Here we witness, yet again, the state’s arrogance in its most grotesque form. Whether under Netanyahu or anyone else, government actors—given coercive, monopolistic power—impose their will over individuals and entire populations as if borders, property, and freedom are theirs to allocate. The plan to occupy Gaza, even “temporarily,” is a textbook illustration of Hayek’s road to serfdom—where the means of violence and control inevitably become tools for endless intervention and unchecked authority.
Even if justified under the shallow guise of “security,” such military occupation always embodies the state’s collectivist delusion: that controlling territory leads to order, that rights may be trampled for the state’s goals, and that bureaucrats (or worse, foreign military planners) know best how to design the future of a society. Rand would tear down this entire enterprise as naked statism—treating countless individuals, Israeli and Palestinian alike, as pawns to serve an abstract “greater good.” Where is the recognition of property rights, voluntary exchange, or consent? Absent entirely—because occupation and central planning are by definition the antithesis of individual liberty.
Nozick would remind us that every inch of this plan tramples the rights of self-ownership, self-determination, and just acquisition. It’s not only a violation of the Palestinians’ lives, liberties, and property but a disaster for Israelis, who will inevitably bear the costs, bloodshed, and moral stain of “governance by gunpoint.” Central planners never suffer their own mistakes—but individuals do.
Every forced “evacuation,” every planned military assault, every diplomatic pronouncement by foreign bureaucrats and UN meddlers only further enshrines the state’s power and tramples on what matters: peaceful cooperation, property, and individual freedom. To claim occupation is “not permanent” is to insult any thinking person’s intelligence—governments rarely relinquish imposed control once they grasp it.
What is needed is not another round of state violence or internationalist posturing, but a radical re-envisioning toward voluntary order, recognition of private property, respect for consent and self-determination—precisely the values that modern states and their militaries habitually ignore. Every intervention increases suffering; only the market, not the generals and ministers, can offer peace through exchange and respect for individual rights. This entire fiasco is living proof: as always, the state is the enemy.