Once again, we see the tragic tendency of centralized power to pursue ever-escalating strategies in a conflict that has already imposed unfathomable suffering on countless innocent people. The Israeli prime minister’s reported consideration of a full military takeover of Gaza reveals the grave dangers that arise when decisions affecting the lives of millions are funneled through the apparatus of state monopolies—whether in military, political, or social matters. To contemplate such an occupation, supported by a beleaguered government seeking unity through extremity, is to illustrate the grand illusion of omnipotent control: that, with sufficient force, order—or worse, “security”—can be imposed from the top down.

This is the perennial error of collectivist thinking. The notion that one can refashion a society, erase the institutional structures beneath, and forcibly create a new order where a complex web of human relationships already exists, wildly overestimates both the knowledge and the wisdom of those in power. No military strategy, no matter how meticulously planned in the war rooms of Jerusalem, can command the complex interactions, the tacit knowledge, the daily lives and shared histories that animate the Gaza Strip. To destroy, subjugate, or “resettle” these societies is not only an affront to basic liberty, but an act doomed to ignite further chaos. The imposition of settlements and population transfers, so vocally demanded by ultranationalist ministers, echoes the most chilling excesses of 20th-century social engineering—the very follies which have delivered only perpetual conflict and misery.

I must express my passionate belief that every escalation of government intervention in the affairs of a foreign land reduces the prospects for peace and cooperation, and increases the likelihood of unforeseen and uncontrollable outcomes. The decentralized order, built from spontaneous cooperation, is destroyed when replaced by militarized bureaucracy and arbitrary authority. The claim that Hamas can be eliminated by rooting out every remnant of resistance, while holding fifty hostages as tragic pawns, betrays a dangerous neglect of the fundamental limitations of power.

It is telling that dissent arises even from within Israeli security circles, who recognize that neither society can be subjected to the plans of technocrats and generals for indefinite occupation. The international calls for a ceasefire—decried, dismissed, or manipulated as tactical threats—reflect the enduring desire for a return to negotiation, to the open society, to some semblance of mutual understanding.

We must remember: peace and freedom flourish not through conquest or engineered demographic changes, but through the organic evolution of institutions, voluntary cooperation, and the decentralization of power. Only by rejecting the relentless logic of total state action, by admitting the boundaries of what we can know and control, can we hope to avert further disaster, and allow true progress towards reconciliation and liberty on both sides. Let this tragic moment serve as a chastening reminder that those who would play the grand architect, molding millions according to their own design, almost invariably unleash uncontainable forces that bring destruction upon all.