Jeremy Havardi is the director of the B’nai B’rith U.K. Bureau of International Affairs.
(Oct. 25, 2026 / JNS)
It is easy to overlook the fact that anti-Zionism has been an utter catastrophe for ordinary Palestinians.
Moderate Palestinians know a simple truth: You cannot build a Palestinian state by destroying its Jewish neighbor. The only viable path to long-term self-determination is a political process that recognizes the legitimacy and permanence of a Jewish state.
This self-evident truth ought to have galvanized all attempts at creating an equitable peace agreement between the two sides. Yet the refusal of anti-Zionist Palestinian leaders to accept offers of statehood from 1937 onwards, exacerbated by their willingness to engage in acts of terrorism for so long, has condemned the Palestinian people to decades of war, insecurity, poverty and statelessness.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, this was illustrated by the suicide bombings used by Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups to disrupt peace talks linked to the Oslo Accords. Such attacks aimed to stall any resolution to the conflict and leave Palestinians caught in a cycle of conflict and despair.
Anti-Zionists care little for the real-world impact of their advocacy.
Similarly, the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was planned and carried out in full knowledge that Israel would exact an incredibly heavy price to restore its security and regional deterrence. The deaths, injuries and forced migrations suffered by Palestinian civilians in Gaza, themselves a tragedy, are a clear testament to the destructive power of anti-Zionism.
The BDS movement has also been disastrous for Palestinians. By calling for Israel’s destruction and a “one-state solution,” its advocates signal to the Palestinians that they should abandon all attempts at coexistence with their Israeli neighbors. BDS tells the Palestinians that they will not need to make painful concessions and compromises on the issues of land, borders and security because the state they are negotiating with will soon disappear.
This fuels impossible dreams. Instead of encouraging Palestinians to build a viable economy and create lasting social and political institutions in preparation for a better future, Palestinians are told to prepare for Israel’s disappearance from the world stage.
Naturally, Israel’s refusal to bend in the face of such rejectionism only further embitters Palestinians committed to BDS strategy. As the activist Bassem Eid put it, in its “determination to oppose Israel,” the BDS movement “is prepared to fight to the last drop of Palestinian blood.”
In addition, when Israel’s security has suffered from war and terrorism, Palestinian lives have been negatively impacted.
Before Oct. 7, roughly 163,000 Palestinians were employed in Israel and its settlements in Judea and Samaria—around 115,000 inside Israel and 48,000 in settlements. According to a 2022 report by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), their income accounted for approximately 20% of Palestinian GDP, injecting $4 billion into the economy compared with the Palestinian Authority’s total annual budget of around $6 billion. Additionally, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) noted that 22.5% of employed Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria worked in Israel or its settlements in 2022.
After Oct. 7, Israel suspended all work permits. It later reinstated approximately 8,000, mainly in manufacturing and industrial jobs. As an Israeli report indicates, more than 100,000 jobs have been lost and “large extended families” who “relied on the salaries of those who could access work in Israel” have been “propelled into financial crisis.”
When Israel’s security has suffered from war and terror, Palestinian lives have been negatively impacted.
Clearly, anti-Zionism, whether violent or not, has become an assault on the livelihoods of Palestinians in the region.
Yet anti-Zionists care little for the real-world impact of their advocacy. They take the real and localized grievances of Palestinians and Israelis, and replace them with one-sided narratives designed to fit Western agendas. Those narratives reduce Palestinians to helpless victims of external powers rather than individuals and families with agency.
This sacralizing is itself a form of bigotry because it replaces genuine accountability with a culture of low expectations. It is tantamount to accepting that a culture that rewards terror and violence, embraces authoritarian abuse rather than democratic legitimacy and consistently rejects peace overtures cannot do better. In fact, it can and it must.
Palestinians have lived “on a sense of historical entitlement,” to quote journalist Fouad Ajami. In some ways, Western leaders are to blame. By unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state without corresponding reform, as many did last year, they have told Palestinian leaders that no amount of incitement, rejection or support for terror will stand in the way of major concessions.
They have embraced the cause of Palestinian statehood without demanding real and lasting deradicalization and a change to Palestinian political culture. For as long as this insidious policy continues, Palestinian elites will not suffer the consequences of promoting anti-Zionism, but their people will.