity, population, territory and political control. Voluntary mobility will not solve the conflict and must never substitute for a political settlement, rights or reconciliation. But it could add a degree of freedom in a situation where almost every existing option has become painfully constrained.

Reconciliation remains the better road.
People should not have to leave their homes because governments and societies failed to make peace. We should keep working toward a future in which Israelis and Palestinians live safely, with dignity, rights and prospects for their children.

But after so many decades, we should stop assuming that everybody must remain inside the conflict until reconciliation arrives. Some will stay and work for it. Some will stay and resist extremism. Others may decide that one lifetime spent waiting is enough and build their future elsewhere.

That is not forced departure, demographic engineering or surrender. It is another human possibility when the hoped-for political solution fails to arrive.

Nobody should be imprisoned by the Israel–Palestine conflict—not Palestinians, not Israelis, and not the generations that come after them.

  

References

[1] Can the Cycles of Conflict Be Broken – Reconciliation?, Europe Is Us, October 2026. https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/10/can-cycles-of-conflict-be-broken.html

[2] Beyond Left and Right – Israel's Israel, Europe Is Us, September 2026. https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/09/beyond-left-and-right-israels-israel.html

[3] We Promised “Never Again”, Europe Is Us, September 2026. https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/09/we-promised-never-again.html

[4] Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, International Migration of Israelis, 2023–2025, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, Table E/4. https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/publications/DocLib/2026/yarhon0226/e4.pdf

[5] Israel Democracy Institute, Stay or Go? A Mapping of the Views and Considerations of Israelis in Relation to Moving Abroad, 3 December 2025. https://en.idi.org.il/articles/62287

[6] European Union, Your Europe, Residence rights when living abroad in the EU. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/residence-rights/index_en.htm

 

Can the Cycles of Conflict be Broken – Reconciliation

 

What Real Peace would Take - A Reality and Honesty Check
Israel and Palestine

 

R.M. Westerink; August 2026 

Bottom line 1.  An agreement between leaders (Layer 1) holds only if the populations carry it (Layer 2). Without that, the first crisis or power vacuum brings it down. 2.  Every conflict narrative here is addressed to three audiences at once: the group's own public, the other group, and third parties (US, Europe, Arab states, UN, courts, media). A move at one address ripples to the other two. Thinking in terms of "two stories" misses this. 3.  The decisive instrument is the recognition declaration, the one act that can be made credibly at all three addresses. Proposed sequence: West, then Israel, then Palestinians, with each step valuable on its own so the chain survives a break. 4.  If every party keeps its current role (exclusive victim, exclusive rightful claimant, partisan judge), the balance of sorrows compounds and the cost of recognition rises with each generation. 5.  Full declarations are unlikely in the near term. For use as benchmark and reality check.

1. Why agreements alone are not enough

A peace settlement has two layers.
Layer 1 is agreements between groups and their leaders: treaties, borders, security arrangements.
Layer 2 is what ordinary people in those groups believe: how they read history and what they accept as justice. The literature on protracted conflict is consistent on this point. Reconciliation requires a change in the society's conflict ethos (its shared beliefs about its own goals, the adversary, its own group and the nature of peace; Bar-Tal), and peace without a change in attitudes and structures stays unstable (Galtung's negative versus positive peace).
A signed agreement on top of an unchanged ethos pauses the war; it does not end it.

2. Every narrative has three addresses

Each side's account of the conflict does three jobs at the same time. The failure modes below are where processes most often break.

Address	What the narrative does there	What goes wrong	Lever
Own public	Holds identity together; justifies sacrifices already made.	Any concession reads as betrayal. Untreated trauma becomes the recruiting pool for the next escalation.	Let the group's own suffering stay seen and commemorated. Trauma care. Credible hope that situations can change.
The other group	Accusation plus a demand for recognition: "you must know what was done to us."	Recognition offered only where it is easy is not recognition. Dehumanization prepares the next round.	Recognition that answers the other side's grievance without withdrawing one's own account. Equal-status contact.
Third parties	Legitimacy claim: post our suffering to the international ledger.	Each external validation (resolution, ruling, prize) is harvested at home as proof of being right and feeds the hard core. Facilitators get absorbed into one side's story.	Affirm both narratives instead of crowning one. Facilitator as symmetric witness. Coordinated external narrative truce.

Third parties are never blank slates: 
Germany carries its own history as moral capital toward Israel, the US its alliance, postcolonial States their liberation narratives.

