Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians Remains Possible

By Natan Sachs

But to Get There, Both Sides—and America—Need to Be Realistic About What’s Achievable Now

Hamas’s horrific attack on October 7 and the devastating war that followed confirmed the calamitous failure of Hamas’s strategy of “resistance” through the slaughter of Israeli civilians, which has brought not liberation to Palestine but ruination to the Gaza Strip. But the attack has also exposed the failure of Israel’s long-pursued strategy of conflict containment with the Palestinians since the failure of the peace process in the early 2000s. The October 7 attack and today’s war have also laid bare the faulty, reckless logic of one-state proposals that wish away the extremism that feeds the conflict and the existential fear that animates it. Yet these events have also made a two-state solution any time soon even less likely than it was before October 7, with Israelis terrified of any Palestinian sovereignty and the potential repeat of that day’s massacre and Palestinians far less ready for historic compromise with Israel after its devastation of the Gaza Strip.

Seemingly out of solutions, the Biden administration and Israelis and Palestinians themselves must and can find a path toward a less terrible future. They must not revert to the same conflict-containment strategies that set the stage for October 7, nor to reckless notions now in vogue in the West of a one-state solution—essentially regime change in so-called Palestine/Israel. Instead, all sides must be clear about both the strategic objective and, no less important, the long path toward it. They must reaffirm a political horizon, distant though it likely is, of Israeli and Palestinian independence—even if it does not look exactly like the two-state solution of old—coupled with a robust policy for managing the long interim before conflict resolution might be possible. They must be clear that the choice is not between full peace and reconciliation today, which is not available, and a return to a bloody slide away from it, which would only bring further ruin.

Instead, until conflict resolution is possible, the best chance lies with a vigorous push toward dramatically more independence for Palestinians in civilian affairs, while addressing the sources of fear on both sides. This approach would take seriously deepened Israeli security concerns after October 7 and place a limit on what security authority might be transferred to Palestinian control at present. And it would require the United States to use its leverage with Israel to contain violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and the expansion of settlement activity, both sources of Palestinian insecurity. Not least, it would require a massive effort in Gaza, with the United States using its influence with Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and the Gulf states to start to rebuild and reconstitute a future for Gaza governed by secular Palestinian actors.

The current Israeli and Palestinian leaders are either hostile to or incapable of pursuing such strategies seriously. On January 18, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly said he rebuffed a U.S. push for a Palestinian state once the conflict in Gaza comes to an end. But that should not stop the United States or other interested parties in pushing for what is in all the parties’ interests. Although this conflict may not be resolved for the time being, the United States can still help transform reality on the ground so that Israelis and Palestinians move toward a real solution, rather than away from it.

PARADIGM FAILURE

Even as the horrific attack of October 7 in southern Israel was unfolding, shocked Israelis were trying to make sense of the intelligence failure that permitted the surprise invasion by thousands of Hamas terrorists. They turned immediately to the memory of October 6, 1973—50 years and one day earlier—when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel, breaking its defensive lines in the Sinai and the Golan Heights. The 1973 surprise attack is widely attributed to Israeli analysts becoming prisoners of their own conceptual framework—a vaunted Conceptzia, in Hebrew—that made them evaluate new and potentially contradictory evidence about Egyptian and Syrian intentions and capabilities as merely confirming their existing incorrect assumptions.

In 2023, Israel suffered again from a similar form of confirmation bias. Israeli leaders and intelligence analysts were convinced that Hamas was focused on improving life in Gaza and strengthening its political position in Palestinian society. This thinking was buttressed by what Israel believed was an effective carrot-and-stick approach: Hamas was deterred, Israeli officials assessed, and it was increasingly incentivized to avoid conflict by the gradual loosening of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. Evidence to the contrary was either reinterpreted or discarded in the face of this preconceived worldview.

