To put it succinctly, by every possible measure but one (and a tiny bit more) – the Zionist victory over the Palestinians is total. Political, military and economic power is entirely in our hands. So too is the control over land, water and other natural resources. Throughout the Land of Israel, Jews are stronger and wealthier than Palestinians, by a large margin. We won.There is only one aspect in which we did not defeat them: demographics. In this regard, we did not replicate in 1967 the far-reaching achievements of 1948. As a result, while we have not returned to Zionism’s starting point over a century ago, when Jews were but a small minority here, we have arrived at a demographic tie. For now, still, half of the people who live here, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, are Palestinians. This is the only parameter by which the struggle between us and them has not ended in their defeat but rather in parity: parity not in political power, not in rights, not in land and not economically. But numerical parity – yes. In this, we are stuck.This gap – between the fact that by every possible measure we have managed to organise our existence here so that to us – everything, and to them – nothing, and the fact that numerically we and them are 50-50 – is deeply troubling to us. Our politics, and what we do with the tools at our disposal – the actions of the government and its ministries, the military, the courts, the planning authorities and through legislation – largely focus on this gap and what can be done about it.The gap could be closed by redistributing political power among all the inhabitants of this land, with all the ramifications that will follow. That is, to allow the numerical parity to realise its democratic function and thus to live in a binational reality – as we already do – but without denying it and without forcibly perpetuating the supremacy of one people over another. It is pointless to elaborate here on this possibility since it has almost no supporters and, in any case, has not been – and is not – the path of Zionism in practice for over a hundred years.The gap could also be closed through population transfer: expulsion and ethnic cleansing. This would allow demographics to catch up with the rest of the indicators. Everything will be in our hands (as now); the novelty would be our constituting the entire population. This would also free us from the stain of apartheid, which involves a measure of discomfort, despite our not paying a price for it on the international stage.For years now, liberal Zionists have liked to posit Israel as being in a dilemma, forced to choose between a “Jewish and democratic” state in part of the Land of Israel and a binational state in Greater Israel. Thus the third option – ethnic cleansing – is denied, both as a part of Zionist history in the form of the 1948 Nakba and as a still-viable option for the present and the future. As such, David Ben-Gurion’s remarks in the Knesset in April 1949 are fondly quoted: “When we were faced with the choice between the entire Land of Israel without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without the entire Land of Israel, we chose a Jewish state without the entire land of Israel.”But the truth is that in a rarely quoted part of the very same speech, Israel’s founding prime minister and defence minister in fact explained well the borders of the land while weighing in on a different topic – Deir Yassin. Ben-Gurion said: “A Jewish state without Deir Yassin throughout the country can only be in a dictatorship of the minority.” In plain words, Ben-Gurion explained that there is no effective ethnic cleansing without massacres like the one that took place in Deir Yassin in 1948. He told his critics in the Knesset that if they wanted both “the entire Land of Israel” and “a Jewish state”, more massacres were needed. We must perpetrate “Deir Yassin throughout the country” to expel the Palestinian population from more and more parts of the Land of Israel: “A Jewish state in the current reality, even just in the western part of the Land of Israel, without Deir Yassin, is impossible if it is to be democratic, for the number of Arabs in the western part of the Land of Israel is larger than the number of Jews.”Also read: In Graphs: What Israel Did in PalestineThus, the borders of the State of Israel are not purely a military or political matter, but primarily a demographic one: Israel after 1949 was as large as the area in which it could carry out “Deir Yassins” and enjoy their consequences. Indeed, after that war, within the Green Line – the armistice demarcation line that separated Israel and the West Bank – we succeeded in engineering a state in which everything was in our hands, including a demographic majority. After 1967, we gained the “entire land” – albeit by expelling around 2,50,000 Palestinians – but without a second Nakba. This is how we got stuck with “Arabs in the western part of the Land of Israel”, whose number is equal to the number of Jews.And today? Despite the distractions, deep down we all understand that not a single one of the violent regional moves that Israel has made in recent years – recurrent wars with Iran, repeated campaigns in southern Lebanon and even the creation of a buffer zone in southern Syria – will resolve the fundamental issue that Ben-Gurion spoke about 77 years ago. Nor will regional diplomatic moves – the 2020 Abraham Accords or even a future peace agreement with Saudi Arabia – change the demographic balance in the western part of the Land of Israel. Regional peace or, alternatively, regional wars, will not cause even a single Palestinian to leave their homeland.But wars can – and how! – indeed be a time that “enables” the expulsion of Palestinians, as we did in 1948 and (to a much lesser extent, as noted) in 1967. And under the cover of the war that began two and a half years ago, Israel is once again choosing the option that we know – and know to be effective – the one we have used in the past and have never taken off the table: Deir Yassin.This is the strategy behind the ongoing pogroms and the recurrent killings of Palestinians in parts of the West Bank; as Ben-Gurion said, ethnic cleansing requires nothing less than murderous violence.The same logic is behind the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in refugee camps in the West Bank, as well as the destruction of the Gaza Strip and the expulsion of the Palestinian population from half its territory. The scale, the pace and the justifications given differ according to circumstance and what has been made possible. In both the West Bank and Gaza, “what has been made possible” at this stage is not the reduction of the number of “Arabs in the western part of the Land of Israel”, but rather “only” their displacement from their homes and concentration into ever-smaller areas. Internal ethnic cleansing, if you will.Along the way, we establish our control over more and more territory while destroying entire Palestinian communities and cities. The hope is that a population that has been displaced on one – or more – occasions, along with the destruction of its homes and sources of livelihood, is a population on which it is easier to perpetrate external ethnic cleansing, when circumstances permit.This is not an Israeli dilemma between a democratic state (for Jews) in part of the land and a binational state in the ‘Greater Land of Israel’. And certainly, there is no Israeli quandary over equality for all the land’s inhabitants. The only question is how to manage the unresolved demographic issue, along the spectrum between apartheid and ethnic cleansing: the more we advance the latter, by means of murderous violence, the more we will reduce the discomfort surrounding the former.Also read: Israel’s Land Grab Violates International LawThis is the reality of life in Deir Yassin: history denied yet omnipresent; a massacre that everyone knows about but whose secrets remain buried in the state archives; a place that we erased but that is nevertheless right here, in Jerusalem – and not only in the minutes of the Knesset, from the mouth of Ben-Gurion, but physically, between the modern suburban neighborhoods of Givat Shaul and Har Nof.This is that niggling “tiny bit” mentioned in the first paragraph, that something extra added to the unresolved demographic issue: the narrative. The fact that we did not come to an “empty land”, the historical memory of this land being the homeland of also another people, and the full recognition of the violence, bloodshed and massacres that our forebears committed, that we commit, and that we impose on our children so that they may live in “Deir Yassin throughout the country.”Hagai El-Ad is a writer based in Jerusalem. He tweets @HagaiElAdOriginally published at Ha’aretz.