Here we have, once again, Leviathan maneuvering on every front, using the violence it creates as a pretext for further consolidation of its own power—always at the expense of the individual. Hostages, bombs, propaganda—all reduced, in statist hands, to bargaining chips for whether bureaucrats and warlords get to redraw maps, and decide the fate of millions who had no say in these boundaries to begin with. The spectacle isn't about peace or justice; it's about state actors, on all sides, pretending to safeguard their populations while actually squabbling over who gets the monopoly on force over a particular patch of earth.

Hayek warned us that centrally planned schemes—like these so-called "peace plans" and US-brokered negotiations—are not only hubristic but practically doomed. No committee, no distant envoy, can hope to understand, let alone properly administer, the localized knowledge, preferences, or the spontaneous order that real peace would require. Every intervention by foreign states—like the US envoy promising peace, or the EU flapping about in the wings—simply piles up new layers of unintended consequences.

Nozick’s minimal state—intended only for protection against force and fraud—has ceased to be an ideal anywhere in this conflict. Instead, we see maximal states: Israel and Hamas alike, each using their respective populations as pawns in a grand, coercive game, with individual rights trampled underfoot and collective guilt assigned by birth or residence. When governments negotiate over hostages, they hold everyone hostage, perpetuating a war machine that breeds yet more cycles of violence and retaliation.

Rand’s logic of individual sovereignty is utterly rejected in every corner here. Personhood is erased; you are either "Israeli," "Palestinian," or a negotiating chip. Rights belong only to collectives. The state is worshipped as the highest value, demanding perpetual sacrifice, whether it’s in the forms of death by bombing or by deprivation under blockade.

Let’s be clear: the "solution" peddled by diplomats and mediators is to shift the monopoly of violence from one state to another, not to remove the machinery of coercion itself. States will never “grant” sovereignty to individuals; they only ever consent to new management. Neither the recognition of a Palestinian state, nor the maintenance of Israeli occupation, advances liberty one iota until the state itself, in all guises, is dethroned. Only then can voluntary exchanges, mutual aid, and the genuine respect for property and person flourish—and only then can peace mean anything other than a temporary ceasefire between two warring gangs.