Guns, Germs, and Gaza
Why Israeli-Palestinian Peace Remains an Illusion
“It’s not about who’s right. It’s about where they’re standing — and how little room there is between them.”
Two Years After October 7th
Two years ago today — October 7th, 2023 — Operation Al-Aqsa Flood stormed across the Gaza-Israeli border.
The result: Over 1,200 Israelis dead, and 250 kidnapped.
The Israeli Defense Force’s response within Gaza has since been cataclysmic— to the point many now call it genocide.
Here we look at the conflict through a simpler, colder lens: geography.
Borrowing from Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, the goal here isn’t to moralize but to map inevitability — to show why this conflict can’t end, because the land itself won’t let it.
Diamond’s Premise: Geography as Destiny
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argued that history is shaped not by race or genius, but by terrain.
Civilization is an accident of mountains, rivers, flora, fauna, and animals.
Europe thrived not through superiority, but through luck: its geography fostered agriculture, metalwork, and disease resistance — the “guns, germs, and steel” that let the Spaniards cross the Atlantic and conquer the Americas.
“Why did the Spaniards conquer the Mayans instead of the Mayans conquering Spain?”
Diamond’s counterfactual forces a truth most can’t stomach: history’s winners are usually just better positioned on the map.
Israel and Palestine: Geography’s Perfect Trap
Now apply that logic to Israel and Palestine.
Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey. Twenty-two percent of that — Gaza and the West Bank — forms the heart of the world’s most chronic conflict.
The land is tiny, flat, resource-poor, and densely inhabited. No mountains. No deserts. No buffer zones.
The people — Jews, Muslims, and Christians — live interwoven, not apart. Each religion calls the land theirs. Jerusalem is the sacred center for all three.
“The land is tiny, the populations are large, the boundaries invisible, and the stakes infinite.”
That’s the formula for forever war.
A History of the Impossible
The Holocaust exterminated six million Jews.
The Nakba displaced 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.
Two historical traumas collided in one postage-stamp of desert. An “infinite force” met an “immovable object.”
Whether you’re born Palestinian or Israeli largely dictates which version of truth you inherit — the same way being born north or south of Chicago determines whether you root for the Cubs or the White Sox.
It’s not rational. It’s tribal.
And it’s permanent.
Gaza: The Powder Keg
Gaza is an open-air prison — two million people locked in a 140-square-mile cage. Hamas turned that cage into a fortress: tunnels, rockets, and ideology instead of industry.
“Instead of a Riviera, Gaza became an arsenal.”
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers expanded into the West Bank with state protection, solidifying “facts on the ground.”
The world debated, but the bulldozers didn’t.
The Trump-Kushner Realignment
The first Trump administration stopped pretending neutrality. Jared Kushner’s diplomacy threw subtlety into the shredder.
Instead of balancing sides, the U.S. chose an axis: Israel + the Sunni powers (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain).
The Palestinians were written out of the script entirely.
The “Abraham Accords” normalized relations and monetized peace — by burying the idea of Palestinian sovereignty.
The “diplomacy” was a geopolitical hack: peace without Palestinians.
October 7th as Strategy
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, saw the writing on the wall.
Palestine was being erased diplomatically — so he decided to force it back into relevance.
He knew every Israeli death would trigger a disproportionate Israeli response. That was the plan.
Each bombing, each civilian death, would shift global sympathy and reignite outrage.
And it worked.
“Sinwar wanted the world to hate Israel and Jews again — and he succeeded.”
The IDF’s fury obliterated Gaza, but the moral terrain shifted. Young liberals abandoned neutrality. “Free Palestine” went mainstream.
Sinwar achieved political relevance at the cost of 50,000 lives.
Israel’s Overreaction, Iran’s Weakness
Yet Sinwar underestimated Israel’s ferocity and America’s indulgence.
The IDF not only flattened Gaza — it dismantled Hezbollah’s northern threat and crippled Iran’s nuclear ambitions with U.S. backing.
Iran’s proxies evaporated. Its deterrence died.
Sinwar won the narrative. Israel won the region.
The Right-Wing Endgame
By late 2025, Hamas’s leadership was decimated.
Hostage negotiations dragged on.
And inside Israel, the far-right had cemented control.
Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — men once labeled domestic terrorists — now controlled the coalition propping up Netanyahu.
Their platform is unambiguous: annex Gaza and the West Bank, expel the Palestinians, and erase the two-state idea forever.
“Forget the two-state solution. Forget negotiations. The goal is removal — total and final.”
This isn’t speculation. It’s stated policy. Look it up.
The Death of the Two-State Illusion
The “two-state solution” survives only as diplomatic taxidermy — mounted and displayed, but long dead.
Even Trump’s much-publicized “20-point plan” for peace is more theater.
Every additional “point” is another potential failure.
Netanyahu doesn’t have to sabotage it now — he just has to wait for entropy to do its work.
“Every link in the chain is weak — and there are twenty links.”
Meanwhile, Hamas can’t disarm — not without dying. Israel won’t withdraw— not without fracturing.
Peace isn’t postponed. It’s impossible.
The Coming “Technocratic Gaza”
The next act will be dressed as progress.
Expect international Arab “technocratic management” — a sanitized euphemism for privatized occupation.
Gaza will be rebuilt, not for Gazans, but for investors. Think crypto zones, AI “innovation hubs,” and desalination startups.
A digital mirage rising over a graveyard.
“With enough power and money, demographics bend. Always have.”
The comparison isn’t poetic — it’s historical.
New York’s homeless were “disappeared” during Giuliani’s 1990s gentrification. Gaza’s poor will be, too.
Not by compassion — by design.
The Geography of Inevitability
The disaster isn’t a moral failure, but a spatial one.
Israel and Palestine are too small, too dense, and too sacred to coexist. There’s no natural separation, no buffer, no “other place to go.”
Religion fuels it. Demography sustains it. Geography locks it in.
“Peace isn’t elusive — it’s impossible. The land won’t allow it.”
Coda: The Desert Always Wins
In the coming months, you’ll hear optimism. You’ll see handshakes. Hostages will be released. Deals announced.
Then it’ll all fracture again — because the map demands it.
A tiny, barren strip of earth, worshiped by billions and livable by none, will keep replaying the same nightmare.
The land is the author. The people are just characters. Stop blaming the characters for acting-out.
They couldn’t do otherwise. Neither would you.
Mookie Spitz
Host of No Hair, All Heart — where empathy collides with cynicism. Writer, ranter, podcaster, and chronicler of human contradiction.
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