A Better Democratic Conversation About Israel Has to Include Palestine

Democrats don’t just need more nuance about Israel – they need a framework that centers both Israelis and Palestinians, and a policy that reflects that reality.

A thoughtful recent column in The Bulwark by former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro addressed an important question at a moment of rapidly shifting politics: how Democrats can have a better conversation about Israel.

Shapiro’s starting point is sound: the Party is being pressed by loud voices pulling in absolutist directions – Israel’s staunch defenders still demanding unconditional support no matter what the country does; fierce detractors unwilling to acknowledge the legitimacy of a national homeland for the Jewish people.

He is right to argue the case for a more nuanced path. But the Party’s approach won’t improve if the conversation focuses only on the U.S. relationship to Israel.

For decades, American politics on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been shaped by asking how candidate positions would play among supporters of Israel. Palestinians too often remained outside the frame.

That approach is now failing politically, morally, and strategically.

It alienates much of the Democratic base, ignores half the issue and misses the basic reality that there can be no long-term security for Israel while millions of Palestinians live without freedom, dignity, political rights, or security of their own.

Israel’s advocates may for years have considered it a win when our politics treated Palestinians as peripheral. In reality, this approach has helped entrench a status quo that is as disastrous for Israelis as it is for Palestinians.

The omission of Palestinians from mainstream Democratic politics – and literally from the stage of the Party’s national conversation – helps explain decades of policy that have failed to deliver peace, stability, or lasting security for either people.

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At the same time, parts of the pro-Palestinian movement have begun to adopt their own form of absolutism – dismissing Israeli security concerns, denying Jewish historical roots in Israel, and at times treating a candidate’s or activist’s engagement with Israel itself as disqualifying.

That trend is not just wrong on principle. It is counterproductive. A movement committed to Palestinian freedom cannot succeed by narrowing the circle of who is allowed to participate.

Democrats must reject both forms of imbalance: the longstanding tendency to center Israel while marginalizing Palestinians, and the emerging tendency to frame Palestinian advocacy in ways that delegitimize Israelis and those who support Israel’s existence.

If Democrats hope to build a healthier and more sustainable approach to Israel-Palestine, we need to center the humanity, rights, and aspirations of both peoples equally.

That means recognizing a basic truth too often absent from American politics: Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve freedom, dignity, and security.

It also means recognizing that questioning aspects of U.S. policy toward Israel is not the same as questioning the U.S.-Israel relationship itself.

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A truly “better conversation” for Democrats must look to recalibrate American policy in a way that advances both American interests and freedom and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

For decades, the United States has lavished military, diplomatic, and political support on Israel while treating investment in Palestinian governance and self-determination as expendable.

The result has been a deeply unstable status quo in which one people’s security is heavily subsidized while the other lives without sovereignty, security or a credible political future.

Eliminating a political horizon and hope for Palestinians while granting Israeli governments a blank check helped create the dynamics of perpetual conflict and never-ending occupation.

The question, then, is whether American policy can be grounded more consistently in both our values and our strategic interests by treating both Israelis and Palestinians as human beings whose futures matter – and as two peoples whose long-term security is ultimately intertwined.

Shapiro asks important questions about American interests in the Middle East and how its relationship with Israel impacts them: regional stability, normalization, and effective competition with adversaries like Iran, Russia, and China.

But few of these critical American interests in the region can be advanced while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved.

Supporting Palestinian freedom, security, and self-determination must therefore be a core American objective – not an afterthought, but a central pillar of policy.

A recalibrated American approach should maintain a strong commitment to Israel’s security and future while also establishing a credible and consistent commitment to Palestinian rights, political dignity, and accountable Palestinian institutions.

That means aligning policy with principle: enforcing existing U.S. laws, ensuring American assistance advances both our interests and our values, and making clear that permanent occupation, displacement, and endless insecurity are neither sustainable nor acceptable.

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Advocates for Israel and advocates for Palestine alike should recognize that their cause is not advanced by forcing the United States to choose between the two peoples.

This conflict will not end through force or through the disappearance of either people’s national aspirations.

There is only one viable path forward: a political resolution that recognizes the humanity, rights, and national aspirations of both peoples.

A better Democratic conversation should reject absolutism in either direction and begin from a simple principle: peace, justice, freedom, and security are indivisible.

A politics that refuses to fully see both peoples will ultimately leave both peoples less free, less secure, and further from peace.

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