For decades, Western diplomats, journalists and experts have comforted themselves with a tidy story about the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict, saying it is a complex, but ultimately solvable quarrel over territory and security. In this narrative, if only both sides would “sit down at the table,” peace could follow.
This reflects the DNA of modern Western diplomacy; the assumption that conflicts are transactional, negotiable and resolvable through dialogue and compromise. The post-World War II relationships between countries that were once enemies, like France and Germany, the United States and Japan, reinforce this belief. If these bitter enemies elsewhere have reconciled, why not Jews and Arabs?
But the framework collapses when applied to actors like Hamas or the PLO. For these entities, the conflict is not about borders; it is about the existence of the State of Israel. Understanding their worldview requires confronting a historical parable they embrace with near-religious fervor: Israel as the “new Crusader state.”
In much of the Arab and Islamist imagination, the Crusader period is not a distant medieval chapter, but a living blueprint. In 1099, European knights invaded the Levant, seized Jerusalem and established a chain of fortified states. Some lasted decades, others nearly a century, but all were eventually expelled.
In modern Islamist discourse, this history becomes a model: Israel, like the Crusader kingdoms, is a foreign implant sustained by the backing of Western countries. Zionism is portrayed as a colonial project wrapped in a religious guise, culturally alien and economically exploitative, fated to collapse when the power balance shifts. Whether this happens in one year or two centuries is immaterial; victory is inevitable if patience and unrelenting pressure are maintained.
This analogy has enormous strategic value. It promises inevitable triumph, sustains morale through battlefield defeats and hardship, and frames the conflict as a zero-sum effort: If Israel is temporary by nature, then negotiating a permanent peace is pointless.
The Crusades were a minor theme in traditional Arab historiography, but, in the 20th century, nationalism, anti-colonialism and anti-Western sentiment transformed them into a dominant metaphor. Syrian writer Vadia Talhok’s 1948 work The New Crusader-Phenomenon in Palestine likened “Christian colonialism” to “Zionist colonialism” and called for Palestine’s cleansing of the Star of David as it had been cleansed of the Crusaders. Figures such as Saladin or Baybars were retroactively framed as Arab-Islamic heroes, symbols of liberation and religious zeal.
The irony is stark. When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, Jews and Muslims alike were slaughtered. Shared suffering between Jews and Arabs has been erased in modern Islamist rhetoric and replaced by a morality play casting Israel as the latest doomed intruder.
Hamas openly embraces this narrative; its 1988 Covenant frames Zionism as part of a centuries-long sequence of invasions. Article 34 draws parallels between medieval wars and the modern conflict; Article 35 instructs patience and persistence in dismantling the Jewish state. Senior leaders echo the message; Mahmoud al-Zahar told Israelis, “You will leave, just like the Crusaders,” and Ismail Haniyeh called Israel “temporary.” In this worldview, recognition of Israel is apostasy.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas turned this creed into action. More than 1,200 people were murdered in a single day, and 251 taken captive to Gaza, languishing underground in tunnels, a deliberate enactment of a worldview glorifying violence as a Divine duty. Israel’s military response devastated Gaza, causing inevitable civilian casualties, largely because Hamas embeds its fighters and weapons within civilian areas. Yet in Hamas’s logic, civilian suffering is a tool, not a tragedy; rubble and funerals are symbols of resistance, mobilizing domestic support and delegitimizing Israel abroad.
Since seizing control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has invested in rockets and tunnels rather than schools, hospitals or water systems. Its aim is perpetual war, modeled on the imagined arc of Crusader defeat. The analogy sustains the belief that Israel’s fall is inevitable, glorifies patience and endless struggle, and reframes human suffering as strategic.
Western diplomacy, however, values speed and short-term solutions. Ceasefires, aid or concessions are misinterpreted as progress, while Islamist actors operate on a timescale of centuries, mirroring the protracted defeat of the Crusaders.
Even secular leaders have invoked the Crusader frame. After rejecting the 2000 Camp David peace offer, PLO chief Yasser Arafat referenced Saladin, reminding followers that Israel is a passing foreign power.
The historical analogy collapses under scrutiny. Crusader states were fragile, dependent on reinforcements from Europe and alien to the local population. Israel, by contrast, is sovereign, economically advanced, militarily strong and deeply rooted in the land. Jews are not foreign interlopers; nearly half of Israel’s Jewish population descends from families long-established in the Middle East and North Africa.
Yet a persistent double standard distorts how people see the Middle East. Sometimes it seems that the region’s history begins in the seventh century with the violent Muslim conquests that brought Arab and Islamic rule. These conquests are called “liberations,” while the Jewish return to their homeland and the creation of Israel are labeled “colonial.” This selective view ignores thousands of years of Jewish history and makes the return to Zion look like an intrusion.
Ignoring the Crusader analogy leads to misreading signals: concessions are weakness, aid sustains conflict, and periods of calm are merely pauses for regrouping. Western policymakers misread movements driven by jihadist ideology, projecting material reasoning onto actors committed to Israel’s destruction.
The West must abandon the habit of “mirror-imaging,” assuming the other side thinks like us. Recognizing Hamas for what it truly is, not what we hope it to be, is essential for any realistic path toward security or peace. Without that clarity, strategies are built on wishful thinking, not reality. Hamas is not interested in a negotiated compromise; it is committed to Israel’s destruction. Its worldview is coherent, if morally abhorrent, and its time horizon is measured in generations.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer each announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state in September at the U.N. General Assembly. Without first confronting the ideological and governance realities on the ground, such a move risks legitimizing a regime (the popularity of Hamas in the West Bank is enormous) that does not seek peace, but Israel’s eradication. It sends the messages that Western capitals are willing to bypass the hard questions in favor of symbolic gestures and that diplomacy can be weaponized to embolden terrorist groups rather than containing them.
Breaking the cycle requires dismantling the Crusader myth and promoting a narrative that recognizes Jews as indigenous with shared history alongside Arabs. Peace will require rejecting the cult of death, abandoning the seduction of eternal war, and choosing dignity, coexistence, and life over martyrdom. Without this moral and cultural shift, diplomacy remains a polite pause between wars, unable to address the conflict’s ideological core.