Silence and judgment by outsiders are both positions in the story. This is why the external address is not a side issue; after the failure of Camp David in 2000, the fight over who refused what was waged mainly before American and international audiences.

3. Six success factors for lasting peace

Factor	What it requires	Instruments	Observable test
1. Recognition architecture in three directions	Intra: own suffering may be seen and remembered. Inter: recognition that answers the other side's grievance. External: third parties affirm both stories.	Declarations (Section 4); memorials; claims and fact-finding commissions; a positive-peace ethos in schools, media and commemoration.	Can each side retell the other's story without experiencing it as capitulation?
2. Facilitator as narratively symmetric witness	Judge of the process, not of history. Procedural justice: voice, neutrality, respect, trustworthy motives.	Kelman-style problem-solving workshops (closed setting, no audience to play to).	Do both sides trust the facilitator as process holder?
3. Sacred cores off the price axis	Return, land, holy sites, existential security cannot be bought; attempts to do so harden positions.	Map each side's cores; moral reframing and symbolic recognition.	Is each core reframed rather than bought?
4. Trauma and hope infrastructure	Mental health care at scale; messaging that groups and conflicts can change (hope raises willingness to compromise).	Care programs in Gaza and Israeli border communities; veterans and survivors support.	Are war generations treated, or recruited?
5. Equal-status structures	Contact works as a lever only under structural equality; otherwise meetings reproduce the hierarchy.	Institutionally backed joint programs with equal standing.	Do joint programs reproduce or reduce hierarchy?
6. External narrative truce	Donors, media and courts coordinate how they address the narratives. Only partly feasible, but without it the adjudication fight keeps feeding hardening.	Donor conditions; consistent standards; avoiding one-sided prizes and resolutions.	Is external validation still harvested as proof at home?

4. Declarations: the central instrument

A declaration turns abstract recognition into a concrete spoken commitment, and it is the one instrument that can be calibrated for all three addresses. Drafts for each step exist in the companion documents. The design requirements are the same throughout:

•      Concrete: what happened, how much, what followed. A grandmother must recognize her own experience in the text.

•      No "but": justifications written into the same sentence cancel the recognition. Security concerns belong in a separate, simultaneous statement.

•      Own role only: each speaker addresses what its own side did, not what the other did.

•      Moral, not legal: recognizing wrong is not conceding a legal claim or the legitimacy of the state.

•      Right speaker, right place: heads of government, in both languages, before the audience that most needs to hear it.

•      Followed by a deed: a fund, a memorial, textbook revisions, an end to payments to perpetrators. Words without a deed are read as rhetoric.

•      A defined end point for the claims covered, so the liability does not grow without limit.

 

Proposed sequence.
Each step lowers the cost of the next, and removes the paralyzing question of who goes first.

Step	Speaker	Core content	Main audience	Main obstacle
1	EU/UK and US (simultaneously)	Own role in the origins (Mandate and Balfour, Holocaust, refused refuge, restrictive US immigration) and in the continuation (arms, vetoes, unequal standard). Both narratives affirmed. Material fund. End point for covered claims.	Third parties; Israelis and Palestinians	US administration unlikely near term; EU does not speak with one voice.
2	Israel	Specific acknowledgment of the 1948 dispossession, life under occupation since 1967, and civilian harm in the Gaza war. No "but." Moral, not legal.	Palestinians; Israeli public	Taboo around Nakba; coalition politics; fear that recognition erodes legitimacy.
3	Palestinians (joint leadership)	October 7 and attacks on civilians named and condemned. End glorification of perpetrators and payments. Recognition of the Jewish people's historic bond and right to live in security.	Israeli public	Divided leadership; Hamas; public opinion; the feeling of asymmetry.

 

Why West first: a Western declaration spreads part of the ledger across several debtors, so Israel is not the sole debtor, which is the main source of defensiveness. It must cover both narratives, or it will be read as delegitimization by one side and as erasure by the other.
Test for every declaration: can it be told at all three addresses without identity loss?

5. The hardening loop and where to interrupt it

The central dynamic is a self-reinforcing cycle: external validation, then growth of the internal hard core, then less room for concessions, then desperation and escalation, then more suffering, then more external validation. A process that does not break this loop changes nothing structural. Four points of intervention:

•      Break validation: an external narrative truce and symmetric affirmation by outsiders.

