After Hamas’s depraved attack and the unfathomable destruction of Palestinian life, infrastructure and society in Gaza by the Israeli military offensive, any hope for the territory feels far away. But once the guns fall silent and Gazans are allowed to contemplate the reconstruction of their shattered home, the time will come when Israelis, Palestinians and the rest of the world must wrestle with the future of Gaza and its people.

Times Opinion reached out to thinkers, political leaders and experts for their vision of what might meet the moment. Because in the end, two neighboring groups of millions of people must find a way to live their lives. Here are 10 ideas for a path forward.

Empower Palestinians

By Peter Beinart 

Today, most Jewish Israelis support the invasion of Gaza. They think it is crucial to restoring their country’s reputation for military competence and strength. But while Israel can depose Hamas, its leaders have not explained how it can rule Gaza — either directly or by proxy — without inviting a future insurgency. That insurgency will be powered by Palestinians seeking revenge, since, as Israeli experts have noted, Hamas recruits fighters from the families of people Israel kills. As that quagmire deepens, Israel would look about as strong and competent as the United States did when it could not quash insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Militarily, Israel should instead conduct the kind of narrowly targeted response the United States eschewed after Sept. 11. It should pursue the people who masterminded the Oct. 7 slaughter to the ends of the earth and the end of their days. But it should halt its invasion of Gaza and negotiate a long-term cease-fire that leads to freedom for all the remaining Israeli hostages. At the same time, Israel should allow Palestinians to create a legitimate political leadership — which can take charge in the West Bank and Gaza — and empower Palestinians who pursue their freedom in ethical ways. To negotiate seriously with Israel, Palestinians need legitimate leaders — not the discredited Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, who hasn’t stood for election since 2005. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has advised in the past, Israel should release the imprisoned Palestinian nationalist Marwan Barghouti, who is more popular than the leaders of Hamas. Mr. Barghouti was convicted of murder and membership in a terrorist organization during a trial at which he declined to offer a defense and refused to recognize the Israeli court’s jurisdiction. But despite defending Palestinians’ right to violently resist Israeli oppression, he has also lauded Nelson Mandela’s willingness to “defy hatred and to choose justice over vengeance.” Israel should then empower Mr. Barghouti and other credible, non-Hamas Palestinian leaders by showing that they can improve Palestinian lives and give Palestinians hope that they will gain their freedom. It should begin dismantling the West Bank settlements whose inhabitants terrorize their Palestinian neighbors and help Palestinians forced from their villages by settler violence to return. It should prevent Jewish ultranationalists from undermining the status quo on the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and promise not to establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia until Palestinians are free. According to Israeli media, influential Palestinians have proposed allowing Hamas to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella group that includes different Palestinian parties, if it disarms. Mr. Barghouti could oversee such a process, which would pave the way for a revived, internally democratic P.L.O., which could set a new political direction for the Palestinian people. 

Will Benjamin Netanyahu’s government do any of this? Not a chance. But polls suggest that his Likud party may suffer a historic collapse when Israelis next vote. The Biden administration should make it clear that America’s relationship with Israel will depend on its next government pursuing a different path. Israel’s current one will succeed only in devastating Gaza. It won’t give Palestinians hope, and it won’t keep Israelis safe.

Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.

