What if the most difficult question facing Israelis and Palestinians is not where a future border should run, but whether the two national movements can ultimately accept each other’s right to exist—and what happens when decades of diplomacy fail to resolve that deeper dispute?

For much of the past several decades, one idea shaped the thinking of Israel’s political center and left: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, fundamentally, a dispute over territory. The logic appeared straightforward. Israel would relinquish land, the Palestinians would establish an independent state, and a conflict that had defined generations could finally begin to recede.

The Oslo process was built around that premise. Negotiations focused on borders, sovereignty, settlements and security, while successive Israeli governments made increasingly far-reaching territorial proposals.

But the assumptions behind that framework have been badly shaken, particularly since the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

For many Israelis, the question has changed. It is no longer simply where a border should be drawn. It is whether the conflict is also about something more fundamental: the acceptance of a Jewish state as a permanent part of the Middle East.

That is a harder question—and one that cannot be answered by maps alone.

None of this means that Palestinians as a whole share the same objectives, or that the aspirations of an entire population can be reduced to the ideology of Hamas. Palestinian politics are diverse, and millions of Palestinians have their own ambitions, grievances and visions for the future.

But the influence of Islamist movements, particularly Hamas, has become impossible to ignore.

Hamas has long articulated a vision of the conflict that extends beyond the boundaries established after the 1967 war. In its worldview, the struggle is not simply a conventional territorial dispute that can be resolved through the exchange of land for peace. Territory, history, religion and national identity are........

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