Two weeks ago pundits and observers of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict expressed cautious optimisim about the peace process. They were encouraged by the fact that US Secretary of State John Kerry was preparing to submit to the parties the American framework for a peace agreement.

In my view, the enthusiasm and optimism expressed by many analysts represented the triumph of hope over experience and reality. History teaches us that many Israeli leaders have come to the conclusion that peace, not war, was the real threat to Israel. And this because peace would undermine the basic foundation of the Zionist enterprise of forcible conquest and colonisation. It would also pose problematic questions about Zionism and its meaning and relevance in the absence of conquest and colonies — which a peace treaty would normally eliminate.

War and violence, on the other hand, have been the driving force of the Zionist tenet of redeeming the land. It could not be otherwise since wrestling Palestine from its own inhabitants necessarily required the use of force — after all the Palestinian people — or any people for that matter, could not be expected to acquiesce to the loss of their country.

Israeli leaders perfectly understood that reality but could not admit it in public. They and Zionist leaders before the establishment of Israel, considered lies and deceptions necessary tools of propaganda. Before Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, and his theory of propaganda — (If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it), the Zionist lies were both big and unassailable. Consider one of the early lies incapsulated in a brilliantly deceptive slogan which claimed that Palestine was a land without a people for a people (the Jews) without a land.

Exodus of Palestinians

The lies and deceptions are myriad but suffice it to mention another one, as big as it is — or rather has been — resistant to challenges. That enormous lie defined the acceptable explanation for the flight of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war. The Israeli propaganda version remained the acceptable narrative of events for decades to come. It claimed that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily in response to calls by Arab leaders to evacuate in preparation for a victorious return with the Arab armies.

Even today, some 30 years after the new historians in Israel established that the exodus of the Palestinians was driven by ethnic cleansing, expulsion, and terror, the propaganda version occasionally rears its mendacious head.

Zionist leaders did not delude themselves. They readily recognised that the Palestinian people would naturally not surrender their country without a fight. Hence, the Zionist enterprise, if it were to succeed, relied on a strategy of deception and brutality encapsulated in the following candid injunction: “Might must prevail over right.”

In other words, the Palestinian people’s right to their country must be subjugated by force, which will allow us to overcome and subdue the legitimacy of right. But nowhere was the notion of war as inherent in the nature of the Zionist enterprise, and therefore more useful than peace for the accomplishment of its goals, more candidly explained than in the diary of the former prime minister of Israel Moshe Sharett. “The state of Israel must invent dangers,” wrote Sharett, “And to do this, it must let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.”

The current peace talks, after an initial bout of enthusiasm, quickly gave in to the limitations of the terms of references, the competing demands of the parties and their gross inequalities. Upon learning that Kerry was investing enormous energy and intended to present the parties with his own framework for an agreement, a torrent of criticisms and accusations were irrationally, but not surprisingly, directed against Kerry. In keeping with tradition, Kerry’s loyalty to Israel was brought into question. This was a big lie; deliberately so, since the truth is readily ascertainable.

Kerry denied the charges and reiterated his strong support for Israel. Astonished, the Secretary of State of a super power said defensively: “I have a 100 per cent voting record in support of Israel for 29 years in the United States Senate.”

We might also add that in the framework agreement he prepared, Kerry supports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s two main demands: recognition by Palestinians of the Jewish character of Israel; and special security arrangements for Israeli soldiers to remain on the Palestinian side of the new Palestinian state.

Significantly for our thesis that Israeli leaders felt threatened by peace, American officials seem to have reached a similar conclusion: “US officials say the true goal of the attacks” it was reported in the press, “is to derail the peace process.”

Adel Safty is distinguished visiting professor and special adviser to the rector at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His book, Might Over Right, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky and published in England by Garnet, 2009.