Let NATO Nations Send Troops

By Ehud Olmert 

ISRAEL’S MILITARY CAMPAIGN will continue until Hamas’s military capabilities are eliminated and it is removed from power. It’s hard to guess how long it will take, but if we are to be honest, it will take longer than Western societies are prepared to accept and longer than what their leaders — above all, President Joe Biden, a close friend of Israel — are willing to tolerate. It is imperative for this reason that Israel provide the world with a clear picture of what it intends to do next, after the army has completed its work. The current Israeli government has no answer. It hasn’t had time to prepare a long-term strategy. But even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition partners are unwilling and unable to propose the necessary next steps, the rest of Israel — and anyone who cares about its stability and security — can no longer avoid the question. Here’s what I think should be part of that plan: After the military campaign to remove Hamas from power and destroy its ability to fight, Israeli forces must withdraw all the way to the border of Gaza. As that campaign now continues, Israel, the United States and other allies in parallel must agree on the deployment of an international force drawn from NATO countries, with their deployment agreed on by Israel and the United States and operating under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council. The international force would take the place of the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. Arab nations will probably not be willing to send in troops. While Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia desire nothing more than the destruction of Hamas, which is a destabilizing force for their own governments, none will want to be seen as lending a hand to Israel’s military campaign. The international force would help create a different governmental administration and would start to rebuild the civilian authorities and governing systems in the Gaza Strip for approximately 18 months. Israel must announce that with the cessation of its military campaign, talks will immediately begin with the Palestinian Authority based on a two-state solution — which is the only political horizon that can offer stability and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians and diplomatic, military and economic cooperation between Israel and the moderate Arab states. There is no doubt that the Netanyahu government is unwilling, unable and unprepared to make such moves. Before any of these steps may be taken, therefore, there is no choice but to get rid of this government. Once it is gone and as soon as the military campaign in Gaza is over, the first steps toward what comes next may be taken.

Create an Economic Future

By Raja Khalidi  

As Israel’s war on Gaza enters its third month, the warring parties and their allies are eyeing the endgame. Palestinians remain focused on solidarity in the face of what the chief U.N. relief official and the top E.U. diplomat have termed an apocalyptic scenario and what the Israeli agriculture minister has promised will be a second Nakba. Regardless of who is left standing in Gaza after the war, governance of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is best left to Palestinians to arrange through elections. The Palestine Liberation Organization and most of the international community remain committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict within a two-state configuration. In preparing for such a renewed possibility, Palestinians will have to reckon with their economic future. Since 1947, policymakers and academics have generated various visions of Palestinians’ economy after a two-state partition. But for now, the demands of relief, shelter, economic recovery and reconstruction in Gaza are so overwhelming that there is little point in pondering a future whose shape is unknown. Israeli bombardment has destroyed about half of Gaza’s building stock, in what some experts call a domicide. Just as much of the economic infrastructure and public service utilities needed to sustain the population has also been crushed. An economy that before the war had an annual per capita G.D.P. of less than $1,500 — already among the lowest in the world — will almost certainly register $0 next year for some two million Palestinians. Barring the unthinkable but not yet to be discounted risk of mass spontaneous exodus or deportation of the Gazan population to Sinai, there are three essential tasks to get the Gaza Strip back on its feet ahead of any larger solution.

First, Gaza’s people, most of whom have been displaced, need to be sheltered, clothed, fed, given medical care and protected — an effort budgeted by the United Nations at $1.1 billion through this month, assuming a humanitarian management structure can be put in place in Gaza.

Second, before meaningful reconstruction can be planned, huge challenges must be met, whatever the governance arrangement: the removal of rubble and the bodies beneath it, reconnection of utility networks, the provision of temporary spaces for public services and a restarting of the engine of the private economy.

Finally, the people: more than two million traumatized and impoverished refugees, many of them maimed, malnourished and dehumanized. Israel and other economically developed countries have the social protection systems to help cope with such demands. But denied a state of their own, Palestinians in Gaza will need sustained support to simply recover and be productive citizens rather than destitute refugees.Therefore, Gazans should be granted a universal basic emergency income, a new concept among policymakers working on economic empowerment and social protection. Trials have been successful in nonemergency applications in India, Kenya and Spain, and the Covid pandemic spurred short-term programs worldwide. Providing a basic monthly income of $200 to all Palestinians in Gaza for a year, until they can successfully reintegrate productively, would require almost $5 billion. That financial need calls for a recognition by Israel’s allies and Arab states that their failure to halt the military campaign that caused such a disaster comes with a price. The Palestinian people are already paying the human cost of this war, while Israel’s war budget could be underwritten with $14 billion courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. administration and regional partners have been exploring postwar governance in Gaza. Evenhandedness requires that the U.S. administration concern itself less with regime change in Gaza and more with alleviating suffering.

Raja Khalidi is the director general of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah in the West Bank and a development economist.

