Optimizing for Security: Why The Holy Land Must Have A Cost Model

Why The Holy Land Lease Scheme Can Bridge the Land Dispute of the Land of Canaan

Israel’s security dilemma has always been a problem of optimization poorly framed. At its heart is a genuine concern: how to protect a small nation in a hostile region. But the response—continuous, maximal territorial expansion and occupation—has created diminishing and negative returns, not just militarily but politically, diplomatically, and morally.

The occupation is expensive. It drains Israeli society of its democratic integrity, emboldens ultranationalist factions, and destabilizes its political center. And the longer it persists, the more it metastasizes into something else: a system of apartheid that poisons Israel’s global standing and fuels cycles of violence that ricochet across the region. The cost isn’t just borne by Palestinians. It’s paid by the world—through instability, terrorism, forced migration, and geopolitical volatility.

The land lease scheme attempts to reduce the problem of Israeli security by explicitly introducing a cost model to Israel’s territorial expansion.

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This logic is powered by a clean optimization function. Let L_Israel be the land controlled by Israel, and L_allocated the agreed-upon land allocated to Israel—somewhere between 56% and 77% of Mandatory Palestine. Beyond this baseline, Israel incurs a leasing cost for each additional dunam. But rather than a flat fee, the cost escalates with each marginal dunam. The per-dunam rate is defined as:

\(R(L) = R_0 + \alpha (L - L_{\text{allocated}}) \)

This is the marginal lease rate—what Israel pays for each additional dunam beyond what’s it’s allocated. It starts modestly but accelerates based on the exponent β. The total cost of holding land beyond the baseline is calculated by integrating that marginal rate:

\( C(L) = \begin{cases} 0, & \text{if } L \leq L_{\text{baseline}} \\ R_0 (L - L_{\text{baseline}}) + \frac{\alpha}{2} (L - L_{\text{baseline}})^2, & \text{if } L > L_{\text{baseline}} \end{cases} \)

This cost function is strictly convex. That means the farther Israel expands beyond its baseline, the more punishing the cost becomes—not linearly, but exponentially. That’s intentional. It reflects reality: small territorial adjustments may be tolerable. But overreach destabilizes the entire region and undermines Jewish security globally. This model prices that risk.

Meanwhile, the benefit of holding land—what we call the “security dividend”—follows a concave curve. Early gains in land control can enhance security. But beyond a certain point, the returns diminish. And past the optimal point, they turn negative. More land leads to more violence, more isolation, more internal fragmentation.

The result is an elegant optimization problem: maximize net benefit, defined as:

\(U(L)=B(L)−C(L)\)

This gives the geopolitical problem of Israeli land occupation mathematical structure as a convex optimization problem.

The convexity of the cost function C(L) ensures that the optimization problem has a unique solution. This structural property guarantees a unique maximum for the net benefit function U(L). In practical terms, this means there is only one rational point of equilibrium for Israeli land control under the lease scheme—one that is both economically and strategically optimal.

Israel has a choice: either enter into a negotiated framework and help define the parameters of the land lease scheme—baseline land allocation, lease rates, and escalation curve—or leave those parameters to be set unilaterally by its trading partners. In either case, the cost of territorial overreach will be priced in. Refusing to participate doesn’t prevent enforcement; it simply forfeits influence over the terms. The international community won’t need to sanction Israel—it will just start collecting rent.

Israel can still trade. But the more it expands, the more it pays into a stabilization fund—redirected toward Palestinian reconstruction and regional peacebuilding.

It gives the international community a lever—not through boycott or abandonment, but through market pressure. Security through clarity. Stability through cost discipline. Peace through managed disengagement.

This framework was directly inspired by Jewish contributions to mathematics—particularly optimization theory and economic modeling.