Yet the October 7 massacre represents not only an operational failure for Israel but a strategic one, as well. For years, Israel has approached the Palestinian issue, and much else, with an “anti-solutionist” strategy, as I termed it in Foreign Affairs in 2015. Israelis had come to believe that there were no fundamental solutions to the conflict with the Palestinians, and it was thus better to build walls, invest in one’s own future, and learn to live with a low level of chronic violence. In a supposedly conservative manner, Israelis eschewed any grand designs to reorganize reality. Many came to believe that the “solutionism” that animated the peace process produced only the exceedingly violent second intifada, which began in 2000. And that the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 led only to the rise of Hamas there and the decade-and-a-half bloody standoff with the terrorist group.

That is why Netanyahu and many Israelis opted instead for conflict containment: the strategy of kicking the can down the road. Under Netanyahu, Israel gave up on toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza and instead sought a modus vivendi with the group. Israel mixed deterrence (occasionally “mowing the grass” with strikes on Hamas capabilities when provoked) with a willingness to broadly accommodate Hamas’s governing of its Gaza statelet, mere miles from Israeli civilian homes. Israel was not searching for peace—which Hamas would never accept anyway—but a standoff that Israel would live with.

October 7 has exposed 

the danger of anti-solutionism.

This approach also reinforced the political and physical divide among Palestinians that had kept the West Bank–based Palestinian Authority out of Gaza. Although the Palestinians were the chief authors of their own political dysfunction, this division among Palestinians fit Netanyahu’s interest in having a weakened PA. To be sure, if he or any other Israeli leader could have made Hamas disappear with the snap of a finger, they would have: Hamas has murdered Israeli civilians for decades and has regularly launched thousands of rockets on Israeli towns since 2001. Yet its independence from the PA furthered Netanyahu’s aims, as he told his political allies explicitly in 2019: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” If Hamas could not be eradicated easily, better to find a way to live with the group and even take advantage of it, he reasoned.

If this had been a genuinely conservative approach, it would not have been absurd. Avoiding risk can be wise in volatile times, and deferring tough choices may be smart if time is on one’s side. And during the decade leading up to October 2023, the Israeli strategy appeared to bear fruit. As Arab governments grew weary of waiting for an elusive solution to the Palestinian issue and became eager to pursue their own national interests, normalization between several Arab states and Israel became a welcome reality. As they pursued these deals, both sides bypassed the Palestinian issue. The Abraham Accords, which were the result of this process, seemed like proof of the success of Netanyahu’s approach. It was what the right wing in Israel had long promised: “peace for peace” instead of “land for peace.”

Israel’s approach was not truly conservative, however. Instead of genuinely adopting a cautious holding pattern that would accord it strategic flexibility in the future and arrest damaging trends in the near term, Israel was merely foreclosing its future options—and those of the Palestinians—through a creeping annexation of the West Bank and the erosion of the PA’s authority. Netanyahu was presiding over a dramatically worsening reality on the ground, even if the diplomatic gains of normalization were significant.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, rather than acclimating to the reality of Israel’s existence and superior power, Hamas dug in and armed itself, preparing for an opportunity to attack, even while a generation of Gazans grew up in an impossible reality. As Hamas pursued intermittent war with its more powerful neighbor, Gazans bore much of the brunt. They faced an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza aimed at containing Hamas but causing enormous harm to its subjects, as well. Hamas itself was the key agent in creating those conditions, but Israel’s strategy contributed to them. Hamas was growing stronger while the PA in the West Bank withered away under the weight of its own ineptitude and corruption.

Time, in other words, was on no one’s side. Rather than anyone managing the conflict, the conflict was managing Israelis and Palestinians alike.

DRIVEN BY FEAR

October 7 has exposed the danger of anti-solutionism. But in the eyes of Israelis it has also discredited most proposed solutions to the conflict. The trauma and fear that the attack has instilled are still underappreciated by many outside of Israel. Today, one thing is crystal clear to Israelis: they will never again allow such a thing to happen. Whatever international opprobrium they face, Israelis will not allow a radical group to rule next door while free to train and prepare to conquer Israeli villages and towns so that they can systematically massacre, rape, and kidnap Israeli civilians.