•      Shift the ledger: Western declarations and fund, so concession no longer reads as defeat at home.

•      Shrink the hard core: trauma and hope infrastructure, so grievance is not converted into recruits.

•      Protect the process: By a facilitator who stays symmetric. A facilitator who adopts one side's frame ("deradicalization" or "security first" versus "occupation first") becomes a character in the other side's story and is no longer usable.

6. What is at stake if each party holds its role

The logic is symmetric, the content is not.
Scale of loss and power are very unequal, and each side accrues liability in different ways: through harm done and through recognition withheld.
The term Erbschuld means inherited accountability for consequences, not inherited guilt; each generation re-incurs it as long as recognition and settlement are deferred.

Actor	Role it tends to hold	If it holds the role	Move that breaks the pattern
Israel	Victim of October 7 and decades of terror; security first; recognition feared as loss of legitimacy.	Occupation and settlement growth keep adding to the other side's ledger; the demand for recognition grows heavier each generation; isolation and a hard core on both sides.	Specific acknowledgment of the Palestinian experience without conceding legitimacy; deeds that make it credible.
Palestinians	Dispossessed and occupied; resistance as legitimate; recognizing Israeli victimhood feared as erasing their own.	Attacks on civilians keep confirming the other side's fear and justify hard-line policy; leadership split persists; untreated trauma feeds recruitment.	Unambiguous condemnation of attacks on civilians and recognition of Jewish historic ties, backed by action against glorification and payments.
West (US, EU, UK)	Partisan adjudicator: shield for one side, selective critic of the other.	Facilitator capture: trusted by neither side as a process holder; each outside validation feeds the hard core.	Own-role declarations; equal standards on arms and settlements; a fund that spreads the cost.
Regional states, UN, courts, media	Selective validation; instrumentalizing the cause.	The adjudication fight escalates: more claims, more selective validation, more hardening.	Coordinated, symmetric treatment of both narratives; Arab states acknowledging their own roles (1948 war, treatment of refugees and of Jews who left).

The compounding cost.
Failure of Layer 2 is demonstrably more expensive than prevention.
Without recognition, narratives harden into doctrine, dehumanization becomes normal and makes the next escalation psychologically possible, the logic of the "devoted actor" (moral rather than instrumental rationality) displaces compromise, and untreated trauma supplies the fighters and hardliners of the next round.
Skipping Layer 2 does not postpone the payment; it raises the interest.

7. If full declarations are not feasible. And they will not

Our own assessment is that full declarations from either side are fundamentally unlikely in the near term. The asymmetry, and the unresolved question of recognizing a right that arose from large-scale immigration, make them politically very costly. Even where maintaining the conflict is even more costly and even with an Erbschuld consequence on coming Generations.
What the current approach however may contribute is serve as an honesty benchmark for all.

8. Caveats and evidence base

• The three-address model (intra, inter, external) is a synthesis of the research literature, not an empirically tested theory. The external layer is the least developed: its mechanisms rest on well-supported theory but few direct effect measurements.
• The declaration texts are constructs following the logic, not predictions or proposals that any party would accept. Historical details should be checked by historians from both sides.
• Figures and facts from earlier sections of this analysis are rounded orders of magnitude and not all were re-verified for this summary.
  
  

Appendix: The Four Declarations

The criteria a recognition declaration should satisfy are mentioned in Chapter 4.
Here we focus on the essential texts without trying to propose any follow-up deeds.
Status of the drafts: these are constructs stemming from the logic of the Conflict Situation, not predictions and not as texts any party has agreed to.
Historical details were drafted from general knowledge.

Four Declarations

A. United States

Role addressed: continuation of the conflict (arms, diplomatic cover, unequal standard), plus the historical refusal of refuge.
Primary audience: Israelis and Palestinians.

"We speak as Americans, about the role our country has played.

In the 1930s and 1940s we closed our doors to Jewish refugees who asked us for help. That is part of the history that led to the founding of Israel. We acknowledge it.

Since 1948 we have recognized and supported Israel, and we have become its most important ally. We have supplied weapons, given billions in aid, and used our veto in the United Nations to prevent decisions. In doing so we have not always applied the same standard to Israeli policy that we applied to others. We have tolerated settlements that we ourselves often called an obstacle. We have led peace negotiations without securing results, and in doing so we gave Palestinians the impression that we were not an honest broker.

