Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed to the Middle East to try to prevent Israel’s war in Gaza from spiraling out of control and to start talks on what diplomats call “the day after” — what happens after the shooting stopped.
Who will govern a devastated Gaza? Who will feed and house its refugees?
Who will police its broken streets?
And perhaps improbably, can war, however brutal, be turned into an opening for a wider peace?
“When this crisis is over, there needs to be a vision of what comes next,” President Biden said last month. “And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution” — an agreement under which a sovereign Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel, with security guarantees for both.
Blinken took that message to Tel Aviv on Friday, beginning with a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “humanitarian pauses” to provide food and water to civilians trapped in Gaza.
Netanyahu said there could be no ceasefire unless Hamas releases more than 220 hostages – a sign of how difficult it will be to negotiate even a brief ceasefire.
“The next day” is the wrong way to think about these challenges. Stabilizing Gaza, establishing a new government, and reviving progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be the work of years, not days or months.
Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed to the Middle East to try to prevent Israel’s war in Gaza from spiraling out of control and to start talks on what diplomats call “the day after” — what happens after the shooting stopped.
Who will govern a devastated Gaza? Who will feed and house its refugees?
Who will police its broken streets?
And perhaps improbably, can war, however brutal, be turned into an opening for a wider peace?
“When this crisis is over, there needs to be a vision of what comes next,” President Biden said last month. “And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution” — an agreement under which a sovereign Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel, with security guarantees for both.
Blinken took that message to Tel Aviv on Friday, beginning with a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “humanitarian pauses” to provide food and water to civilians trapped in Gaza.
Netanyahu said there can be no ceasefire unless Hamas releases more than 220 hostages – a sign of how difficult it will be to negotiate even a brief ceasefire.
“The next day” is the wrong way to think about these challenges. Stabilizing Gaza, establishing a new government, and reviving progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be the work of years, not days or months.
Planning for what comes after the war is a good idea. A vision for a better future is essential. But a reality check is in order.
I spent the past week talking to US diplomats who have worked on previous Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and they all had similar advice: Lower your expectations.
Almost a month after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israeli towns and villages, the war is far from over. Israel seems to have the upper hand, but it is not clear what victory will look like.
Netanyahu said he intends to “destroy Hamas.” Other Israeli officials have offered slightly more limited goals: eliminating Hamas’ military capability and ending its rule in Gaza.
“These goals are desirable, but it’s not yet clear how achievable they are,” warned David Makowski of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who worked on Israeli-Palestinian talks during the Obama administration. “I wouldn’t predict it being a slam-dunk.”
“If Israel achieves its goals, the question is what to do with Gaza,” he said. “Israel does not want to occupy Gaza. They don’t see it as a prize. They don’t want to stay … so they’ll want to hand it over to somebody.”
Last week, Blinken said the most logical candidate to take control of Gaza would be the Palestinian Authority, the de facto government in the West Bank. But its officials are widely seen as inefficient and corrupt, and Blinken said it would need to be “reinvigorated” to meet the challenge.
“Do we put (the Palestinian Authority) in now? It would be doomed to fail,” Makowski said. “And fixing the PA will take some time.”
If there is an interim one, the debate in Washington and Israel has focused on persuading a consortium of Arab countries to form a peacekeeping force for Gaza, but it is not clear that anyone wants the mandate.
“Which Arab state is going to volunteer to fight the insurgency against the Palestinians in Gaza?” asked Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has worked on Arab-Israeli negotiations for more than two decades. “The Egyptians are a logical candidate and could do this as a way to regain a closer relationship with the United States … but could it stand the test of time?”
With all these problems, seeking negotiations for a two-state solution can sound quixotic. But Biden and other officials insist they are serious.
Blinken says a commitment to a two-state solution is needed so that Hamas or an extremist alternative does not rise again.
“We have to fight (Hamas) with a better idea … that gives people something to hope for, to buy into, to grab onto,” he said last week.
The administration also has practical diplomatic reasons for pursuing a two-state solution. Without it, other Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are unlikely to help a Gaza peace effort.
A lot will have to change before a two-state solution, including the Israeli government, starts to look possible. Netanyahu has devoted most of his career to preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.
A change in the Palestinian Authority would also help. Its current president, Mahmoud Abbas, is 87, discredited and unpopular.
“Under the current circumstances, the two-state solution is basically an aspirational talking point,” Miller said.
Previous wars have led to breakthroughs, he noted. The 1973 Middle East war led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt — six years later. The Palestinian uprising that began in 1987 indirectly led to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, again six years later.
“At some point, Blinken might have to pack a few extra shirts,” Miller joked, referring to the shuttle diplomacy pursued by previous secretaries of state. “But that time is not now. We are still in the middle of a hard war.”
Then again, it’s not about the next day. It’s about the years after — and many years after.
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