For the most part, Israel fears Palestinian Arab statehood from the standpoint of expanding terrorism. Though such fears are manifestly valid, a more existential hazard would lie latent in this new Arab sovereignty. Because “Palestine” could coincide with growing military hazards from enemy states and regional terror groups, the “whole” effect on Israel would be far more corrosive than the additive sum of its “parts.
Among other things, a Palestinian Arab state would impact the continuously changing balance of power between (1) Israel and Iran; and (2) Israel and Iranian state proxies. Regarding potential nuclear surrogates for the Islamic Republic, most plausible would be North Korea or Pakistan. In a markedly worst case, Israel could find itself in direct military confrontation with more powerful adversaries. Prima facie, any such confrontation could be unprecedented and unpredictable.
For the moment, there is no law-based Palestinian Arab state (only a UN “Nonmember Observer State”), but this is apt to change. Following steady denunciations of Israeli warfare in Gaza, pressures on Jerusalem to accept some form of Palestinian Arab statehood have been expanding. This is the case despite the fact that statehood cannot be lawfully created by accumulating acts of recognition.[1]
If at some future date Palestinian Arab statehood and a new war with Iran would coincide, the expected costs to Israel could be “synergistic.” There could also be destabilizing impacts for Israel of variously reconfiguring jihadist terror groups. In addition to Hamas, Hezbollah. Houthi, Fatah and other “usual suspects,” the fall of al-Assad’s tyranny in Syria spawned Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadi organization already displaying clear commitments to law-violating insurgencies. (Ironically, at the insistence of an overly optimistic American president Donald Trump, HTS was removed from the US State Department list of worldwide terror groups, but this may soon change.)
In essence, though Iran and its principal sub-state surrogates were substantially weakened by the June 2025 12-Day War, Tehran has not abandoned its long-standing nuclear ambitions. If this goal were approached or achieved simultaneous with Palestinian Arab statehood (even a bestowal of sovereignty that failed to meet codified international law prerequisites), the “whole” war outcome would be much greater than the simple sum of its “parts.” Additionally, “Palestine” would immediately become a belligerent ally of Iran.
For Israel, at this stage, these issues should be viewed as an intellectual rather than political problem. A “Two-State Solution” would enlarge not “only” the jihadi terror threat to Israel (both conventional and unconventional), but also prospects for a catastrophic regional war. Even if such a war were fought while Iran was still pre-nuclear, Tehran could use radiation dispersal ordnance or electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP) against Israel and/or target Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor with conventional rockets.
“Everything is very simple in war,” warns classical Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is still very difficult.”
What about North Korea and future war against Israel in the Middle East? Pyongyang has a documented history of active support for Iran and Syria. On ties with Damascus, Kim Jung Un built the Al Kibar nuclear reactor for the Syrians at Deir al-Zor. This same facility that was preemptively destroyed by Israel in its “Operation Orchard” (also known in certain Israeli circles as “Operation Outside the Box”) on September 6, 2007. In the absence of “Orchard,” new post-Assad jihadists in Syria (organized primarily as HTS) would have inherited an already-existing nuclear weapons option.
What about Pakistan?[2] As a potentially-unstable Islamic state with nuclear weapons, Pakistan is continuously subject to coup d'état by assorted jihadi elements and is aligned with both Saudi Arabia and China. At some point, the Sunni Saudi kingdom could decide to “go nuclear” itself, most likely in response to Iran’s “Shiite nuclear program.”
Would such a consequential decision by Riyadh represent a net gain or net loss for Israel? It’s not too soon to ask this simple but perplexing question.
Jerusalem should also consider correlative decisions by Egypt and Turkey. To wit, facing a still-nuclearizing Iran, might Israel be better or worse off with a simultaneously nuclearizing Egypt and/or Turkey?
On such elemental nuclear issues. truth may be counter-intuitive. For Israeli nuclear deterrence to work longer-term, Iran will need to be told more rather than less about Israel's nuclear targeting doctrine and the invulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces/infrastructures. In concert with such changes, Jerusalem will need to clarify its presently too-opaque “Samson Option.” The key objective of such clarification would not be to affirm Israel’s willingness to “die with the Philistines,” but to enhance the “high destruction” end of its nuclear deterrence continuum.
During the next six months, bolstered by world public antipathies to Israel’s policies in Gaza, Palestinian terrorist leaders will launch a major effort to acquire statehood. Even if this effort was not founded on legitimate jurisprudential foundations (i.e., on principles of the 1933 Montevideo Convention) and although these antipathies to Israel are generally visceral rather than law-based, Jerusalem would still have to assess re-started nuclear dangers from Iran together with the projected hazards of “Palestine.”
Because these perils would be “force-multiplying,” Israel’s only rational course is to oppose both threats consistently and simultaneously.
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. Born in Zürich at the end of World War II, he is the author of many books and articles dealing with world politics, law, literature and philosophy and is a contributing member of the Oxford University Press Editorial Advisory Board for the annual Yearbook on International Law and Jurisprudence. His writings have been published at Horasis; Jurist; Harvard National Security Journal; World Politics (Princeton); Modern Diplomacy; American Political Science Review; American Journal of International Law; US News & World Report; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); The Brown Journal of World Affairs; Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College; Modern War Institute (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon) and others. His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2016 (2nd. ed., 2018).
Notes:
[1] See Convention on Rights and Duties of States (1933). According to Article 1: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) a government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”
[2] Pakistan is an example familiar to this author. See Pakistan Ministry of Defense, review of nuclear strategy works by Professor Louis René Beres: https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/surviving-amid-chaos-israels-nuclear-strategy.452097/