Does Israel have a right to exist?

Does Israel have a right to exist? Of course it does. Its sovereignty rests on international recognition and the will of its people. That much is beyond serious dispute. The real question, however, is whether Israel has the right to deny Palestine’s existence. It does not. To recognise one people’s national aspirations while extinguishing another’s is not just unjust; it is unsustainable. If we truly care about Israel’s survival, we must reckon with the self-destructive path it has chosen in Gaza. Its leaders appear to believe that overwhelming force secures legitimacy. The opposite is true. By directing indiscriminate aggression towards Palestinians, as well as Lebanese and Qatari civilians, Israel risks undermining the very claim to legitimacy it has spent decades defending. Military might may win battles; it cannot confer moral authority. Legitimacy is not a static inheritance; it must be renewed by a state’s conduct. Israel’s founding was underwritten by law and necessity, but its future depends on whether it governs as a democracy upholding rights, or as an occupying power denying them. By rejecting Palestinian nationhood outright, Israel imperils its own. The more it blurs the line between defence and domination, the more it invites the world to see it not as a democracy under siege, but as a regional hegemon lashing out with impunity. The question that Israel has always posed was this: what sort of unchecked violence would a nuclear-armed Iran unleash on the Middle East? We are finding out, in grim detail, with the Middle East’s actual hegemon: Israel.