Even though many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failure, they have also become even more wary of Palestinian power in any form. And although Palestinians may come to blame Hamas for what it has produced for its people, they are no more likely to forgive Israelis for today’s devastation of Gaza or to seek a fundamental, historic reconciliation with Israelis than they were on October 6.

The events of the last three months have confirmed for Israelis and Palestinians their worst fears about the other. Motivated by national, religious, and personal goals and grievances all at once, the conflict turns existential, in the literal sense. The sides believe that they cannot survive if the other has power, meaning that any concession could lead to calamity. This belief encourages preemptive action, lest the enemy gain more power over time. Such a strategy on one side makes the other side’s fear rational—it must now correctly assume it cannot afford to lose, come what may. The result is an ethnic security dilemma, where each side believes it must overpower the other to prevent being itself overpowered and decimated over time.

This fear does not produce a cycle of violence, nor a playing out of ancient hatreds. It does not represent some irrationality or tendency toward vengeance unique to these particular peoples. Instead, this is an equilibrium of rational fear, common to many ethnic conflicts but made more acute by the circumstances of this one. It was this kind of equilibrium that fueled widespread violence in the one state of Mandatory Palestine from the early 1920s until Israel’s founding in 1948. It continued to animate the conflict for decades afterward and it is far worse today than it was just three months ago.

This fear makes achieving a two-state solution far more difficult. Israelis are loath to grant Palestinian security control over one more inch of land. Israel’s concern now is that what befell southern Israel on October 7 could happen to its densely populated center, abutting the West Bank, just as it could along Israel's northern border with Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. Before October 7, some in the Israeli leadership might have considered enlarging the territory under PA security control. That is no longer the case.

The challenges facing a two-state solution, however, have in no way created support for a one-state solution. The one state now advocated in many circles abroad is often described as a single state including all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It would ostensibly include all Israelis and Palestinians and the descendants of Palestinian refugees from 1948 who choose to return. It would be governed, the argument goes, by a secular, liberal Western-style democracy, supposedly at peace.

Such a state’s chances of peace would be vanishingly small, however. One-state advocates assume that in this new state, the extremists on all sides, and the fear that motivated even many moderates to fight, will vanish in the face of a secular notion of justice. Gone will be the religious commitments of extremists and the deep-seated national dreams of so many, such that there will be no minority significant enough to spoil the peace and reignite that all-encompassing fear. Not only will the belligerents of today lay down their weapons but everyone else will have enough trust that they will not pick them up again to avoid sliding back to the ethnic security dilemma. The truth is, if reconciliation through a two-state solution is impossible, as one-staters often claim, a peaceful one state is even less feasible.

It may be that reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians will prove impossible any time soon. The traumas that both societies have faced, and the traumas that these recent events have resurfaced, have immense power to disrupt the best diplomatic efforts. But the fact that a grand “Peace” is out of reach, does not suggest that peace, with a lowercase p, itself transformative, cannot or should not be pursued vigorously, as anti-solutionists always assumed. In fact, there are more choices between perfect reconciliation and the horrors of war. There are also outcomes that would allow both peoples to pursue their own dignity and well-being.

A horizon of political independence for both sides need never have included full reconciliation and justice. It merely had to create the conditions for people to disagree while building their own better futures, assured, at least to a degree, by a border. Similarly, conflict management was given a bad name when it was conflated with anti-solutionism, but it deserves far better consideration in the context of a path toward conflict resolution. It is time to set aside utopian visions, as the cynics have long argued, but, contra the cynics, it is also time to replace them not with kicking the can down the road or with policy passivity in the face of ongoing war and occupation. It is time, rather, to couple a political horizon with serious, transformative, solution-oriented yet hard-nosed conflict management: imperfect, messy, halting, unsatisfactory for all, and yet preferable by far to the current reality.

A LESS TERRIBLE FUTURE

Sound policy must chart a political horizon of meaningful independence for both sides down the road, even if tired language of a two-state solution helps little at this point.

