Peace Now
Six principles for achieving lasting peace in the Middle-East
By Gol Kalev
From “definition of insanity” to true peace
1 – Pro-Palestinian shift: From obsessive and exclusive focus on Palestinian national rights – which has been intertwined with dehumanization of Palestinians, such as through UNRWA whose mandate is to perpetuate Palestinian misery – to focus on Palestinian human rights, including the right to flea a war zone and chose to have a prosperous life elsewhere. More
2 – Peace frameworks shift: From “divide the baby” templates that perpetuate the conflict, keeping all parties unhappy and just resetting the conditions for the next round (“land for peace”, “two state solution”), to win-win deals in which all sides benefit, and therefore provide stability (Abraham Accords). More
Applying 1920 principles – organic peace
3- Separating geographic from conceptual homeland: Applying the model of the Jews relationship to the Jewish State, the Druzes to a potential Druze state, and Catholics to the Vatican: Palestinians around the world can stay where they are, while celebrating their collective identity elsewhere – be it in west or east bank of the Jordan river. Like Jews, and Druze, this by far is more in-line with organic Palestinian Arab sentiments than the Western-imposed notion of a geographical Palestinian nation-state. This was the model Palestinian Arabs aspired to in 1920. More
4- 1920 baseline: Voluntary Intra-Arab land swaps: the random “lines in the sand” drawn in 1919-1920 post-Turkey rule, are suboptimal for all of today’s regional actors. For example, the Hashemites are strategically better off in today’s Southern Syria than they are in the eastern slopes of the Jordan river. This while Palestinian migration triggered by Trump’s Gaza relocation plan, could create unique opportunities to bloom the Arab desert to the East – “Riviera in the desert”. Redrawing lines can advance the interests of the Sauds, Hashemites, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, as well as second-ring actors. More
Neutralizing the opposition to peace
5 – Disengagement of Europe: Europe has incepted, nurtured, fueled, and funded the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – through policy, direct programs, and NGOs it sponsors. This led to today’s Palestinian dependencies on both Europe and the conflict itself. Peace can only be achieved if Europe fully disengages from its century-old disruptive intervention in Israeli-Palestinian affairs. An opportunity to do so now emerged: Europe is entering an “everything on the table” bilateral dialogue with the United States triggered by Trump’s tariffs, and at the same time Europe is under pressure to redirect its capital and resources to the emerging threat to global stability that is coming from within Europe. More
6 – Neutralizing Lawfare: October 7th was supported by Lawfare – Hamas likely assumed that the ICC, international pressure and the Western media would force Israel to stop its counter-operation at some point – as they have done in previous rounds. As long as there is a credible threat from the Hague, there will be an incentive to attack Israel and counter-incentive for peace. Neutralizing this threat is now actionable, such as through an enforceable long-term European non-collaboration pledge. More
Conditions are ripe and the right leadership is now in place to act quickly and implement decisively. There are also various deep-current factors that present a unique opportunity in 2025 to usher in sustainable peace in the Middle-East, based on the above six principles.
Related Videos – principles for peace
Related articles
Palestinian shift: From national rights to human rights (Jerusalem Post)
De-Palestinizaton? From people to concept (Jerusalem Post)
Expanding the Trump plan to 1948 refugees (Jerusalem Post)
ICC’s threat to the United States (Wall Street Journal)
Europe must decide: ICC or DC (Washington Times)
Trump should keep Europe out of Israeli-Palestinian affairs (Jerusalem Post)
Background – Six Principles for Peace
For a century, “Peace in the Middle-East” was, for the most part, an empty slogan.
The primary objective was often the “peace process”, or “horizon towards peace”, as opposed to long-term sustainable peace.
Peace efforts involved Western frameworks that by themselves served as a hurdle to peace.
While Israel formed peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan and five Arab countries through the Abraham Accords, there has been a broad perception that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not solvable.
This can not be further from the truth
Israeli-Palestinian is not an organic mega-conflict, such as the dormant ones in Europe. It is a conflict that was fueled over the last century due to the combination of factors:
(1) Incitement and “conflictization” of this “routine conflict”, through European funding, foreign policy and direct actions, and
(2) the “peace frameworks” imposed by the West, which by their own definition were conflict-perpetuation recipes (keeping all sides unhappy).
In contrast, in 1920 , there was peace which was based on organic Arab and Jewish principles. It had the foundations to serve as stable long-term peace, but Europe aggressively ended this, and subsequently altered the Middle-East geopolitical realities, making a return to 1920 conditions unfeasible.
A century later, conditions are ripe for a historic peace that is based on a shift of thinking and can provide long-term stability.
It involved completely eradicating – not building upon – frameworks and principles that governed peace-making for decades.
The above six simple principles can lead to sustainable long-term peace, and it can happen quite rapidly.
Once those principles are accepted, they can be applied to policy, as expanded in my articles and book, The Assault on Judaism.
Gol Kalev’s new Jerusalem Post column applies the ideas in his book, The Assault on Judaism, to policy recommendation:
Those ideas are already making a big impact:
Applying the ideas of ‘The Assault on Judaism‘
Gol Kalev presented his book to the President of Israel:
Selected Media appearances
TV: American Sunrise
Podcast: Newsweek
Video-cast: The Franciska Show
Webinar: Rejuvenation with Eve Harrow
News: Ynet
Radio: Talkline
Print: The Wall Street Journal
Magazine: The Jerusalem Report
Author’s Biography
Gol Kalev is the author of the bestselling book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential threat is coming from the West (October 2024). He serves as Chairman of the Judaism 3.0 Think Tank, and is the author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism, (2022, updated in July 2024 for October 7th and the Gaza war).
