More than two months after Hamas’s barbaric attack on October 7, its primary objective remains unchanged: to embroil Israel in a protracted ground invasion, part of a long-term strategy, masterminded by Iran and shared with Hezbollah, to bring about Israel’s destruction through ongoing attrition. In other words, repeated limited wars designed to sap Israel’s economic and military strength, undermine its international standing, erode its societal resilience, and ultimately lead to its collapse. For Hamas and Iran, the devastation of Gaza and the suffering of its people are collateral damage.
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam obliterates it,” Hamas’s charter proclaims. Apologists dismiss this; it is just talk; they do not really mean it. Actually, they do. Ask the 1,300 Israelis slaughtered, raped, and mutilated on October 7. In practice, Hamas’s objectives are not very different from the Nazis’. Ask those who did not take Mein Kampf seriously.
In the US, far too many have come to view a just war of self-defense as an act of aggression. War is ugly, not some sterile computer game. With little experience of military conflict, they excoriate Israel for its conduct of the war, but viable alternatives that do not include a significant increase in Israeli casualties are not offered.
With little knowledge of the conflict’s history, including dramatic Israeli and American peace proposals that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected, the catchy slogan “From the river to the sea” is chanted in blissful ignorance – or willful disregard – of the fact that it is not a call for peace, but for Israel’s destruction. With blithe indifference to the irony, LGBT and women’s groups identify with Hamas, for whom homosexuality is punishable by death and women are little more than chattel.
For all of its “success” on the first day of the war, Hamas has made four strategic errors: it erred in believing that Hezbollah and Iran would immediately join the fray, forcing Israel to fight a difficult two-front war; failed to anticipate the extraordinarily strong American response, including the deployment of two carrier groups, designed to deter them from doing so; failed to appreciate the Israeli public’s determination to finally end the threat it poses, despite the cost in Israeli lives and international opinion; and is now in danger of losing control of Gaza and jump-starting the very peace process and regional normalization it so vociferously opposes.
Victory, transition, peace
IT IS relatively easy to sketch the contours of a postwar American effort to achieve a two-state solution; far more difficult to envision it succeeding. For it to have any hopes of success, beyond another transient cessation of hostilities, the following will be necessary.
First, Hamas’s defeat, in the sense that it no longer constitutes a coherent fighting force and the governing body in Gaza, is essential. Unfortunately, this requires a continuation of the fighting, especially in southern Gaza. Only if Palestinians conclude that Hamas has led them to utter defeat, will more moderate forces emerge.
Second, a months long transition phase will be required, in which Israel remains deployed in Gaza, as necessary, for security purposes and bears indirect responsibility for civilian life. The US had hoped to transition directly to a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, backed by an international and Arab military coalition. It was forced, however, to recognize that it was not the obstinacy of the Netanyahu government, but the unrealistic nature of its initial expectations, that require a phased transition. The feckless PA is incapable of taking the reins in Gaza without first undergoing significant change, and the list of countries able and willing to contribute to an effective international force, to supplant the Israel Defense Forces, is exceedingly short.
Third, following the transition phase, Palestinian elections must be held to instate a new PA in both Gaza and the West Bank. One of Hamas’s primary reasons for starting the war may have been to best position itself for the looming battle to succeed PA President Mahmoud Abbas, now 88 and in the 20th year of his four-year term. Already a likely winner of any elections before the war, Hamas has now gained far greater popularity, especially in the West Bank. Elections must be limited to candidates who explicitly espouse democracy and peace with Israel; that is to say, Hamas and other extremist organizations would be precluded.
Fourth, the Saudis and other Arab states must take on an actively constructive role, including participation in an international force, which would enable Israel to withdraw from Gaza after the transition; provide the revitalized PA with political legitimacy; ensure that it is not overthrown by remnants of Hamas; and prevent Gaza from once again becoming a base for terrorism. This role would also include normalization with Israel, pressure on the Palestinians to make concessions in future talks, and providing massive aid to Gaza and the West Bank.
Future aid can't be unconditional
Beyond immediate humanitarian needs, however, future aid should be contingent on performance benchmarks. The Palestinians have already received massive aid over the years, only to see Hamas squander it through repeated rounds of warfare, and the PA through widespread corruption and malfeasance. To merely pour in further aid would be foolhardy.