The Answer Lies With Biden

By Bernard Avishai and Ezzedine Fishere 

PRESIDENT BIDEN HAS CALLED for a two-state solution. But this vision has foundered for decades. What makes this goal remotely plausible today? In the background of the horrible deaths of Israeli and Gazan civilians are moderate majorities in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, increasingly polarized by zealots. If Mr. Biden can provide a credible diplomatic track to a just peace, moderates on each side will have something to trust in. Mr. Biden enjoys great moral prestige in an Israel deeply skeptical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also has credibility with Arab leaders and can make a good-faith overture to the Palestinian street because, in spite of anti-American sentiment, all understand that the United States is the only power Israel depends on and that America has more leverage than ever to induce productive negotiations. A strong U.S. commitment to two states — one that entails a demand for a settlement freeze — would almost certainly force the dissolution of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, since it rests on the support of religious parties that represent the settler movement. Rejecting American diplomatic leadership in favor of continued settlements would probably lead to the withdrawal of centrists from his unity cabinet. On the Palestinian side, polls have shown that any peace process that looks serious enough to end the occupation turns people away from Hamas. Palestinians also feel the force of Arab states pressuring from the outside and time running out for a political solution. Israelis need to feel that their security partners are the neighboring Arab states — Egypt and Jordan — and not only the Palestinian Authority, in which they have little trust. 

What, then, should Mr. Biden specifically propose, beyond the broad outline he has given? Solutions to the once-thorny core issues of a two-state solution are well understood from previous negotiations. As a first step, he can just check these off: American-mediated negotiations for two independent — and, in some jurisdictions, interdependent — states based on the 1967 lines, with land swaps; Palestinian refugees returning to a Palestinian state, not Israel, compensated by an international commission or in some cases accepting resettlement in other countries; Jerusalem remaining united administratively but home to two capitals, with a dotted-line border; and the Holy Basin, including the entire Old City and Temple Mount, or Noble Sanctuary, as it is known to Muslims, subject to an international custodian, acting by consensus, and composed of Israel, a Palestinian state, the United States, Jordan and perhaps Saudi Arabia.

Next, the United States should invite Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and, crucially, Saudi Arabia to form a security alliance — a sort of Arab NATO — that would deploy Egyptian and Jordanian missions to the West Bank and eventually Gaza. These missions, in liaison with U.S. and Israeli counterparts, would move to establish a collective security environment: police Palestinian territories and its border crossings, reconstitute the Palestinian security forces, build out a Palestinian state apparatus and preside over eventual elections, in which armed organizations would not be allowed to participate.

The third step would be drafting a road map that would couple moves toward Palestinian statehood and investments in it with regional integration. Israel and its neighbors have already undertaken or proposed projects dealing with desalination, electrification and a high-speed train from the United Arab Emirates to Haifa. The road map should realize such projects and facilitate the entry of diaspora Palestinian entrepreneurs to the West Bank, therefore ensuring that peace building is associated with economic growth, not decline. Mr. Biden should revive the idea of a rail corridor linking the West Bank and Gaza, as proposed by the RAND Corporation. Crucially, he should also make clear that new aid to Israel must be used to strengthen regional peace, not obstruct it with settlement expansion.

Only the United States can lead the players into these three steps — and only for a brief window. A Gaza war that breaks hearts without hope will ignite the region. That is what Hamas intended. That is what the settlers expected. Mr. Biden is the only player with a chance of denying them victory.

Bernard Avishai is the author of “The Tragedy of Zionism” and other books. Ezzedine Fishere is a former diplomat for Egypt and the United Nations. He is the author of “Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge.” They teach at Dartmouth College.

Establish an International Trusteeship

By Limor Yehuda, Omar M. Dajani and John McGarry 

THE MOST PROMISING COURSE of action, and one that has not been widely discussed, is a temporary international trusteeship under a U.N. Security Council mandate encompassing Gaza and the West Bank, not just for Gaza. Such a trusteeship would offer a viable immediate alternative to Israeli rule, which is unacceptable to Palestinians and counterproductive for Israel; to Hamas, which cannot serve as an acceptable interlocutor; and to the Palestinian Authority, which needs reform and revitalization to regain public trust. The sort of trusteeship we have in mind has been called a neo-trusteeship, to distinguish it from the old, self-interested and discredited trusteeships associated with colonialism and the League of Nations system, such as the post-World War I mandate of South Africa over Namibia. A neo-trusteeship seeks to make domestic political decisions through consensus among the trustees — possibly some combination of the United States, Egypt, Jordan and a European country — as well as Israelis and Palestinians. It should also allow a U.N. representative backed by the Security Council to make decisions in the event of a deadlock among the trusteeship’s parties. 