He is a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, where he analyzes long-term global geopolitical shifts, European developments, and trends in Zionism and international affairs. His magazine cover-articles shaped conversations on topics ranging from contemporary European colonialism to the state of Judaism. His new weekly column, The Assault on Judaism, applies the ideas in his recent book to today’s policy decisions.
Gol has also written analysis articles for The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Jerusalem Report, Israel Hayom, The Daily Wire, The Media Line, The Washington Times, and Foreign Policy. His daily TV appearance on American Sunrise in the days following October 7th garnered bipartisan praise for his strategic analysis, placing the atrocities in historic and geopolitical contexts, and warning of an ensuing ideological attack coming from the West.
Gol is also known for revolutionizing the research of Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism. Delving into the depth of Herzl’s thinking, Gol applies Herzl’s frameworks to today’s strategic issues, such as the future of Europe, the Palestinian quest for statehood, debates about the form of governance, and theological issues.
Since 2015, his geopolitical analysis has been featured on Europe & Jerusalem, and read by decision-makers in the United States, Europe and around the world.
Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Gol served in the Israeli army before spending nearly two decades in New York, where he was an investment banker in Citigroup (formally Salomon Smith Barney) and J.P. Morgan, specializing in Mergers and Acquisitions and capital raising for financial institutions in the United States, Europe and around the world. He now lives in Jerusalem.
Recent video clips: Book launch – The Assault on Judaism
Summary article – The Assault on Judaism
(Jerusalem Post, November 20, 2024)
Launch event press release:
The Assault on Judaism launched in Jerusalem
Jerusalem, October 15, 2024; for immediate release (press inquiries: media@theAssaultoOnJudaism.com)
Gol Kalev: “Iran and its proxies have the capabilities to kill many Jews… but not to destroy Judaism….Those capabilities are housed in the West…And have been activated”
The Assault on Judaism was launched last night in a dynamic event at the Begin Center in Jerusalem, live-streamed to audiences around the world.
Author Gol Kalev said that the contemporary path to destroy Judaism is not through war, but through war crime indictments. Until a year ago, that path has been theoretical, “war crimes need a war,” he said. On October 7th it went live, and “we are now in a well-advanced [Western] attempt to negate the idea of the Jewish state, and through that to negate the idea of Judaism,” he stated.
Kalev highlighted some of the key arguments in his book, which analyzes the ideological assault from the West that followed October 7th, and compares it to previous attempts to eradicate Judaism. He explained that the Western assault on Judaism is also a proxy assault on America, and presents a strategic threat to US national security.
He addressed pushbacks that it is not the right time to deal with an abstract threat coming from “polite Europeans in suits”, when Jews are being killed, missiles are coming in, and Israeli soldiers are fighting a brutal war: “People say, let us fight the physical war now….and afterwards, in a few years, we can address the ideological assault from the West….Well in a few years it is going to be too late,” he cautioned.
He pointed to the trajectory of the rapidly-expanding Western assault that he describes in the book, which includes actions by the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, sanctions by Western governments, indoctrination of global public opinion, and the instillment of Jewish insecurity. He said that with this new book, he hopes to “refocus world’s public opinion to this existential threat,” offering new long-term and short-term strategies to counter it.
Renewed London Times columnist Melanie Philips spoke about The Assault on Judaism: “I read it with great joy and interest. The book is a very effective description of the forces that have come together to assault on the Jewish people.” She reacted to Gol’s claim that American Jews can not carve themselves out of the assault, “I think it is absolutely right to cast it, as Gol does, as an assault on Judaism,” pointing to the obsessive nature and glee of the attackers.
In her view, the assault is committed by three primary sources: “The ideological far-left, Islamist who wish to Colonize that non-Islam world, supporters of Palestinian rights in the West, who are not ideological, but have bought into a particular narrative that Israel is the bad guy – always, and the Palestinians are the victims – always.”
The evening continued with a conversation moderated by Begin Center’s Senior Fellow Paul Gross, who said that the book “has already made quite a splash…influential figures from around the world view this book as revolutionary,” he said, noting that book is became an Amazon bestseller and was chosen for the cover of a recent Jerusalem Report magazine.
Kalev ended his remarks by saying that “never before has there been such a clear demarcation: The world’s nations can either bless Israel or curse Israel. Over the last year, we saw a lot of people who chose to curse Israel, including world leaders…but we also saw a lot of individuals who defy the propaganda they hear from various Western media and their own Western leaders, and have chosen to bless Israel. I hope that this book helps expand this coalition of people who choose to bless Israel – from the Right and from the Left, from various political, religious and national backgrounds.”
Purchase The Assault on Judaism (Amazon)
Watch full event:
“A must-read for all those wishing to understand the intricacies of the full-spectrum assault not merely on Judaism and the Jewish people, but also on America and Western civilization itself.”
Josh Hammer,
Newsweek – Senior editor at Large
”Groundbreaking book! Brilliant analysis of the existential threat to Judaism and danger to global stability that followed October 7th. This is the original thinking the world needs to address our era’s geopolitical challenges.”
Col. Richard Kemp,
Former Commander of British Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
Pre-October 7th:
Watch Gol Kalev discusses the Assault on Judaism from the West, three weeks before October 7th:
The Assault on Judaism through anti-Zionism and Israel-Bashing (September 2023)
The Assault on Judaism is on the cover of The Jerusalem Report:
JUDAISM 3.0 