To Organize for Peace, We Must First Dare to Imagine It

On April 7, the United States, Israel, and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. By the afternoon of the same day, it was already unraveling.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who mediated the deal, announced it would cover "everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere—effective immediately." Within hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office contradicted him: The ceasefire "does not include Lebanon." Israel's military said it "continues fighting and ground operations" against Hezbollah. Missile alerts sounded across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. A gas facility in Abu Dhabi was ablaze. Iran and Israel each accused the other of violating a truce that neither had fully agreed to in the first place.

This is not a diplomatic miscommunication. This is a structural diagnosis. A ceasefire that each party defines differently, that excludes Lebanon while Lebanon burns, that leaves unresolved the nuclear question, the proxies, the sanctions, and the fate of millions of displaced people—is not a ceasefire. It is a pause in a war that has no agreed-upon end. And it proves, more vividly than any argument could, the central claim of this piece: There is no lasting peace to be found in bilateral arrangements, back-channel deals, or sequenced diplomacy that takes each front separately. Everything must be on the table, simultaneously, in the open. The region will not be stabilized by threading one crisis at a time. It will only be stabilized by a framework comprehensive enough to hold all of them at once.

For years, the pogroms in the West Bank grew more violent in the dark, largely ignored by media and public attention. The lawlessness of those carrying them out was enabled—sometimes actively, sometimes through willful inaction—by those whose job was to enforce the law. This ongoing catastrophe, beyond being war crimes and perhaps crimes against humanity, has already fueled new waves of antisemitic violence worldwide.

What is needed is not just pressure, but a credible vision—something to organize toward, not only against.

Now the world is paying attention. But attention, it turns out, is not the same as action.

Two and a half years of genocide in Gaza. Bombing campaigns across half a dozen countries. The Israeli Knesset's passage of a death penalty law for Arabs—62 in favor, 48 against, 1 abstained—while Germany, Britain, France, and Italy issued a statement fretting over the law "undermining Israel's commitments with regards to democratic principles." It would be funny if it weren't so revealing. The shrewdest member of the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi, used to say that Israel is Jewish and democratic—Jewish for the Arabs, democratic for the Jews. Now even that uneasy equation has collapsed. Anti-government protesters are being violently suppressed. Activists are being arrested.

What, exactly, are we waiting for? Another October 7 to green-light a massive genocide in the West Bank?

In the 1980s, the world still maintained a façade of respecting international law, human rights, sovereignty, and human dignity. Today those principles are treated as virtue signaling, carrying zero weight in global politics. The massacre at Sabra and Shatila produced one of the largest anti-war protests in Israeli history, the removal of a defense minister, the resignation of a prime minister. Today, the same events would merit a public yawn. Israelis would say there was no choice; in war, civilians die; terrorists hide among civilians.

The campaign against apartheid South Africa helped end that regime—sanctions were part of it, though not the whole story. Today the world is reluctant to act similarly, and Israel's stocks are rising. Military and technology exports have grown. The Israeli economy remains stable, the shekel as strong as it has been in years.

So what is the world to do? What are the Palestinians to do?

Here is the honest assessment: Pressure alone will not work. The Israeli public's mental condition now requires constant war to manage its anxieties, and the government has mastered the manipulation of fear to sustain itself. Geopolitical realities ensure Israel will always have trade partners—including countries that position themselves as critics, including in the Arab Middle East. And if isolation were somehow achieved comprehensively, the best-case scenario is Israel becoming a North Korea: The boycott succeeds, and we are not one inch closer to Palestinian liberation or regional normalcy. What is needed is not just pressure, but a credible vision—something to organize toward, not only against.

Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that "those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war." That is the question before us.

As today's unraveling ceasefire makes clear, there is no safe region without a framework that addresses everyone's security simultaneously.

There are credible levers that have worked before. President Dwight D. Eisenhower forced Israel's hand in 1956. President George H.W. Bush did it again in Madrid. Real leverage—the kind that changes calculations—is possible. The platform already exists: the Arab League Peace Initiative of March 2002. The Middle East is different now, but the architecture of that initiative remains usable. When Israeli leadership presented peace prospects with Egypt, Jordan, and even in the Oslo Accords, the Israeli public responded favorably. Public opinion in this region can shift quickly when circumstances change.

And this framework could do something even more ambitious: help resolve the conflict with Iran—comprehensively, not bilaterally. The ceasefire announced last week, already disputed and already violated, shows exactly why. Iran has insisted Lebanon must be part of any deal. Israel says it won't be. The US sits somewhere between the two, unable to enforce its own mediated agreement. This is the logic of piecemeal diplomacy: It produces temporary pauses, not durable peace. On multiple occasions, Iran reaffirmed the Arab League Peace Initiative and suggested that if Palestinians reach an agreement that earns the approval of a Palestinian majority, Iran would not carry the banner of the Palestinian struggle. Iran can become part of the solution. Imagine a Middle East in which the genuine security concerns of Palestine, Israel, Iran, and Lebanon are all taken into account—together, not sequentially—and prove compatible. Such a deal could include a final resolution to the nuclear question (dare we dream of dismantling both Iran's and Israel's programs?), the disbanding of proxy forces, and enforceable benchmarks for human and civil rights across all parties. After years of genocide, wars, and hundreds of thousands of victims, none of this would come easily. The international community would have to deploy every tool at its disposal, every credible threat.

Today, no leadership anywhere is offering a viable future. Here is the vision nobody in the entire Zionist political spectrum is proposing: a grand bargain. Israel accepts the Arab League Peace Initiative. A Palestinian state is established in all the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip—with real elections—before the end of 2027. This is a first stage enabling the self-determination of both national collectives, which could develop over time into various arrangements: a two-state solution, a confederation, a single democratic state, or something in-between. The international community guarantees security for all sides during the transition. And the pressure must be real: If Israel refuses, it is immediately removed from EU treaties, the OECD, and every international institution it depends on.

And then there is the bonus—the kind of audacious proposal that makes a vision legible to ordinary people. The 2026 World Cup will be hosted in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The 2030 tournament goes to Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. The 2034 tournament is slated for Saudi Arabia—the country that originally proposed the 2002 Peace Initiative. What if the 2034 World Cup became a Peace World Cup, hosted jointly by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Palestine? Imagine the region's countries spending the coming years building sports infrastructure. Imagine the tourism economy it would generate—not only in those three countries, but in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. Absurd? Maybe. But the question MLK poses is whether peace-loving people can organize as effectively as those who love war. A concrete, imaginable future is part of that organizing.

I have always argued that the only genuinely pro-Israel position is also a pro-Palestine position. There is no safe Israel without a free and safe Palestine—and, as today's unraveling ceasefire makes clear, there is no safe region without a framework that addresses everyone's security simultaneously. To be pro-Israel means ensuring Israel's ability to become a nation among nations—secure, recognized, legitimate. That cannot happen while Israel is an occupying power. It cannot happen alongside an apartheid regime. It cannot happen while Palestinian citizens of Israel face systematic discrimination and neglect. And it cannot happen while a two-week truce substitutes for the comprehensive, just, and durable peace that the entire region is owed.

We cannot wait any longer. The question is whether we are willing to organize for a vision, or only against an atrocity.