Such trusteeships were established in all but name in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, Kosovo in 1999 and East Timor in 1999. Clear U.N. leadership, accountable to the Security Council and exercised with the goal of maximizing local support, would allow the trusteeship to avoid the problems associated with the fractured coalition model employed in Kosovo and to realize the benefits of the model used in East Timor.

The trusteeship’s main tasks would be to maintain security, facilitate reconstruction and support the development of institutions that can provide public services, including health, education, welfare and transportation across the West Bank and Gaza. It should also be mandated with helping Palestinians establish a united government that includes representation from as broad a swath of public opinion as possible and with incentivizing a peace agreement based on the Arab peace initiative.

And critically, unlike their colonial counterparts that overstayed for decades, the trustees must try to exit the territories as soon as possible.

Limor Yehuda is a lecturer in law at Hebrew University. Omar M. Dajani is a law professor at the University of the Pacific and served as a legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators. John McGarry is a professor at Queen’s University in Canada and a U.N. consultant.

Grant Gaza Statehood

By Jerome M. Segal 

THE FIRST STEP TOWARD RESOLVING the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be an immediate move to Palestinian statehood, with a twist: That state would exist first in Gaza, on a three-year trial basis. The advantage of this approach would be twofold. It would resolve the post-conflict issue for the territory, and it would open the door to broader, long-term Palestinian sovereignty. A Palestinian state based in Gaza, with a newly elected government, would have unique legitimacy in demanding that Hamas and other nonstate actors give up their weapons. States, after all, by definition must hold a monopoly on the possession of weapons of war and armed forces within their borders. Israel went through this process in 1948, but only after statehood was declared. This approach would also address the widespread perception that the Palestinian Authority lacks legitimacy in governing Palestinians in view of its continuing security cooperation with Israel and its failure to deliver Palestinian statehood. After elections, the new leadership of a budding state could take over the governance of Gaza without being viewed as the police of the Israeli occupation. 

Firm American leadership would be required to move in this direction. In particular, it may be necessary, without obtaining prior Israeli agreement, for the United States to recognize a state of Palestine and support its full admission to the United Nations, where it is presently recognized as a nonmember observer. After the three-year trial, negotiations would begin over extending statehood to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If such negotiations arrive at a deadlock, the United States should support a new international process like the 1947 establishment by the United Nations of the Special Committee on Palestine to develop a comprehensive end-of-conflict plan. The idea of Palestinian statehood before full resolution of the conflict has been proposed before. The 2003 road map for peace, proposed by George W. Bush’s administration and accepted by the other members of the Quartet (the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia), proposed the creation of a Palestinian state “with provisional borders” before negotiations finalized the core issues of the conflict, including the state’s borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. The road map called for international recognition of the Palestinian state and its possible admission to the United Nations. Under that 2003 plan, final negotiations to resolve the conflict would have immediately begun after the state was formed. Under the current proposal, statehood would be subject to a three-year testing period, and only if the state were stable and demonstrably committed to peace would final status negotiations begin. 

A Gaza-first test of Palestinian statehood would require a new, less ideological Israeli government — one that, while it may remain skeptical of Palestinian statehood, could also be pragmatic. There is much wishful thinking about how various international forces could take over Gaza. When it becomes clear that only the Palestinians themselves are prepared to do this over the long term, Israel may be willing to test statehood in Gaza. It is the only way it can get out and stay out of Gaza.

Jerome M. Segal is the director of the International Peace Consultancy and the author of “The Olive Branch From Palestine: The Palestinian Declaration of Independence and the Path Out of the Current Impasse.”

Consider a Leading Role for the U.N.

By Emma Bapt and Adam Day 

THE PROSPECTS FOR GOVERNANCE in Gaza after Israel ends its assault are bleak. The Palestinian Authority would not want to be seen as doing Israel’s security work and would, in any case, almost certainly be rejected by Gazans. The Palestinian leadership, along with the United States and Europe, will not accept an Israeli reoccupation of the enclave.

