Reconstruction alone is not enough. Joe Biden has to push for an enduring peace deal based on two states.
On the day after Israel’s stunning victory in the June 1967 war, Yitzhak Rabin reportedly wrote about the need to “turn the fruits of this war into peace.” Rabin, who as chief of staff had masterminded the strategy and tactics that made the Israel Defense Forces so remarkably successful, understood that a conflict that ends without peace is merely an interregnum until the next war breaks out. Israeli and American policy makers should heed this lesson as they think about the day after the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Significant differences already exist among the key parties. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks of taking on a long-term security responsibility in Gaza, and has seemingly ruled out the return of the Palestinian Authority to govern the territory. American President Joe Biden rejects any extended Israeli presence and argues for resuming efforts to create a two-state peace settlement. The U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, wants a revitalized Palestinian Authority to resume control over Gaza. The PA’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, agrees with Blinken but argues that this can happen only in the context of a broader deal. These leaders might find a way to paper over their disagreements in the immediate aftermath of the war, but missing is a common vision for how to transform the fighting’s outcome, which will probably see Hamas’s military capabilities and political ambitions sharply curtailed, into some more durable arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians.
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When thinking about the day after, we need to be mindful that actions now will affect options later. Israel’s stated intention to destroy Hamas—an unlikely prospect—suggests continued fighting, a worsening situation on the ground, and even more civilian casualties. Hamas’s survival strategy is to hang on and emerge as intact as possible when the fighting stops. These war aims, as mutually exclusive as they are, could amount to the same result: a very prolonged conflict. That makes the task of bringing the fighting to an end all the more urgent, once Israel has severely degraded Hamas’s capabilities.
Part of that task is to decide what arrangements cannot work and should be discarded—namely, the 2020 Trump plan. That proposal included permission for Israel to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank; a Palestinian state in a number of noncontiguous cantons in the West Bank; and a de facto right for Israel to decide when the Palestinian state could come into being. Not only is that plan a nonstarter, but its reappearance as the basis for talks, as some have suggested, would kill a peacemaking process before it even began. Instead, the parties need to embrace complexity and hard choices.
A phased diplomatic strategy is required, one that operates on two tiers. The first tier involves providing security inside Gaza after the fighting stops and setting up a transitional government until the Palestinian Authority can take over; the second tier includes a serious, sustained effort to bring an end to the occupation and the beginning of a two-state solution. Both elements in this diplomacy will require American leadership to convene and organize representation from Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Arab Quartet (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), as well as major European allies. Support from and consultation with the African Union and other regional bodies could lend credibility and broader consent to the effort.
The first focus must be on rebuilding Gaza to ensure security and stability, and to pave the way for restoring governance by the Palestinian Authority. This process will be laborious and delicate, and will take time to achieve. First comes deescalation, providing monitoring and accountability for an armistice, when that takes effect. In turn, the security arrangements must enable the restoration of basic law and order. Alongside this, humanitarian assistance must resume, with as much aid as possible delivered as quickly as possible. This delivery of aid must also assure all parties of its integrity—that it is supplying civilians, not resupplying terrorists. An international conference may be required to facilitate donor countries’ pledges of funds for the reconstruction of Gaza.
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This initial phase can draw on the thousands of Palestinian civil servants and police officers employed by the Palestinian Authority. Because they will not agree to operate under Israeli supervision, a United Nations body or other international group will need to oversee the provision of basic civic services. Israel will likely retain a military presence in Gaza during this phase, but will need to start planning a complete withdrawal of its forces.
The second phase will involve stabilization measures—for example, providing security mechanisms to reassure Israel that it can begin that withdrawal, and reconstruction projects that enable civilians to return to rebuilt homes. In this phase, a contact group representing the PLO, the Arab Quartet, and the UN should meet to discuss the principles and timeline of a transition to Palestinian Authority rule in Gaza. This group could also spin off council bodies: one to oversee public safety and order, and another to oversee the allocation of goods and services.
A third phase would see the Palestinian Authority begin to take over the governance of Gaza. The contact group’s members would need to establish an interim ruling body, agree on a schedule and process for handing over full authority to the PA, accelerate reconstruction, and explore a constitutional convention. The group would also begin a process of disarming Hamas fighters and reintegrating them into civilian life.
