When nationalist parties are reluctant to present a vision of sovereignty and a path to achieving it, the result is a fixed mindset, international pressure, and withdrawals that ultimately lead to a Palestinian state; an interview with Zofnat Nordmann, esq.
The issue of a Palestinian state is barely heard in the current election campaign, and there is a reason for this. After the calamity of October 7th, the public internalized the danger of a state of that kind in Israel’s heartland, and the vast majority of the parties, even those in the center-left, know that brandishing the banner of a Palestinian state would be political suicide for them.
As a result, attorney and columnist Zofnat Nordmann says that the center-left parties look for other characterizations. “These parties make certain to clothe their diplomatic vision in a costume more palatable for the average Israeli, so they speak of ‘separation,’ ‘autonomy,’ and the like. They reject a ‘Palestinian state,’ but for all intents and purposes, they offer the same thing in other words. It is a sleight of hand. Rejecting a Palestinian state is not enough. Alongside it there must come another, clear vision: the vision of sovereignty throughout our Land. In fact, it is sovereignty over the small part of the Land that remains in our possession, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”
“The only parties that articulate a vision of sovereignty are Smotrich's Religious Zionism, Feiglin's Zehut, and Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit. This is the only diplomatic right-wing that exists today that presents an alternative to Oslo. It is not merely managing the conflict and empty opposition to a ‘Palestinian state,’ but a demand for conquest, for applying sovereignty, for encouraging emigration, and for settlement.”
According to Nordmann, the question Israeli voters should ask themselves when seeking to determine whether a party is right-wing or left-wing is not: ‘Palestinian state, yes or no.’ “The real criterion is whether you support Israeli sovereignty. Afterward one can add the practical questions: how, what, and when. If Israeli sovereignty over the territory between the river and the sea is not defined as the goal, then ultimately, one way or another, we will arrive at a Palestinian state, because there is no vacuum. One who fails to establish sovereignty as the objective, accustoms the world to the notion that the territory does not belong to us, and generates and entrenches an image of us as interlopers in a foreign land. It is difficult to convince the world when we refuse to claim ownership of the territory and legal possession of .it. That is the meaning of failure to apply sovereignty, or even failure to set it as an objective, as a vision.”
The consciousness of the right also erodes when sovereignty is not a clear, defined objective.
“On the internal front, as well,” says Nordmann, “when there is no clear determination of sovereignty as an objective, reality will settle on further withdrawals. It all begins with our own self-perception that the land does not belong to us, which results from the absence of a vision of Israeli sovereignty.”
Beyond practical diplomacy, Nordmann identifies additional damage stemming from the absence of a sovereignty vision. “Even those identified as right-wing are negatively affected by this. There is an extinguishing of hope here. People are unable to imagine anything else. Although they say ‘no’ to a Palestinian state, because they understand it is an existential danger, they are unable to articulate what they actually want. The mainstream of the national camp does not know how to communicate what it wants instead. You can witness this trend among many good people in the Likud whose tendencies are nationalist and right-wing, but do not establish an objective and a vision. Without Smotrich and Stroock, they would not have promoted settlement on their own. The sentiment of these right-wingers is love of the Land of Israel, but without a vision they have no idea what else to do, and so they are easily confused when confronted with accusations of apartheid, questions of demography, and more. This element of the Right does not even reach a serious examination of these questions, because the vision is absent. The option of Israeli sovereignty does not exist for them even in their imagination.”
“If you do not have sovereignty as an objective, you also do not develop a practical plan to realize that objective, so you will never reach it. The result is that reality will take us to a different objective. There is no vacuum,” she reiterates. “Failure to decide is also a decision. The thought that we can remain with the status quo, ‘to manage the conflict’ forever, is a terrible mistake. October 7th resulted from wishful thinking of this kind, as though there were an option not to decide, as though the status quo were guaranteed to us until we decide otherwise. We saw that reality progresses in one direction or another, with us or without us. The same thing could explode upon us in the center of the country, only far worse, God forbid. It is all a result of ‘managing the conflict,’ of the absence of vision.”
The time for practical questions will come, too.
To those who raise the question of ‘what will we do with the Arabs,’ and consider it a question that ends the discussion, attorney Nordmann asserts that this is not the question that should end the discussion. The question is whether Jewish existence is viable over time without sovereignty, when the country’s interior would be diminished to 17 kilometers and the mountain ridge that dominates the country’s heartland would be in enemy hands. “The answer is no. It is impossible to exist that way. There is no option of ceding this territory. Israel is the only one that must control this territory, its own land, which it took from no one, if we seek to continue to exist here over the long term. That is the question and the answer that ends the discussion. Once one understands that there is no other option, only sovereignty remains, and all other questions are secondary. They are important, complex, and challenging questions, but there is no alternative. Sovereignty is an existential need; it is the starting point. From there we can proceed to address the details.”
Regarding those complex questions, which Nordmann makes certain not to underestimate, she believes the answer must come through massive encouragement of Arab emigration as a national-Zionist project that would employ both positive and negative incentives. Those who remain here, she says, will not be granted citizenship in the foreseeable future, and no, she refuses to be accused of apartheid. “There is no discrimination here based on origin or skin color. These accusations are propaganda against the Jewish state or intellectual laziness. The reason that the Arabs of Gaza and Judea and Samaria will not receive citizenship is not because they are Arabs, but because they are enemies, and we are not suicidal. This is totally unrelated to apartheid.”
Did Israel miss, at the beginning of the war, the opportunity to implement that policy with American support? In Nordmann's opinion, definitely. “It physically pains me to think about the missed opportunity here. We are speaking of the most sympathetic American president that has ever been, and that can be expected in the foreseeable future, and we wasted the opportunity that presented itself, to our misfortune, after the massacre and the international legitimacy in its wake. We could have fought the way we were supposed to after incurring a blow of that kind, conquered Gaza in its entirety, land that is ours, which we ceded in the past in an act of exceeding foolishness, and caused the Arab enemy to emigrate. All the conditions created the possibility of finishing this arena once and for all.”
“We all remember the moment when Trump placed his pen on the table to show everyone how small Israel is relative to the sea of Arabs surrounding it. Trump presented an emigration plan, the plan of Rehavam Ze'evi, from the mouth of the leader of the free world; who could imagine it? But we missed the opportunity, a criminal blunder. We missed it because our hearts were not prepared for it, this option was not part of the public discourse, and the leadership did not want it. It is not possible to accelerate from zero to one hundred in a single moment. That is why it is crucial to address this, so that we will not miss the opportunity in the future, as well. I hope we will not need additional disasters to create opportunities.”
This article was originally published in Sovereignty Journal, Issue No. 20 (October 2026). 📖 "Click here to read the full issue