Tweet Share Share Comment President Joe Biden had hoped to strike a diplomatic deal in the Middle East by this past Monday—an Israel-Hamas cease-fire that would let hostages be freed and let aid flow into Gaza. It didn’t happen, though not for lack of trying. American, Egyptian, Qatari, and Saudi diplomats have spent months devising formulas for some sort of peace. The problem is that the two combatants—Israel and Hamas—are unwilling to sign on.
Their resistance stems not from stubbornness but from vital interests, as they see them. Israel doesn’t want the war to end without first crushing Hamas or at least expelling its leaders from Gaza. Hamas wants to stay in power and doesn’t want to free all the hostages unless or until Israel first stops the war and withdraws its troops from Gaza.
Clearly, these are irreconcilable positions.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been especially adamant in expressing his country’s position, but he is far from alone in holding it. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet and—more tellingly—the prime minister’s chief political opponent, shares this view completely. This includes Israel’s planned attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Gantz told Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, at their meeting in the White House this week that “ending the war without clearing out Rafah is like sending a firefighter to extinguish 80 percent of the fire.”
How to end the impasse?
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In all of the many Arab-Israeli wars, cease-fires and settlements have been mediated, imposed, or enforced by outside powers—usually by Washington, Moscow (back when it had leverage over Egypt and Syria), or the United Nations (back when it had more clout and more peacekeeping troops). Outsiders may have to step in again this time—more vigorously than they have done thus far.
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Gantz was given an earful in his conversations with Sullivan, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and some generally pro-Israel legislators. Netanyahu—who has long had a turbulent relationship with Biden—was upset that Gantz made the trip to Washington against his wishes, but he may come to find it useful. Gantz can go home and tell his fellow cabinet members that relations with the United States—Israel’s leading ally—are in truly serious danger and could turn calamitous unless they do more to allow more humanitarian aid and reduce civilian casualties, both of which require a pause in the fighting.
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Still, some press reports have exaggerated the degree of the administration’s criticism. Many stories made a big deal of Vice President Harris’ call, in a public speech on Sunday, for an “immediate cease-fire.” The New York Times reported that she “took a tougher tone” than Biden had on the issue. But a reading of her full remarks reveals this simply isn’t true. Harris called for an “immediate cease-fire for at least the next six weeks” (italics added), then noted that this was already a proposal “on the table”—made by Israel—and that “Hamas must agree to that deal.” This is not at all a departure from Biden’s view—it’s not even a departure from Israel’s stated position. Nor is it some new position motivated by the results of the Michigan primary, where many Arab-Americans voted “uncommitted” rather than for Biden because of his support of Israel. Biden has been stressing the need for a cease-fire for some time. (In fact, it was Biden’s pressure that led to a weeklong cease-fire, which allowed for the release of 100 hostages, back in November.)
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Biden could go further in pressuring Israel to make more concessions. Netanyahu is not helping his own case by saying, as the Times of Israel reported Wednesday, that Israeli troops may need to stay in Gaza for 10 years in order to prevent repetitions of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. The foreign diplomats trying to resolve the conflict haven’t reached a consensus on how to rebuild and govern Gaza, or how to secure its border with Israel, after the war is over. But there is no appetite, among any of the negotiators, for a renewed Israeli occupation.
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At least Biden has been struggling with the complexities of supporting Israel’s right to self-defense while also pressuring its leaders to step back from their “over the top” response, as he has described the excess bombing and insufficient attention to Palestinian suffering.
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We have as yet seen little pressure, of any sort, on Hamas from the Arab countries. The Sunni leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia have signaled for years that they don’t really care about the plight of Palestinians and particularly detest radical groups like Hamas. Along with the leaders of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, they had thought they could ignore the Palestinian issue and push ahead on “normalizing” relations with Israel—for the trade, the technology, and the common alliance against Iran. But they have since learned otherwise. Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, at least in part, in order to put the Palestinian issue “back on the table,” as one of the terrorist group’s leaders boasted soon after. The cries of support and eruptions of anger against Israel’s retaliation from “the Arab street” (the term for easily agitated public opinion in these countries) alarmed the Sunni leaders—and made them reluctant to disagree.
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Qatar is a more complicated case. The emirs who rule this tiny Gulf state have long played all sides of the game—striking deals with Western oil companies, hosting the headquarters for the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, and serving as the chief ally of Hamas, supplying its fighters in Gaza with military and economic aid and providing the movement’s political leaders with lavish housing in Qatar and elsewhere.
The deal now on the table—which Israel has accepted but Hamas has not, as Vice President Harris noted in the little-reported passage of her misinterpreted remarks—calls for a six-week cease-fire to allow for another exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, as well as the flow of much more humanitarian aid to Gazan civilians.
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Biden hopes that the cease-fire could be extended beyond six weeks so that still more hostages and prisoners could be released, still more aid could be brought in, and—most significantly—that further progress can be made in talks so that the cease-fire can evolve into a diplomatic settlement of the broader Israel-Palestinian disputes. He harbored similar hopes for last November’s much briefer cease-fire, to no avail.
At the moment, prospects seem dim. According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the talks are on the “verge of collapse.” Hamas is demanding a total cease-fire, an Israeli retreat from Gaza, and a return of displaced Gazans to their homes in the northern part of the strip as a precondition to releasing more hostages. Israel finds this demand unacceptable—properly so, as Hamas fighters could return north along with civilian residents and Israel couldn’t counter, or even ensure the hostages were returned, if its troops were withdrawn first.
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Related From Slate
Foreign Policy
What Will Gaza Look Like One Year From Now?
Read More At some point, if this war is to be settled, four things will have to happen. First, Qatar will have to crack down on Hamas, or perhaps provide its military leaders refuge in exchange for their departure from Gaza.
Second, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Sunni powers in the region will have to help rebuild Gaza and foster new, more moderate political leaders. (The Saudis have offered to reform the Palestinian Authority, which has headquarters in the West Bank—a beginning, but only that.)
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Third, Israel will at least have to say that it favors the creation of a Palestinian state and to take at least a small movement in that direction. This is a prerequisite to the Saudis doing anything. It’s not a big obstacle—the Saudis once demanded that Israel take “irreversible” steps toward a two-state solution, but backed away from that. Even so, Netanyahu has refused to go even this far. In fact, he boasts to his coalition partners—who are all further to the right than even he is—that he has rejected such talk.
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Finally, the United States will have to serve as some sort of guarantor to all of this—and not only for Israel. Back before Oct. 7, when the Saudis were gearing up for talks with Israel on normalization, they demanded that Washington provide—as part of the diplomatic package—a NATO-like security treaty and access to nuclear technology. At the time, some in the U.S. found both conditions unacceptable. (I was among the naysayers.) Now this side deal might be necessary to strike a peace agreement—which might, in turn, be the only way to avoid the creeping escalation to a bigger, far more destructive regionwide war.
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