Regional and global help will be needed
The Gaza disaster is a full-blown crisis for the Middle East and the world. But it is also a chance for an extraordinary restart. That will require recognition of hard truths, Arab involvement, a ton of money, and determined global guidance.
So, it is good that recent days have seen a parade of U.S. officials arriving in Israel and neighboring countries, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Brown. They are not there for the weather, but because they know the region is at a crossroads and that it matters. Here’s why.
The vicious Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 was the biggest one-day pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, killing 1,200 people amid gang rapes, dismembering, burning babies to death and the mass murder of families. The Gaza-ruling terrorist group seemed to want Israel to explode with rage.
So Israel did, determined to both remove Hamas from power and get back all the 240-plus hostages. Neither has yet happened, and by Hamas numbers, which Israel does not really dispute, well over 10,000 civilians have been killed in the strip, making this the deadliest war for civilians of any in the century-old conflict. And it is also the longest Arab-Israeli war since the one that established Israel in 1948.
Meanwhile, Iran’s proxies, the Houthis, who control much of Yemen, have chimed in by impeding maritime traffic through the Bab-el-Mandeb, straits leading to the Suez Canal. More than 100,000 Israelis have had to evacuate the country’s north due to fire from Lebanon’s other proxy, Hezbollah, so that border threatens to erupt as well.
All this has put on hold the Saudi-Israeli peace deal that appeared set to be the signature foreign policy accomplishment that President Joe Biden would present to voters in 2024. Instead, Islamic terrorism could resume at any moment in the West, where relations with Muslim minorities are again at a boil. Indeed, Muslim Americans enraged at Biden’s support for Israel could doom his chances next year in critical Michigan, the swing state with the largest Muslim population.
Hamas in Gaza is led by a psychopath, Yehiya Sinwar. And Israel, quite disastrously, is led for now by the cynical and scheming Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for bribery, has been politically hobbled by the Oct. 7 breakdown, and appears interested in a lengthy conflict. In seeking a new ticket, Netanyahu is settling on opposition to Biden’s view that the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank-based autonomy government, be eventually be restored in Gaza. Netanyahu prefers a new Israeli occupation, which is a recipe for insurrection, conflict, and contagion.
Netanyahu is right that the Israeli people are in no mood to leap into a two-state solution and a military pullout from the West Bank under the current realities. If terrorists take over that territory, too, they’ll be much closer to Israel’s main cities.
Changing the realities is more than Israel and the Palestinians can handle, so others must step in. Defusing what may be the most hopeless dispute in the world will require careful calibration of many moving parts. It will require sacrifices of both sides and cannot be seen as a reward to Hamas for its barbarism. The Palestinians must finally see justice but will also need to accept that they have failed abysmally in self-governance. Israel will need wiser leadership that understands that force alone cannot prevail; tough love from the U.S. will be needed.
Here’s what I assess is needed, based on decades of Mideast reporting and years spent living both in Israel and the Arab world:
Hamas must go, period
The sine qua non is that Hamas—which was never elected—must be removed from power in Gaza. After Oct. 7, Israel cannot give in on this. To leave them in charge of Gaza would be like not defeating ISIS in Iraq, or acquiescing to the Nazis. It would be a huge blow to moderate Arab states and risk a wave of triumphalist jihadism. It’s not negotiable.
That said, pursuing this by military means alone will exact a terrible price on the Gazans, because of the human shields policy of their jihadist captors. What could speed it up? A number of things, including massive unanimous pressure of the Arab League on Hamas to lay down its arms, and a global war on funding to all the group’s offshoots. Lastly, and critically, Israel should give the leaders, and however many fighters surrender, amnesty and put them on a boat to Qatar.
The Palestinians must rule Gaza
After that, any Israeli occupation of Gaza should be brief and every effort made to project that unlike in the complicated West Bank situation Israel has no designs on it. The Palestinian Authority should be readied to take it over as part of its autonomy zones.
But preparing the PA will not be simple. Time may be up for 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas. It will be interesting if Israel agrees to release Marwan Barghouti, former peace talks leader whom Israel convicted of dispatching killers during the Second Intifada. He may be a minor terrorist, but he has Mandela-level street cred and popularity.
No armed militias and a new Palestinian mindset
Armed militias can no longer be tolerated. This was a basic understanding of Israel’s first leader David Ben-Gurion, and the Palestinians must do the same if they want their statehood aspirations to be viable; Hamas’s outrage has ended that discussion too.
All of this will require a new mindset for the Palestinians, who in the past have resisted every offer sent their way and at the moment are feeling good about idiots on Western campuses supporting Hamas. To make the reset popular on the Palestinian street will require two sweeteners.
A Marshall Plan for the Palestinians
The first should come in the form of a massive redevelopment and rescue fund. Not pledges but actual aid. Not over decades but immediate. Not miserly but $100 billion or more. This is a global emergency and all rich nations, including Israel, should contribute.
It should be conditioned on none of it finding its way to anything other than development—but these should be clearly messaged to the Palestinians: a huge and immediate rebuilding of all that has been destroyed, a correction of all that has been wasted. Examples should include an island is built off the coast of Gaza for a sea harbor at which security checks will be conducted by the EU and Israel, and a tunnel linking the West Bank and Gaza.
Settler pullout
The second is the real promise, in a clear statement by Israel, that beyond the existing Security Barrier in the West Bank, and beyond the Gaza border with the new barrier there, it has no interest in occupying the Palestinians. And a written pledge that this process will include the withdrawal of the 100,000 Jewish settlers now living beyond the Security Barrier; the outrage of these settlers enjoying citizens’ rights that their Palestinian neighbors lack will end.
All this will still be a risk for Israel, and a huge political conundrum, and that will require two sweeteners as well.
Saudi Arabia and other sweeteners for Israel
The first is that the world will get serious about demanding that Hezbollah implement UN Security Resolution 1701 and pulling back from the Israeli border. NATO should send a force if needed. And Israel should be welcomed as an “associated partner” of NATO, same as Japan and Australia.
Second, and critically, Saudi Arabia (and perhaps also Qatar) should join the Abraham accords. Saudi Arabia has an interest in proceeding with normalization: it will be a major rebuff to Iran. And for Israel, it will make the Palestinian medicine go down.
The White House, the European Union, the Arab League and the UN Security Council should issue a clear call on Israel and the Palestinians to accept this framework. I don’t know whether it will work, but it’s far better than the current path, which could reasonably be called the road to hell.
Grim living conditions now even more lethal than Gaza fighting
