Put Israel To Sleep: When Peace Is Really Preparation For War

What if a peace agreement is not actually intended to produce peace?

That disturbing question is again confronting Israel after reports that one Arab country allegedly advised another to show flexibility toward Israel, reach an agreement, lower Israel's defenses--and use the resulting calm to strengthen itself for a future confrontation.

Some reports have suggested the countries involved were Saudi Arabia and Syria, although that has not officially confirmed.

But the alleged strategy itself should sound painfully familiar to Israelis.

Because one of the most dangerous lessons of October 7 was that quiet does not necessarily mean peace.

Sometimes quiet is when your enemy is preparing.

Israeli Arab affairs journalist Tzvi Yehezkeli has reportedly compared this mentality to one of the most famous episodes in early Islamic history: the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah.

In 628, Muhammad entered into a ten-year truce with the Quraysh tribe of Mecca.

This period of peace proved enormously advantageous to Muhammad's movement. His political and military position grew substantially stronger. Two years later, after an allied tribe of the Quraysh attacked an allied tribe of Muhammad--an event regarded as violating the agreement--Muhammad used that pretext to march on Mecca with a dramatically larger force and conquered the city.

Hudaybiyyah illustrates something strategically important:

A truce can transform the balance of power.

An adversary who cannot achieve his objectives today may accept peace today while never abandoning those objectives tomorrow.

And Israel has encountered that thinking before.

Perhaps the most chilling example came from Yasser Arafat himself.

Just months after the Oslo Accords transformed the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, Arafat addressed Muslims in Johannesburg, South Africa, on May 10, 1994.

He explicitly compared the agreement he had reached with Israel to Muhammad's Hudaybiyyah agreement with the Quraysh. Contemporary documentation of the speech confirms the comparison.

Think about the implications.

Israelis were being encouraged to believe they had entered a new historical era.

Peace conferences were held. Handshakes were celebrated. Palestinian institutions were established. Israeli territory and security responsibilities were transferred in the expectation that political accommodation would gradually replace conflict.

Yet Arafat was simultaneously speaking to a Muslim audience using the historical analogy of a temporary truce made during an unfinished struggle.

Israel heard peace.

Arafat's audience heard Hudaybiyyah.

That should have produced far more uncomfortable questions than it did.

Then came Gaza.

For years Israel fought Hamas, reached ceasefires, restored calm and repeated the cycle.

Each round produced the same hope: perhaps Hamas had finally been deterred.

But Hamas was digging.

Building tunnels.

Producing rockets.

Training terrorists.

Collecting intelligence.

Planning.

Israel increasingly interpreted extended periods without major conflict as evidence that Hamas preferred economic stability to another devastating war.

Hamas apparently interpreted those same periods as opportunities.

Then came October 7.

The lesson was catastrophic: an enemy temporarily choosing not to attack is not necessarily an enemy who no longer wants to attack.

Sometimes deterrence works.

Sometimes the enemy is simply waiting.

That lesson matters enormously as Israel considers potential arrangements with Syria.

Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has publicly acknowledged negotiations with Israel over a security agreement intended to reduce tensions along their border.

Israel certainly has an interest in preventing another hostile front from emerging.

But any agreement must answer a far more important question than whether the other side is willing to sign a piece of paper:

Has its strategic objective changed?

There is an enormous difference between genuine peace and tactical accommodation.

Egypt's peace treaty with Israel has survived for decades. Jordan's has as well. The Abraham Accords produced meaningful diplomatic and economic relationships.

Israel therefore should not assume that every agreement with an Arab or Muslim government is fraudulent.

But neither can it afford the opposite mistake--assuming that every signature represents reconciliation.

The Bible repeatedly warns against declarations of peace that conceal a much more dangerous reality.

Jeremiah warned of those who declared "Peace, peace," when there was no peace.

Paul similarly warned that the language of "peace and safety" can precede sudden destruction.

Scripture recognizes something human beings continually forget:

Wanting peace badly enough can make people believe peace exists when it doesn't.

Israel should pursue genuine peace wherever possible.

But October 7 permanently changed what Israel can afford to assume.

A ceasefire is not peace.

Silence is not surrender.

Negotiation is not necessarily reconciliation.

And a signed agreement is only as valuable as the intentions and capabilities of the people signing it.

If reports are true that one regional government advised another to "put Israel to sleep" through an agreement while preparing for a future confrontation, Israel should remember a lesson written repeatedly across its history:

Make peace when peace is possible.

But never sleep because someone promised you peace.