A decade or so ago I saw a cartoon made in the context of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It showed an Indian chief and a white man sitting around a campfire, talking about a possible peace treaty. Fully aware that white man’s peace means anything but peace, the chief askes facetiously: “Tell me more about land for peace.”

Though land for peace has been proven time and again to bring anything but peace, the international community along with the Israeli Left and moderate Right still insist that it is the best idea to achieve a lasting peace. For decades the dominant Israeli position has stated unambiguously that peace must begin with a Palestinian state or never start at all.

The official 2017 academic position of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), to give but one example, says that, “the vision of Israel to normalize its relationships with Arab countries without an agreement with the Palestinians only exists in one’s imagination … the road to normalization with Arab countries is...