In the war that began in 2023, tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed in Gaza, with weapons that came from our country. We acknowledge the suffering of those families and our responsibility for our contribution. We also acknowledge that Israelis were attacked on October 7 in a way that nobody may justify, and that we promised Israel we would protect it.

We do not say that our support for Israel was a mistake. We say that friendship demands honesty, and that we owe Palestinians and Israelis the same care."

B. European Union and United Kingdom

Role addressed: origins of the conflict (Mandate and Balfour, persecution leading to the Holocaust, refused refuge, partition of the region), and inconsistency since.
Primary audience: Palestinians and the Arab world (as former colonial power), Israelis.

"We speak as Europeans, about what happened in and from Europe.

For centuries Europe persecuted, excluded and murdered Jews. The Holocaust was conceived and carried out on European soil, with the cooperation of many European countries and populations. When Jews asked for help in the 1930s, we too often refused them entry. After 1945 we did not do enough to protect the survivors and to let them return to their homes. We acknowledge that guilt.

Europe also let its Jewish question be solved partly outside Europe, in a land that was already inhabited. In 1917 the United Kingdom promised a national home for the Jewish people, then governed the land as the Mandate power, suppressed the Arab revolt of 1936-39 with force, restricted Jewish immigration in 1939 at the moment the need was greatest, and left in 1948 without a workable solution. European powers divided the region without consulting its inhabitants. As a result, Palestinians paid a price for a problem Europe had created. We acknowledge that wrong too.

Since then we have defended the rights of both peoples in words, but have been inconsistent in deeds. We called settlements illegal and yet traded with them. We financed Palestinian institutions and demanded too little accountability. We supplied weapons without fully weighing the consequences. We allowed antisemitism in Europe to grow again, and the treatment of Palestinians and Muslims in Europe deserves equal attention.

We take responsibility for our share. We do not say who must follow us. We say only what is ours."

C. Israel

Role addressed: the 1948 dispossession, life under Israeli authority since 1967, and civilian harm in the Gaza war.
Primary audience: Palestinians; the Israeli public.

"We stand here to say what has not been said for too long.

In 1948 about 750,000 Palestinians lost their homes. More than four hundred villages disappeared. Many fled, many were expelled, and nobody was allowed to return. Their children and grandchildren still live in camps and in exile. That was a wrong, and we acknowledge it as a wrong.

Since 1967 millions of Palestinians have lived under our authority, without the rights we take for granted for ourselves. We demolished homes, took land, restricted movement, and let generations grow up with checkpoints and humiliation. That too was and is a wrong.

In the war that began on October 7, 2023, tens of thousands of men, women and children were killed in Gaza, and almost an entire population lost its home. We acknowledge the suffering of every Palestinian who lost someone, and we take responsibility for what our government and our army did in it.

We recognize that the Palestinian people is a people, with its own history, its own loss and its own right to live in dignity.

We do not ask the families for forgiveness as a condition, but as a hope. What we say today is not a demand. It is a debt we no longer deny."

D. Palestinians

Role addressed: October 7, 2023, and earlier attacks on civilians; glorification of violence; the Jewish people's historic bond with the land and right to live in security.
Primary audience: the Israeli public.
Speaker note: ideally the joint Palestinian leadership, addressing Israelis in Hebrew and Arabic.

"We address ourselves to the people of Israel.

On October 7, 2023, about 1,200 men, women and children were killed in their homes, in the streets and at a festival. About 250 people were taken away. Sexual violence was committed. They were civilians, and it was murder. We condemn it without reservation. No injustice exists that justifies this.

That violence did not come out of nowhere. For years Israelis were killed on buses, in restaurants and in markets, and rockets were fired at cities. That too was murder, and for that too we take responsibility. We have for too long honored violence, congratulated perpetrators and paid their families. That ends.

We recognize that the Jewish people has an ancient history in this land, that it was persecuted for centuries, and that six million were murdered. This land is also your home. You have the right to live here in security and dignity, without fear for your children.

We acknowledge the pain of every family that lost someone, and of the hostages and their loved ones. We do not ask you to forget. We ask you to know that we see what was done to you.

We do not say this as an exchange. We say it because it is true."

Notes on the drafts: figures are rounded (about 750,000 displaced in 1948, more than 400 villages, about 1,200 killed and about 250 taken hostage on October 7). Each text addresses only its own speaker's role; none makes statements about borders, Jerusalem, the Palestinian right of return, or legal qualifications such as genocide, which belong to the settlement and to the courts

 

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