Since Hamas’s horrific assault on October 7, Israel has launched a war, but the Israeli government has not yet “reckoned with the enmity that produced the attack—or what policies might prevent another,” writes Aluf Benn, the editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a new essay for Foreign Affairs. This failure to strategize is not an accident. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rose to power on the basic premise that “Israel could thrive without addressing the Palestinian issue,” and by keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out of sight and out of mind. But the country, Benn writes, “can no longer be so blinkered.”

“The trauma of October 7 has forced Israelis, once again, to realize that the conflict with the Palestinians is central to their national identity and a threat to their well-being,” argues Benn. “It cannot be overlooked or sidestepped, and continuing the occupation, expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, laying siege to Gaza, and refusing to make any territorial compromise (or even recognize Palestinian rights) will not bring the country lasting security.” If Israelis continue to follow Netanyahu’s path of ethnonationalism and militarism, Benn warns, the violence of the October 7 attack will “not be a one-off event, but a portent of what’s to come.”