The Unlearned Lesson: How October 7th Solidified a Path of Conflict Over Peace 

The article explores how the aftermath of October 7th, 2023, has entrenched conflict rather than moved Israelis and Palestinians toward peace. Drawing on insights from Nathan Thrall, it argues that the idea of Palestinian expulsion—once confined to Israel’s far right—has entered mainstream discourse, fueled by trauma, fear, and demographic anxieties. Despite global outrage and protests, Israel faces little real pressure as U.S. and European support continues unabated, enabling further violence and displacement.

Hamas’s attack, while shattering Israel’s sense of invincibility and reviving global attention to Palestine, ultimately accelerated a far grimmer reality: the normalization of ethnic cleansing and a deepening of permanent occupation. The piece concludes that without genuine U.S. leverage and accountability, the ceasefire is merely a pause before a more devastating phase of the conflict.

The Unlearned Lesson: How October 7th Solidified a Path of Conflict Over Peace 

The dust has not settled in Gaza. It has merely been kicked into a hazy, temporary suspension. The recent ceasefire, brokered under the heavy hand of a Trump administration eager for a foreign policy victory, has produced a palpable, collective sigh of relief. But to mistake this pause for a pivot toward peace is to misread the fundamental, and terrifying, lessons learned by both Israelis and Palestinians since the horrors of October 7th, 2023. 

According to a sobering analysis by Nathan Thrall, an authoritative voice on the conflict based in Jerusalem, the past two years have not been a recalibration toward resolution. Instead, they have been a brutal acceleration down a path everyone claimed to fear but few believed was possible. The central, chilling takeaway is this: the concept of large-scale ethnic cleansing has been dragged from the fringes of Israeli political discourse and planted firmly in its mainstream. 

The Mainstreaming of Expulsion 

Before October 7th, the idea of mass “transfer” of Palestinians was the province of the radical, messianic right. It was a dark whisper, a theoretical endgame that liberal democracies and international law would never permit. Today, as Thrall points out, it is a topic of open discussion. 

Ministers, Knesset members from centrist parties, and leading media figures now openly debate plans for the “voluntary” resettlement of Gazans. Polls, however flawed, show staggering majorities of Israeli Jews in favor of such a policy. This represents a seismic shift in consciousness. The trauma of October 7th did not, for a significant portion of the Israeli public, create a desire for separation via a two-state solution. It forged a deeper, more primal desire for the problem itself to simply disappear. 

The underlying logic of this shift is the unresolved predicament of Zionism in a demographic reality it cannot peacefully absorb. Israel is unwilling to grant Palestinians a sovereign state and, as a Jewish state, cannot grant them equal rights within a single state without ceasing to exist in its current form. The status quo of managing a disenfranchised population—often accurately described as apartheid—is sustainable but deeply unsatisfying. It’s a perpetual, grinding conflict. Expulsion, however morally abhorrent, presents itself to many as a final solution. 

This is not a future hypothetical. As Thrall emphasizes, a slower, grinding version of ethnic cleansing is already the daily reality in the West Bank, where settler violence, backed by the Israeli military, systematically pushes Palestinian communities off their land. Gaza’s destruction is simply the same logic writ large and with apocalyptic force. 

The Illusion of International Pressure 

A natural assumption would be that global outrage and shifting public opinion would act as a brake on these ambitions. The images from Gaza have sparked the largest protest movements in a generation across Western capitals. Universities have divested, and South Africa has brought a case of genocide before the International Court of Justice. 

Yet, from the Israeli perspective, these developments have registered as little more than noise. Why? Because they have not translated into tangible consequences that alter the cost-benefit analysis in Jerusalem and Washington. 

As Thrall starkly observes: “During a genocide, the Israeli arms industry was booming.” The United States continues its unconditional flow of arms and diplomatic cover. The European Union, Israel’s largest trading partner, cannot even muster a consensus to ban products from illegal settlements, let alone enact serious sanctions. The much-touted recognition of Palestine by several European nations and Canada is, in this view, a hollow gesture—a way to signal virtue without taking any action that might actually pressure Israel. 

The lesson learned by the Israeli leadership is clear: international condemnation is a fleeting cost of doing business. So long as American military and political support remains firm, the most powerful actors in the global order are not just permitting Israel’s actions; they are actively enabling them. The ceasefire itself, championed by a U.S. president who imposed it without threatening to cut a single dollar of aid, only reinforces this perception of untouchable power. 

Hamas’s Catastrophic “Success” 

This brings us to the most agonizing question of all: Was October 7th a strategic catastrophe for the Palestinian cause? 

The moral catastrophe is undeniable. The deliberate targeting of civilians was a horror that rightly shocked the world. But strategically, the calculus is more complex, and deeply tragic. 

From a purely tactical standpoint, Hamas achieved objectives that had eluded Palestinians for decades. They shattered the illusion of Israel’s invincibility. They forced the Palestinian issue back to the center of global politics after years of diplomatic neglect. They secured the release of thousands of prisoners in a lopsided exchange. They galvanized a global movement that has shifted public opinion, particularly among younger generations in the West, in a way the Palestinian Authority’s docile diplomacy never could. 

However, these “gains” came at an almost unimaginable price. Gaza lies in ruins, with a death toll in the tens of thousands and a public health and humanitarian catastrophe that will span generations. More devastatingly, as Thrall argues, the attack acted as a catalyst for the very existential threat Palestinians have long feared: it unlocked and normalized the Israeli desire for mass expulsion. 

So, was it a strategic error? One could argue that for Hamas, any action that doesn’t lead to liberation is, by definition, a failure. But this analysis ignores the context of a people who feel they have nothing left to lose. When the status quo is a slow-motion erosion of your rights, your land, and your dignity, and the prescribed alternative—the Palestinian Authority’s strategy of security cooperation and endless negotiation—has yielded only more settlements and humiliation, then violent resistance, regardless of the cost, can appear to be the only path that retains a shred of agency. 

This is not nihilism; it is the brutal logic of a people who believe their backs are against the wall. The problem is that this logic can lead to outcomes even worse than the oppressive status quo. 

The American Complicity and the Road Ahead 

The ultimate tragedy, and the most damning indictment, lies in Washington. The interview with Thrall highlights a history that the U.S. political establishment deliberately ignores: when American pressure is actually applied, Israel concedes. 

From Eisenhower’s threats of sanctions in 1956 to force a withdrawal from Sinai, to Carter’s hardball at Camp David, the leverage exists and has a proven track record. The problem is not a lack of power, but a lack of political will. The U.S. has chosen, across administrations, to be a “mediator” that is, in fact, a full-throated backer of the occupying power. 

The recent ceasefire, orchestrated by Trump, proves the point. By simply flexing his political muscle, without even threatening aid, he pressured Netanyahu into a deal the Israeli Prime Minister had resisted for months. Imagine what could be achieved if that pressure were applied consistently and in service of international law and human rights, rather than a one-time transactional “win.” 

The path forward is bleak. The Palestinian national movement is fragmented between a discredited, collaborationist Authority and a resistance movement whose actions have potentially precipitated a greater existential threat. Israel, emboldened and traumatized, sees less reason than ever to compromise. And the international community, particularly the U.S. and Europe, offers empty gestures that salve their own consciences while the machinery of conflict and occupation grinds on, better funded and more entrenched than ever. 

The real lesson of October 7th is not that peace is harder than ever. It is that the world, by refusing to use its power to uphold justice, has made a more violent, more final, and more horrific outcome not just possible, but probable. The ceasefire is not an end; it is the starting line for the next, even more dangerous phase of a conflict that has learned all the wrong lessons.