But there is another option: a U.N.-led transitional presence in Gaza. Germany recently floated the idea in an unofficial document, suggesting that the United Nations should take control of Gaza after Israel’s operations end. Though the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, has said a U.N. protectorate is not the answer in Gaza, he also said the international community “needs to move into a transition period.” The notion of a U.N. administrative presence in Gaza is not new. In 2014 the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas requested that the United Nations place Gaza and the West Bank under international protection; the U.N. conducted a review but took no action. It may be time to again think seriously about a special U.N. mission in Gaza. It seems unlikely that the United Nations will be asked to deploy a new peacekeeping force, but it could support a coalition of the willing Arab neighbors in a transitional security role. The key would be involving actors that both Israelis and Palestinians see as guarantors of their safety. Having the United Nations at the helm of a coalition could work, though Israel might dislike it. Another option would be to repurpose or expand U.N. resources on the ground, potentially as a complement to forces that would be provided by neighboring countries. Before the war, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which serves Palestinian refugees, employed 13,000 people in Gaza, who helped provide direct relief, education, health care and social services to Gaza residents. Israel and its defenders are already critical of the agency, potentially complicating any future role. But given the scale of recovery efforts needed and the agency’s proximity, these functions could be expanded and strengthened on an interim basis after the war. Alternatively, the main office of the U.N. special coordinator for Middle East peace in Jerusalem could oversee or support a transitional period. A long shot might be a role for the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, which has maintained military observers in the region since 1948 to prevent escalation between Israel and its neighbors. The upside of working within existing missions is they are there; the downside is they were not set up for this task. A critical lesson from past U.N. operations is that there will need to be a clear exit strategy. In Gaza this will be challenging, most likely requiring a Palestinian reconciliation process and elections that avoid laying the groundwork for Hamas 2.0. Even if a viable new government is elected, what might happen to the technocrats who worked in the Gazan government but are not Hamas loyalists? Something like Iraq’s de-Baathification process — which stripped Iraq of nearly all its administrative capacities in the name of eliminating Saddam Hussein’s influence — should not be repeated. A U.N.-led transitional mission in Gaza may seem far-fetched. But amid the lack of likely solutions, the ever-rising loss of life in Gaza and the absence of clarity on what victory would look like for Israel, it might be the best hope we have.

Create a Confederation of Two States

By May Pundak and Dahlia Scheindlin 

ISRAELI AND PALESTINIAN LIVES, as well as our economies and needs for security and health care, are intertwined. Both nations have powerful emotional, religious and cultural attachments to their land, but neither side can own all of it. As a result, there must be two sovereign states, but they cannot be founded on Israeli-Palestinian or Jewish-Arab segregation or on hard partition. The arrangement must be grounded in the principle of individual and collective equality. We envision a political framework of two states in a confederated association. The core concepts can be outlined as follows: two sovereign states, each with its own government but with joint mechanisms and institutions for critical shared concerns. 

Palestinians and Jewish Israelis could live as permanent residents in the other state, in a mechanism phased in over time, if they accept the sovereignty of that state and respect its laws. They would enjoy equality and protections under the law, and neither side would establish the superiority of one group over another. Each person would vote only in the country of his or her citizenship. We envision freedom of movement, like in the Schengen zone in the European Union, with security restrictions imposed individually instead of collectively and unequally, as they are today. Instead of being divided by walls, each side would be able to cross these borders for tourism, study or work. The demarcation should be close to the Green Line, instead of cutting deeply into the West Bank, which chops up Palestinian areas into enclaves. Jerusalem would remain a shared, open city, the capital of the two nations. Its municipal government should guarantee representation for Israelis and Palestinians, providing new incentive for Palestinian participation in elections. 

The two sides would establish a joint court of human rights to adjudicate claims of Jewish or Palestinian residents living in the other state. They would establish shared institutions to manage climate change issues and natural resources, as well as a common economic zone to reduce the large economic gap between Israelis and Palestinians.

