Sometimes You Have to Downsize Your Dreams to Find Peace

(July 19, 2024 / Newsweek)

From the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to Russia’s war with Ukraine, the pursuit of lost territory has caused enormous bloodshed. But the countries that pay the most for such revanchism and irredentism are small nations.

And no one has suffered more in this regard than the Palestinian people.

The Palestinians have sacrificed their security, wellbeing, land, and independence by chasing the fantasy of destroying Israel. They had countless opportunities to create their own state and use generous loans from the international community to build a prosperous future. Instead, they pursued maximalist claims, using terror as a means to achieve them and destroying their chances of self-determination. Not unlike a gambling addict, they have thrown everything into the pot, including their children, who are taught that there is no greater hero than the “shahid,” or martyr, who dies trying to kill Jews.

Since 1948, generations of Palestinians have insisted on returning to the land they lost during the Israeli war of independence. Many still cling to their house keys and pine for a return to what is now Israel.

As painful as it may seem for many Palestinians, they should look to the example of a smaller nation in the process of giving up its extraterritorial ambitions—Armenia.

For more than 35 years, Armenia has fought a brutal ethnic conflict with Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh—an Armenian-separatist region on internationally recognized Azerbaijani soil. During the first war, from 1988 to 1994, both sides saw some 30,000 killed. According to refugee organization estimates, some 900,000 Azerbaijanis were displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia and some 300,000 Armenians were displaced from Azerbaijan. To keep control over the region against their militarily superior neighbor, Armenia relied on Russia, which cynically used the conflict to maintain its influence over both Yerevan and Baku. In turn, Armenia remained an underdeveloped, authoritarian kleptocracy unable to pursue its own foreign policy.

But that changed after anti-government protests during the so-called 2018 Velvet Revolution led to the democratic election of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. After losing the 44-day Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, Pashinyan finally understood that Armenia needed to give up its claim to the region to move forward. He realized that holding on to Karabakh, where the separatists held control with Russian support, would interfere with his attempts to reorient Armenia towards the West, develop the economy and stamp out corruption.

Pashinyan then risked the wrath of his people when he agreed to cede most of the Armenian-occupied territories to Azerbaijan in a ceasefire accord following the 2020 war. Many Armenians were livid and took to the streets to protest Pashinyan’s capitulation after some 4,000 Armenian and separatist soldiers died fighting for that territory. In March 2023, Pashinyan joined the international community in recognizing Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over the whole Nagorno-Karabakh region. Six months later, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to retake the territory from the separatists, causing around 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia proper.

During such fierce ethnic conflicts, pursuing peace can be dangerous.