As Israel wages a devastating military campaign in Gaza—described by jurists, United Nations officials, and global human rights bodies as genocidal—one of the country’s most renowned historians argues that the state itself is nearing a profound historical rupture.
Ilan Pappé, professor of history at the University of Exeter and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, has spent decades documenting how Zionist ideology shaped Israel’s system of domination over Palestinians. In his new book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence, he presents a stark thesis: Israel is imploding from within, driven by the emergence of what he calls a “state of Judea”—a new, explicitly theocratic and ethnonationalist power structure that seeks permanent sovereignty over occupied Palestine and imperial reach into neighbouring Arab states.
According to Pappé, this transformation marks the abandonment of Israel’s decades-long strategy of “incremental ethnic cleansing.” Where previous governments masked dispossession behind legalistic manoeuvres, settlement creep, and bureaucratic strangulation, the current leadership has shifted to open mass expulsion by force. The Gaza Strip, emptied through siege, bombardment, and starvation, is the test case. The West Bank, he warns, is next.
But this ideological radicalisation is not simply directed against Palestinians. It is reshaping Israel itself.
Rise of the Neo‑Zionist State
Pappé defines the government of Benjamin Netanyahu—led in coalition with religious Zionist extremists—as “neo-Zionist.” Where classical Zionism couched settler dominance in secular liberal language, its modern variant is more openly supremacist, more religiously militant, more violent, and less constrained by international law.
This current, rooted in the settler movement that emerged after Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, has created a parallel political order: the state of Judea. Operating from settlement blocs deep inside the West Bank, its adherents fuse Orthodox Judaism, biblical literalism, and territorial maximalism. They view secular Israelis not as partners but obstacles.
Politically, this faction has captured the ministries of national security, finance, and key command posts in the army and police. Socially, its base draws heavily from Mizrahi Jews—descendants of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities—who were historically marginalized by Israel’s Ashkenazi elite. Economically excluded and culturally resentful, many communities were inducted into religious nationalism through patronage networks and education systems that glorified ethno‑religious exclusivity. The result: a powerful, grievance‑driven mass constituency producing graduates who, as Pappé notes, are “racist, theocratic, and deeply committed to Zionist conquest.”
Empire Thinking and Regional Escalation
The movement’s ambitions do not end at annexation. Institutions such as the Temple Institute prepare openly for the demolition of the Al‑Aqsa Mosque and construction of a Third Temple—an act certain to detonate a broader religious conflict. Their literature asserts divine title to lands extending into southern Lebanon, southern Syria, and Jordan.
In practice, this manifests as assassinations, airstrikes on Iranian targets, and an expanding footprint in Lebanon and Syria. Internal Hebrew‑language discourse reveals the vision most clearly: Jerusalem as the regional center of gravity, radiating power across a ring of vassals and punished enemies.
Pappé situates this project within a shifting global order. The United States, Israel’s strategic backstop, faces political fatigue and fiscal constraints. As Washington retrenches, Israel’s impunity narrows. Meanwhile, Arab regimes that have long suppressed pro‑Palestinian public sentiment remain brittle. A future wave of uprisings could produce leaderships committed to confronting Israeli expansion with conventional military power rather than containable guerrilla resistance.
Israel’s Internal Fractures
Beneath wartime unanimity lie severe stresses. Reservists serve so frequently they function as full‑time soldiers, losing jobs and businesses in the process. Families fear indefinite conscription; emigration rises among those with EU or North American passports. Equipment and doctrine designed for short, offensive wars are grinding down in urban attrition.
Socially, two nations now inhabit one: a secular, globally oriented “State of Israel,” and a religious‑colonial “State of Judea” that is steadily capturing the levers of power. Tel Aviv’s mass protests against judicial overhaul, led largely by secular Israelis, clash with settler triumphalism choreographed on social media from the West Bank. The latter is winning the institutional war—courts, police, army posts—turning ideology into policy.
Pathways to Disintegration
Pappé outlines two archetypes for what comes next: the “South Vietnam” outcome (erasure of a state) and the “South Africa” outcome (demise of a ruling ideology). Israel’s trajectory, he argues, will combine elements of both.
Stages of disintegration likely include continued genocidal warfare; attempts at mass expulsions into Egypt; growing international sanctions; loss of American funding; regional escalation; economic crisis; elite emigration; and Palestinian demographic resurgence. Ultimately, Israeli Jews will face the same stark choice as white South Africans did: share power under equal citizenship or depart.