To manage the states’ joint security, there is a precedent: For nearly 30 years, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have conducted security cooperation in the West Bank, which has largely worked, though it enabled Israel’s ongoing occupation and fed Palestinian resentment. But in a framework establishing Palestinian independence, coordinating security policy could serve the security needs of both sides and would support the new political arrangement. It’s time to recognize that complete separation has failed, both as an aim of the peace process and wherever it has been carried out on the ground. The two sides have never agreed on a peace deal based on separation, because they don’t want one. It’s time to replace separation with partnership. The road to realizing this vision would be a long one. Gaza would first need to be reintegrated with the West Bank to correct the failed policy of isolation, with international help. Palestinians would need a unified, representative, accountable government. Both sides would need to reject political extremists and commit to political rather than military solutions to the conflict. As far off as it might be, the day after the war’s end must be grounded in the real needs and interests of people to ensure that this war is the last war.

May Pundak is the Israeli executive director of A Land for All, a grass-roots Israeli-Palestinian movement. Dr. Scheindlin is a board member of the group and the author of “The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel.”

Build a Culture of Peace

By Sulaiman Khatib and Avner Wishnitzer 

PEACEMAKING MUST BE ENVELOPED in a comprehensive project of re-humanization: a widespread process to reverse the effects of oppression, violence and dehumanization of the other, which have been fueling one another for decades. Our awareness of the importance of re-humanization was shaped through our involvement in Combatants for Peace, established by Palestinians and Israelis who had taken part in the conflict and later laid down their arms. On the basis of almost two decades of a joint nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation and ideologies of hate, we realize the importance of shared values and concepts. This common ground must be premised on the mutual affirmation that both peoples have a past and a future in this land and that none of them should be subject to the violence or oppression of the other. Re-humanization is, in other words, a project of liberation. Our experiences teach us that violence dwells in all of us, as do compassion and care. We need to build a culture that recognizes the presence of that violence and that fosters care and compassion. We can draw on ancient traditions, such as sulha, a time-tested tribal mechanism for conflict resolution, that are part of the heritage of this region. But we must develop new models as well. For example, Combatants for Peace has been holding joint memorial ceremonies for the casualties of wars for 18 years. In these ceremonies we recognize pain and loss together, turning them into constructive energy for driving change. In mourning together, we also take responsibility for the violence and pledge to prevent other casualties. 

In order to nourish and spread these values, we must form a network of peace centers in Israeli and Palestinian cities. These would serve to educate both publics about the history and culture of the other side, equip local leaders with skills such as nonviolent communication and arrange joint activities.

We need joint professional frameworks that would bring together Palestinian and Israeli teachers, civil servants, businesspeople, physicians and community leaders to discuss issues of mutual interest. The idea is not merely to promote solutions to problems that concern both societies but also to create interlocking networks of expertise, cemented by personal bonds. These networks would form the infrastructure of a community that would be able to withstand pressures from extremists on both sides who would try to sabotage any political agreement. We need the support of like-minded groups around the world that support the creation of this culture of peace.

Sulaiman Khatib is a co-founder of Combatants for Peace. Avner Wishnitzer, also a co-founder of the group, is an associate professor of Middle Eastern and African history at Tel Aviv University.

Let Palestinians Decide

By Diana Buttu 

IN 2005, I WAS A LEGAL ADVISER to the Palestinian negotiating team when Israel’s disengagement from Gaza was taking place. At the time, we were asked: What is necessary to make Gaza viable?Our answer: Make sure that the Gaza Strip is not turned into an open-air cage. Ensure that Palestinians living there have access to the world through an airport, a seaport and a connection to the West Bank.That idea was scoffed at because it did not conveniently fit into the formula of perpetual Israeli control over Palestinian lives that the West, even then, has always supported. I will never forget when someone from the Israeli negotiating team said to me, straight-faced, that the level of security scanner that Israel was demanding to screen goods entering and exiting the Gaza Strip was so high that no such device even existed.This should never happen again. The future of Gaza — like that of the West Bank — is for Palestinians to decide. That is the essence of self-determination. The international community must not continue to place Israel first, as has been done for decades. It cannot try to seek convenient leaders as partners or try to enter yet another long-term arrangement.Palestinians must live freely, without the faintest sense of an Israeli noose around our necks. Whatever immediate arrangements are put in place after Israel’s assault on Gaza ends must be coupled with an end to Israel’s regime of oppression and be accompanied by measures to hold Israel to account for any war crimes it has committed. Any solution that does not include this will fail.

In a word, Palestinians demand one thing: freedom.