John Mearsheimer asks What Political Horizon for the Palestinians?

by | Oct 12, 2025 | News | 1 comment

Reprinted from John’s Substack:

On 9 October 2025, I was on the “Deep Dive” with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis. We talked mainly about Trump’s Gaza plan, which will hopefully shut down the genocide for good, but which promises no hope for settling the conflict. The reason is simple: Israel will not allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own. To put it in different words, Israel will not allow the Palestinians to exercise self determination. There is no political horizon for the Palestinians, as points 19 and 20 of Trump’s 20-point plan make clear. The Israelis, of course, have a political horizon for the people of Gaza: expulsion via genocide. But thankfully, it appears for the moment at least that the genocide has been halted and the Palestinians will not be expelled from their homeland.

John J. Mearsheimer, PhD, is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. More recently Mearsheimer has attracted attention for co-authoring and publishing the article The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which was subsequently published as a book.

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