At the endgame, two population movements shape the map: secular Israelis with second passports leaving rather than accept equality, and Palestinian refugees returning from exile. This shift would make apartheid unsustainable and force a constitutional reckoning.
Pressure Points: Egypt, Sanctions, and Global Opinion
Rafah concentrates every risk. Cairo rejects the forced transfer of two million Palestinians into Sinai, and the Egyptian army now deploys along the border. An Israeli breach could compel a confrontation that Egypt does not want but may not be able to avoid, especially under domestic pressure.
Internationally, what once sounded far‑fetched now looks plausible: trade penalties; suspension from UEFA competitions and Eurovision; academic and cultural isolation; and a broader regime of sanctions. Generational shifts intensify the squeeze. Younger American Jews increasingly oppose apartheid and support boycotts; younger Palestinians, despite political fragmentation, demonstrate organisational skill, digital reach, and a programmatic clarity capable of rebuilding a unified liberation movement.
After Zionism: One Democratic State
What replaces the current system? Pappé argues for a secular, democratic state across historic Palestine: one person, one vote; constitutional equality; and the right of return. The two‑state framework, he insists, is dead—annexation buried it.
He rejects fantasies of a frictionless transition. Decolonization is historically messy, often violent, and never linear. But the destination need not be utopian myth. The region itself offers precedent: centuries in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews shared civic space before Zionism made ethnic separation the organizing principle of politics.
Israel remains militarily formidable, but force cannot indefinitely sustain minority rule over millions. As Pappé frames it, multiple pressures—economic, diplomatic, demographic, generational—are converging. Apartheid systems collapse. They always do. The only open question is whether the interregnum is steered toward restitution and shared sovereignty or descends into a deeper cycle of vengeance and ruin.
Pappé also stresses in interviews that the ideological fervor of the state of Judea is anchored in a historical narrative that deliberately sidelines secularism. “The problem in their eyes,” he says, “is not only the presence of Palestinians in the coveted new kingdom but also the presence of secular Jews who have exhausted their historical role.” Their educational institutions, he continues, “produce graduates who are racist and theocratic in their way of looking at democracy, human rights, and civil rights.” This social engineering is not marginal; it is now woven into the machinery of the state.
On the geopolitical dimension, Pappé warns that Israeli leaders now see themselves as regional arbiters, capable of operating freely in neighboring airspace. “It is good every now and then to show every part of the Middle East,” he says, “that they have the power and the ability to do whatever they want regardless of international law.” He argues that this arrogance relies on the weakness of Arab governments, many of which—he emphasizes—display “a lack of self-respect and dignity” in their refusal to confront Israel.
Discussing U.S. involvement, Pappé rejects claims that Washington is caught off guard by Israeli escalations. The presence of the American high command in Qatar, he notes, means the United States “would have not sent one aeroplane to that airspace without at least informing that headquarter in Qatar.” He says Israeli leaders believe that if they create new facts on the ground, Washington will simply accept them. “Established facts,” he explains, “are good enough in order to make sure that Trump—even if he’s not entirely happy with an action—would go along with it after it had occurred.”
On the internal Israeli divide, Pappé describes a collision course between secular Zionists and religious extremists. “Their moment of peak came in November 2022,” he recalls, when Netanyahu “was willing to give them anything they wanted in order to remain in power,” empowering them deeply inside the police, army, and security services. This, he argues, allowed the state of Judea to begin swallowing the institutions of the state of Israel.
Turning to generational politics, Pappé says the apartheid system is not sustainable forever. “Reservists have become the regular army,” he observes, noting exhaustion and economic damage across Israeli society. Israel’s military strategy—built on short, offensive wars—cannot withstand drawn‑out urban campaigns. “All three elements were not fulfilled,” he says, referring to the conditions the army requires to win quickly, and this mismatch “reflects the lack of social cohesion between those who serve and those who do not.”
Despite his sobering analysis, Pappé sees hope in younger Palestinians. “There is a human capital there,” he argues, capable of restructuring the Palestinian liberation movement. He believes new leadership will have the clarity and unity needed to articulate a coherent platform for equal citizenship.
Ultimately, Pappé insists the political horizon lies in a single democratic state. “The basic impulse is not revenge,” he explains, “but restitution—wishing to rebuild the normal life that were theirs before the arrival of Zionism.” Even after decades of dispossession, he believes Palestinians retain an ethos of coexistence rooted in centuries of shared history. The question, he says, is whether international pressure and regional change can arrive before further cycles of violence deepen the wounds.