Counterintuitively, perhaps, Hamas’s demise as a military force and the ruling body in Gaza (Israel’s military objectives) is essential if the Saudis are to fulfill this role. Their putative willingness to normalize ties with Israel stemmed from a perception of Israel as a powerful and reliable partner against Iran and its proxies. After years of political turmoil in Israel, capped by the utter lunacy of the “judicial overhaul” during the past year, and now Hamas’s attack, a decisive military victory is necessary to restore Israel’s deterrent image. It would also serve to deter Hezbollah, a far greater threat than Hamas, as well as Iran, and forestall the danger of a wider conflagration.
Fifth, thirty years after the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians must be made to fulfill their commitments. Oslo was predicated on three primary criteria, which the Palestinians have failed to meet spectacularly: effective governance, an end to terrorism, and a demonstrable willingness to live in peace alongside Israel. Instead, they established a genocidal theocracy in Gaza and a corrupt dictatorship in the West Bank, glorify a never-ending orgy of terrorism, inculcate hatred for Israel in schools, and deny Israel’s legitimacy and the need for compromise. Israel, too, must fulfill its commitments. Israel’s ongoing settlement of the West Bank and annexationial tendencies have undermined Palestinian faith in the sincerity of its commitment to Oslo.
To achieve a two-state solution, the Palestinians would have to finally accept a peace proposal along the lines of the three proposed by Israel and the US in the early 2000s: a Palestinian state in Gaza and nearly 100% of the West Bank, a division of Jerusalem and the holy places, and an unlimited return of refugees to the Palestinian state, but not Israel, in exchange for a final end to the conflict and stringent security arrangements. In other words, just short of all Palestinian demands. In practice, a new Palestinian government is unlikely to be willing, or able, to accept what its predecessors rejected, and far less will now be offered.
Israel must elect a govt willing to compromise
In Israel, a two-state solution would require that a new centrist government emerge and agree to terms similar to its predecessors’. Palestinian rejection of these proposals, however, along with the Second Intifada – an earlier paroxysm of Palestinian terrorism, in which 1,100 Israelis were murdered during the early 2000s – had already decimated Israel’s peace camp. It will take a long time, if ever, before a deeply traumatized Israeli public is again willing to consider concessions of similar magnitude. Moreover, Israel’s already limited belief in the efficacy of the security arrangements that have always been its prerequisite for peace will now be almost nonexistent.
Prior to the war, there was already much reason to believe that the Palestinians had missed, or were close to missing, their historic opportunity to ever achieve full independence. These considerations have now been deeply reinforced. Regardless of the war’s outcome, however, the fundamental situation will not change: Israelis and Palestinians will still have to coexist in the same tiny area. The challenges to Israel’s long-term character as a democratic and Jewish state will remain unchanged, as will the Palestinian dream of statehood.
IF A two-state solution remains imperative, the most that can realistically be aspired to for the foreseeable future, and possibly beyond, is probably just civil separation. Under this proposal, a new and more centrist Israeli government would determine which parts of the West Bank it intends to relinquish in a final peace agreement, probably over 90%; cease settlement there and gradually relocate settlers back into Israel; the IDF would remain fully deployed throughout the West Bank for security purposes, but would withdraw from Gaza, if an effective international force can be put in place, or largely do so, if not.
This proposal would preserve the conditions for a future two-state solution, should the necessary conditions ultimately emerge, and ensure Israel’s security and fundamental character as a Jewish and democratic state, in the interim. For the Palestinians, the incentives would be formal delineation of the territory of a future state, dismantlement of most of the settlements, and domestic autonomy under a revitalized PA in most of the West Bank and all of Gaza.
This proposal would also create the conditions for other possible long-term solutions, e.g., a quasi-independent Palestinian state within a confederation with Jordan, whose population is over 70% Palestinian, and possibly Egypt. The Palestinians will have to accept that this is the most they stand to gain, at least for a long time. A critical question is whether Jordan and Egypt can be incentivized to overcome their opposition to this idea. It is high time, however, that both, which share responsibility for creating the Palestinian problem, take part in its resolution, and that the burden for doing so not be placed on Israel alone.
Should the Palestinians continue their nearly century-long insistence on 100% of their demands or nothing, they will remain with nothing, and Hamas’s barbaric attack may be the final nail in the coffin of their national aspirations. The consequences for Israel will be of similarly historic magnitude.
The writer, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, is a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and the MirYam Institute. He is the author of Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy and Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change, as well as Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Cyber Power.