Israel has notched impressive military victories over the last three years. Yet its enemies have not abandoned their ambitions to destroy Israel. A “cognitive defeat” has eluded the Jewish state.
How to achieve that defeat—to make the enemy realize it cannot win—is the subject of a report released on Tuesday by the Middle East Forum (MEF), “Shattering the Palestinians’ Hope of Defeating Israel,” by Meir Ben-Shabbat, a former Israeli national security adviser (2017-2021).
The Middle East Forum has been advancing the idea for nearly a decade that victory will be achieved against Israel’s enemies only once they are convinced they cannot win by armed force. Only then, it argues, will a lasting settlement become possible.
Gregg Roman, MEF’s executive director, expressed satisfaction that Ben-Shabbat, a well-respected member of Israel’s security establishment who served for 30 years in the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) and was a trusted adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has endorsed his organization’s approach.
“He’s really adopted the idea that MEF has been putting forward since 2017, and that Daniel Pipes [MEF’s founder] has been putting forward since the late ’90s—that the only way of achieving a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is to eliminate the Palestinian hope of defeating Israel,” Roman told JNS.
In the paper, Ben-Shabbat, who currently heads the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, defines “cognitive defeat” as “the creation of a deep and lasting change in the enemy’s perception, which leads it to understand that it cannot achieve its goals by force, and that the price of an attempt to achieve them in that way will be too high to be worthwhile.”
He provides ample evidence that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority has reached that point. Hamas remains the central power in the Gaza Strip, and the movement’s leaders defiantly refuse to disarm. One of eight policy lines he recommends is not allowing P.A. elections, which have in any case been postponed, as he argues they would lead to a Hamas victory.
Similarly, Ben-Shabbat argues that the P.A. leadership supports violent conflict. He points to its support for the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, payments to terrorists, the education system and activities in international forums. He argues that attitudes among the population under its control reflect these positions as well.
Ben-Shabbat sharply criticizes the Oslo Accords, the 1993 agreement between Israel and the PLO that was supposed to bring peace. Instead, he said, it bolstered Palestinian aspirations of defeating Israel. It is hope, not despair, that fuels violence, he argued.
Countries recognizing a “State of Palestine” today are adding fuel to the fire by strengthening Palestinian expectations, he said.
“As long as Palestinians believe that they can beat Israel by force, diplomatic pressure, or both, every deal that the international community brings to Israel’s table leads back to Oslo 2.0, meaning concessions. It’s not land for peace. It’s bigger than that. It’s concessions traded for commitments that no Palestinian keeps,” Roman said.
Meanwhile, Israelis have “sobered up” from the “blindness” of the Oslo Accords, Ben-Shabbat said. He cited a September 2025 Israel Democracy Institute survey that found that 72% of Israel’s Jewish public believed Palestinians had no right to a state of their own.
Israelis are concerned about another Oct. 7, this time from the P.A., according to Roman. He said it fields 70,000 troops, which he described as a violation of Oslo, which caps the number at 12,000. Last week, Israeli media aired footage of P.A. forces shooting at targets depicting civilians, among them a mother holding a small child.
“The focus of some of the messaging from political parties is: ‘Beware of the Palestinian police force, which will turn their guns on the Sharon [central] region,’” Roman said.
Palestinians are also looking for alternatives. Fatah, the ruling faction in the P.A., is deeply unpopular, according to Ben-Shabbat. He pointed to a recent case of sheikhs and clan heads from Hebron approaching Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat with a plan for a self-governed “Emirate of Hebron” that would join the Abraham Accords.
One of Ben-Shabbat’s proposals is to replace the Oslo framework with local administrations that would run civil affairs in their districts and maintain “law, order, and public safety, but without security powers.”
The central component in the cognitive defeat of the Palestinians is Jewish settlement, “which fixes a new and irreversible reality,” Ben-Shabbat said.
He praised the Netanyahu government for encouraging Jewish settlement in the territories.
“During the term of the current government, starting at the end of 2022, an unprecedented leap has been recorded in the establishment, approval, and regularization of communities, outposts, and agricultural farms in Judea and Samaria,” he said.
Ben-Shabbat stressed that Gaza must be dealt with first. Israel should ensure that the “area in which the cruel monster that carried out the Oct. 7 massacre grew up provides eternal testimony to the price that anyone who contemplates attacking Israel will pay,” he said.
Can Israel achieve a cognitive defeat?
Ben-Shabbat said it is “hard to be optimistic” when looking at the population of Gaza, which maintains a high level of support for Hamas, whose ideology is “woven into their religious identity.” Gazans also live in a region dominated by radical ideologies to which they are constantly exposed, he said.
However, Israel has achieved clear cognitive defeats in the past, he noted. These included the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War and the Abraham Accords.
Of the latter, he said, “Although they were not the direct result of Israeli military action, they are a further expression of a long-term cognitive defeat, in which states in the region prefer cooperation with Israel over boycotts and struggles, even political and economic ones.”
Defeating terrorist organizations will be harder than defeating states, he said. First, they have a higher tolerance for damage, caring less about civilian infrastructure and the population’s welfare. Second, simply remaining standing after an attack by a stronger opponent constitutes victory in their eyes. Third, the religious nature of their extremism leads them to perceive the struggle “as eternal and as a divine command.” Therefore, they do not view losses as defeat.
MEF has distributed the paper to 1,700 national security congressional staffers, House and Senate committees and the Pentagon.
