Sennholz’s essay is a compact policy argument about Arab-Israeli enmity, written from a classical-liberal perspective. It surveys war, refugees, terrorism, diplomacy, property, and economic controls, but its organizing claim is that neither historical grievance nor military force can by itself produce peace.
Located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the Middle East has been beset with danger since the beginning of time.
The essay begins with a bleak view of regional history. Sennholz treats successive wars not as steps toward settlement but as engines of political memory, mutual fear, and retaliatory claims. This is why he resists making history the final judge of present rights.
The wars did not bring peace; they generated ever more hatred which breeds more wars.
His central conceptual target is restorationism: the demand that political arrangements be returned to some earlier moment. In his account, Palestinian claims to return, Arab appeals to the pre-1967 map, and competing historical arguments from other peoples all reveal the same danger. History can illuminate conflict, but it cannot supply a stable rule for adjudicating all losses.
It may validate aggression or peace, citing similar actions and conditions in the past.
Sennholz’s treatment of the refugee question is therefore severe and controversial. He denies that all descendants of Arab refugees possess an enforceable right to reclaim homes and land, arguing that such a policy would dispossess later Jewish inhabitants and invite renewed war. He also faults Arab governments, militant movements, international institutions, and foreign aid systems for preserving the camps as a permanent political indictment rather than promoting integration and civil life.
Half a million Jews in numerous settlements throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem would have to be forcibly removed from their homes to make way for some four million Arab refugees.
The essay then reads the Oslo years as a test of concession-based diplomacy. Sennholz recounts Israeli withdrawals and offers, then contrasts them with continued attacks, asking whether concessions strengthened militant expectations rather than moderation. Yet he does not collapse Palestinians as a people into their violent factions. A recurring distinction separates terrorists and political leaders from the larger population whose interests lie in security, employment, civil rights, and normal exchange.
His prescriptions follow from that distinction. Israel, he argues, should reduce measures that collectively impoverish Palestinians, halt confiscations, protect private property without ethnic preference, and guarantee speech, due process, and equality before the law. He also criticizes Israel’s welfare-state and labor-regulatory institutions as sources of inflation, unemployment, dependency, and politicized distribution. Peace requires not only treaties but a social order in which ordinary people gain from cooperation.
Sennholz places moral burdens on Palestinians as well: rejection of anti-Semitism, terrorism, and the cult of martyrdom; acceptance that Jews may live among Arabs just as Arabs live within Israel; and support for civil rather than revolutionary politics. His argument is therefore not simply pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. It is an argument against collective vengeance, permanent grievance, and state-managed privilege.
There can be no peace unless reason rules the mind and present interest keeps the peace.
The concluding political vision is one of open markets, secure property, civil equality, and practical coexistence. U.S. diplomacy, in this view, should not merely revive formulas around borders and concessions, but encourage institutions that give moderates reasons to cooperate. The essay’s distinctive contribution is its fusion of Middle East commentary with libertarian political economy: violence persists where historical claims, ethnic discrimination, economic closure, and redistribution dominate public life.
In the Middle East, both mortal enemies must learn from each other, learn to live with each other, and end the reign of violence.
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