War & Peace Quote by Natan Sharansky

Sharansky’s sentence is built like a moral lever: move one weight - Palestinian freedom - and the whole stalled apparatus of “historic compromise” suddenly tilts toward peace. The phrasing “once and for all” is doing aggressive work. It implies the peace process has been trapped in a loop of half-measures, cynical bargains, and diplomatic theater, and that the missing ingredient isn’t another summit but a reorientation of priorities.

As a former Soviet dissident turned Israeli public intellectual, Sharansky’s subtext is familiar: durable peace is not primarily a cartographic problem (borders, maps, security corridors) but a political one. He’s smuggling in a theory of conflict that elevates civic institutions, rights, and accountable governance over leader-to-leader dealmaking. “Helping the Palestinians build a free society” is pointedly external-facing: it suggests that Israel, the West, and regional powers have agency - and responsibility - in shaping the conditions under which compromise becomes possible. That’s also the line’s vulnerability. It can read as benevolent, or as paternalistic, depending on whether “helping” means supporting self-determination or engineering acceptable outcomes.

The rhetorical bet is that freedom changes incentives: a society with pluralism, rule of law, and legitimate leadership can sell painful concessions to its public and restrain spoilers. Sharansky is also offering Israelis a different kind of security argument: democracy promotion as defense policy. In the post-Oslo, post-intifada landscape that frames him, this is an attempt to salvage hope without denying fear - to claim peace isn’t dead, it’s misdiagnosed.