The transition from one phase to another will need to progress on an agreed timeline, so that Palestinians see their lives being rebuilt and Israelis see credible governance and security emerging.
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Even if this ambitious agenda for Gaza meets this series of goals, that will not be enough to gain wide support among Palestinians and Arabs of other countries. If these transitional measures are the only thing happening, Palestinians will see this as a return to an unacceptable status quo: Israeli occupation and blockade, and the denial of their freedoms. A narrow approach limited to Gaza’s reconstruction will end up building an elaborate sand castle that will wash away as soon as the terrorists regroup, rearm, and renew attacks—this time against both the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
The only approach to “the day after” that could prove enduring is to turn the postwar situation into an opportunity for a political settlement that would end the occupation and give Palestinians an opportunity to achieve self-determination. In parallel to the stabilization and reconstruction efforts in Gaza, a peacemaking process must get under way.
President Biden should begin it by delivering a major speech laying out America’s approach to this process. He should declare his determination to move toward a two-state outcome and outline the significant actions the U.S. will undertake. These would include reversing the malign actions of the previous administration: reestablishing the American consulate general in East Jerusalem, to operate independently of the U.S. embassy, and reopening the PLO’s office in Washington, D.C. He should also announce an increase in assistance to the Palestinian Authority to help it redevelop its capacities. He should demand that Israel crack down on settler violence in the West Bank, desist from enabling evictions of Palestinians from residences in Jerusalem, and stop new settlement activity (beyond the blocs that have been identified in previous negotiations to remain Israeli territory in return for “swaps” of land in Israel of equal size and value).
The president should also use this address to insist that the Palestinian Authority end welfare payments to families of terrorists. He must also emphasize the PA’s responsibility to eradicate organized violence and prevent the emergence of violent groups in areas it controls. And he should push for the PA to hold fresh elections throughout the occupied territories as early as the reconstruction of Gaza practically permits. The president should close by stressing his administration’s renewed commitment to the principles established by previous rounds of diplomacy in the Israel-Palestine dispute since the Clinton parameters in 2000.
Biden’s plan, if he adopts this approach, will be unlikely to gain immediate support from the Israeli government, and may not from the Palestinian Authority either. But it will create a firm basis for American policy and diplomacy, laying down the terms for negotiations when they can be resumed.
As the Palestinian Authority’s governance in Gaza is being restored, the U.S. needs to turn back to the effort to help Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations normalize their relations with Israel. The U.S. could also signal a willingness to recognize Palestinian statehood provided that the PA shows it can reform itself and prove capable of running an independent nation.
All of this will be very hard to achieve. The Palestinian Authority barely governs in the West Bank, and assuming the responsibility of governing Gaza and controlling security there will be extremely challenging. The elderly President Abbas has shown no inclination to reform the PA, hold elections, or plan for who might succeed him. As for Israel, the postwar period will be preoccupied with a political reckoning over the intelligence and security failures that preceded October 7. Netanyahu will try to hang on to power, and he and his extremist coalition will return to their agenda of overhauling Israel’s judicial system and paving the way for annexation of the occupied territories. Israelis in general are unlikely to favor freezing settlements or engaging in a peace process with the Palestinians.
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Soon also, Biden will be drawn into a hard-fought battle for reelection. The policy on Gaza and peace that I’m proposing will be controversial among American supporters of Israel; Republicans would probably seize on parts of it to attack the president. Some in Biden’s camp will see little near-term upside in adopting this approach during an election year. But Biden has exercised bold diplomacy in other parts of the world, and it can work here too—advancing the prospects of peace, ensuring Israeli security, and addressing Palestinian grievances. This will help rebuild support for his presidency among disaffected domestic constituencies as well as among foreign allies.
Only such a transformational approach holds the possibility, slim as it is, of changing the disastrous trajectory of Israeli-Palestinian relations. We all know what that looks like: continued occupation, repression, radicalization, and conflict, ensuring an endless cycle of the trauma and tragedy that these two peoples have experienced these past months. We have the choice to try something different.
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