The last decade has felt like an endless war for Israel. Rockets, terror attacks, border conflicts, and international condemnation seem to arrive in waves. What makes Israel’s situation unique in modern history is not only the frequency of attacks, but the reaction of the world. In most conflicts, the country that is attacked first receives global sympathy and support. In Israel’s case, the opposite often happens. The more Israel defends itself, the more it is condemned.

This paradox did not appear overnight. It is rooted in a deeper problem that continues to poison any realistic chance of peace in the Middle East. That problem is the systematic denial of Jewish history in the land of Israel.

Peace cannot exist when one side’s past is erased.

The Jewish connection to the land of Israel is not a modern political invention. It is one of the most documented historical relationships between a people and a territory anywhere in the world. Long before modern nationalism existed, the Jewish people developed their religion, language, law, and identity in the land historically known as Judea.

In the first century of the Common Era the region was under Roman rule. The land was widely known as Judea and Jerusalem functioned as the political and spiritual center of Jewish life. This is not a claim based solely on Jewish sources. Roman historians themselves recorded it.

One of the most important historians of the Roman Empire, Publius Cornelius Tacitus, wrote around the year 100 about the region and its people. Tacitus was not sympathetic to the Jews. In fact he was openly critical of them. Yet even he recorded a basic historical fact. Jerusalem was the capital of the Jews.

When a hostile Roman senator acknowledges Jewish national presence in Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago, the modern claim that Jews are foreign colonizers becomes historically impossible to sustain.

Another revealing aspect of these ancient records is what they do not contain. There is no mention of an Arab people calling themselves Palestinians during that period. There was no Palestinian nation, no Palestinian political identity, and no Palestinian ethnicity described by the historians of the time.

The name Palestine itself entered common usage only later. After crushing major Jewish revolts against Roman rule in the second century, the Roman Empire renamed the province Syria Palaestina. The change was not neutral geography. It was an act of political punishment meant to weaken Jewish attachment to the land by replacing the name Judea with a reference to the long vanished Philistines.

Centuries later, following the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, Arab populations settled and grew throughout the region. Their presence is real and historically documented. But acknowledging this later development does not erase the earlier Jewish one. Both histories exist, yet only one is frequently denied.

And that denial has consequences.

Modern peace efforts have repeatedly failed because recognition has been one sided. Israel has formally accepted the idea of a Palestinian state on multiple occasions. In 1947 the United Nations proposed partitioning the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Jewish leaders accepted the plan despite the fact that it left the Jewish state with narrow and vulnerable borders. Arab leaders rejected it and launched a war aimed at preventing the creation of Israel entirely.

Again in 2000 and again in 2008 Israeli governments offered proposals that would have created a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in eastern Jerusalem. Those offers were rejected.

These moments reveal a painful pattern. Peace agreements succeed when both sides accept the legitimacy of the other. When one side still believes the other has no right to exist, negotiations collapse.

History offers many examples of long conflicts that eventually ended when recognition replaced denial. France and Germany fought devastating wars for centuries. Yet after the Second World War they accepted each other’s permanence and built the foundation of modern Europe together. Egypt and Israel fought several wars, yet when Egypt recognized Israel and Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula, peace was achieved and it has lasted for more than four decades.

Recognition made peace possible.

Where recognition is absent, conflict continues. The Israeli Palestinian conflict remains trapped in this reality. As long as Israel is portrayed as a temporary colonial project rather than the national homeland of an ancient people, violence can be framed as resistance rather than rejection.

Dreaming of peace without confronting this reality is naive. Peace is not created by slogans or wishful thinking. It is created when both sides accept that the other is not going away.

Israel exists because the Jewish people never lost their connection to their historic homeland. Archaeology, ancient texts, and historical records confirm that bond beyond serious dispute. Denying that history does not strengthen the Palestinian cause. It only prolongs the conflict.

Recognizing Jewish history does not deny Palestinian humanity. Palestinians are a real people with real aspirations and grievances. Their future deserves dignity and stability. But dignity cannot grow out of historical erasure.

Real peace requires two truths to stand side by side. Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel and Palestinians are a people who live there today.

You cannot build peace on a deleted past.

Peace begins when history is acknowledged rather than rewritten. Only when truth replaces denial can the foundation for a stable future finally be laid.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)