There must be a clear commitment by the United States to Palestinian independence alongside Israel, even if its security aspects are deferred into the distant future. And although this horizon should be announced, the United States must set the ground rules for the long interim period before true conflict resolution might be possible and enforce these rules vigorously.

These rules would include confronting radical jihadism, rather than hoping it somehow will moderate. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as organizations, cannot be allowed a significant role after the war if there is to be credible diplomacy with Israel. Tolerance toward financing of these groups or their safe havens in other countries should end. If Palestinians are to have serious authority in the future, they cannot operate through two armed factions at odds with each other.

The flip side of this policy is no less crucial: the marginalization of the PA and the rapid deterioration of conditions in the West Bank must be arrested. The PA, deeply unpopular and perceived as corrupt, is in need of reform, but it remains the only vehicle that might be used toward productive Palestinian agency over their own affairs that does not entail more devastating war with Israel. With political reform and renewal, a renewed diplomatic horizon, enlarged civilian authority, and a serious clamping down on violence toward Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, the PA has a chance to regain its relevance in Palestinian society.

Although most in the Israeli elite know that the PA, if reformed and revitalized, represents the best chance for a less violent future in Gaza, the Israeli public mood is naturally wary of the idea. Today’s fear is overpowering, and secular Palestinian forces that were central to the second intifada and those years’ long horrors are seen by Israelis as part of the problem rather than the solution. Israeli politicians, Netanyahu first among them, have read the public mood correctly and voiced their opposition to a PA role, at least for now, in Gaza. But this logic need not prevail, if confronted effectively.

Sound policy must chart 

a political horizon of meaningful 

independence for both sides.

Taking seriously the fear that dominates Israeli and Palestinian lives today, the parties must not take chances on new complex security structures. Israel will not acquiesce, in the short term, to a larger Palestinian security role in the West Bank and would only agree to one in Gaza if Israel retains considerable freedom of action. There will be no enlargement in the short term of what the Oslo II Accords labeled Area A, a section of the West Bank where there is nominally full Palestinian security authority. There could, however, be a significantly enhanced Palestinian civilian autonomy in what is known as Area B in the West Bank, where Israel retains freedom of action from a security standpoint, but where its footprint could be reduced.

Striving to grant Palestinians far greater civilian control could transform Palestinian lives, but only if it were a meaningful change. It would require not just more money or temporary jobs but real Palestinian authority over the legal zoning of land use, resources, urban planning, and economic development. To achieve this, Area B in the West Bank would have to be enlarged considerably, creating far greater contiguity of civilian Palestinian control in the West Bank, which currently consists of over 160 separate enclaves, without any change to security authority. Enlarging Area B would also exclude settlement construction, which is restricted to Area C, under full Israeli control.

Working to expand civilian Palestinian authority, the United States should steer clear of empty notions of “economic peace,” Netanyahu’s code name for bettering the welfare of Palestinians while blocking any horizon for effective Palestinian governance of their own affairs. Economic development would have to be tied to a political horizon and to genuine Palestinian civilian control over territory and resources, even if overall security authority remains Israeli.

Enlarging Area B would be very difficult, given Israeli political constraints at present, but it is a challenge worth facing in the coming years. For such a plan to gain support in Israel, the United States and Israelis and Palestinians interested in a better future must work consistently to drive a wedge in Israeli minds between Israelis’ legitimate security concerns and the logic behind the expansion of Israeli settlements, which has stronger support than in the past, but still is not the motivating rationale of the median Israeli voter.

Washington should try far more 

vigorously to counter settler violence 

against Palestinian civilians.

Although Israel has become far more hawkish on security, a trend that is not likely to abate quickly, it does not follow that Israel must become more hawkish on settlements or the ideology of the “whole land of Israel.” Israel’s turn toward hawkishness in recent decades started with the second intifada, was galvanized by the rise of Hamas after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, and is now turbocharged by the October 7 attack. Israeli hawkishness is motivated, more than anything, by fear, not ideology.

The Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 is telling in this regard. Broadly seen in Israel as a failure for opening the door to the Hamas takeover of the strip in 2007, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza had two disparate components that should be separated in policy today, too. Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza allowed for a Hamas-governed statelet bordering Israeli towns and villages, but the Israeli removal of settlements from Gaza was a success since it extricated Israeli civilians from Gaza, a security nightmare itself.

Taking Israel’s security concerns seriously, U.S. policy should pursue far more vigorously its efforts to counter settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The United States should similarly redouble its efforts to prevent the expansion of settlement land and jurisdictions. The United States should set the longer-term goal, impossible at present, of rolling back settlements in remote parts of the West Bank, even while security authority remains in Israeli hands. The United States has already considered sanctioning violent settlers, and it can use its considerable leverage with the Israeli government far more robustly to limit settlement expansion. October 7 and the war that followed demonstrated how vital U.S. support is for Israel, in materiel and diplomatic cover, and the United States can make clear that the price for such support is joining a U.S. vision for a better future.

Returning to the settlement quarrels with Israel may seem politically unappealing to an American administration, given the track record. But it would be essential to providing a political horizon for the Palestinians. U.S. pressure on this issue would also lessen Palestinians’ fear, which is exacerbated by settler violence and the apparent impunity it enjoys. Palestinian base fear is a threat to Israelis, just as Israeli fears are a threat to Palestinians, despite all the cheering to the contrary from armchair fighters.

GAZA IN RUINS

In Gaza, the challenge is especially daunting, given the death toll and devastation. The war has killed dozens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced hundreds of thousands, at least. According to The Wall Street Journal, about half its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. A path forward in Gaza would require creating a robust and meaningful governing role for the PA, without renewing the security standoff with Israel. This approach would require finding the means to secure and govern Gaza, and, no less difficult, fund its reconstruction. The task in Gaza is immense and daunting, but there are tools that offer at least some avenue forward, if seized upon early and effectively.

Before October 7, the Biden administration was heavily invested in pursuing normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, with controversial U.S. security commitments and support for a Saudi civilian nuclear program included in the agreement. By September 2023, a key question the administration faced was what Palestinian component might be part of the package. Would it resemble the Abraham Accords, which postponed official Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank but did nothing else to promote Palestinian self-rule? Or would it include meaningful changes in the West Bank that would, for the first time since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, enhance Palestinian autonomy in a significant way?

Potential normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia still offers an opportunity to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, in a postwar Gaza, to offer at least some hope for Gaza. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in consort or in parallel, could support Palestinian actors in building a different future in Gaza if Hamas no longer rules there. They have the Arab and Islamic clout to support secular Palestinian players, and eventually the PA itself, entering Gaza to govern it.

If these countries saw a meaningful path toward Palestinian independence—a politically meaningful return for their investment—they may contribute to a massive reconstruction effort in return for a say on Gaza’s direction. Gaining political sway in Gaza—and providing some funding there—would allow them to counter Iranian, Qatari, and Turkish influence in Gaza and provide a genuine Palestinian gain, which would be politically important for them if Saudi Arabia joined the United Arab Emirates in normalization with Israel. Their involvement would certainly not be a panacea for the devastation of the Gaza Strip, but it offers one of the best avenues worth attempting at present.

The United States should have no illusion that Arab—or other—troops could or would engage in the kind of counterinsurgency campaign that will, unfortunately, likely be necessary in Gaza for years to come. If there is any Arab security presence, it would be limited in function and mostly symbolic. No Arab force would seek to provide a robust security role on the ground, nor would Israel trust them to pursue it in full. Yet Arab states could operate pragmatically in Gaza in a day after Hamas—if such a day came—to lessen and eventually end permanent Israeli military presence as credible Palestinian authorities enter. Solving this piece of the conflict could be far more attractive to Saudi Arabia than what would ultimately be technical changes to PA authority in the West Bank, given the global visibility and dire need for change in Gaza, and the public cache that working to save and rebuild Gaza could afford. This sort of endeavor, with all the risks involved, and all the chances of failure, would be a goal worthy of a transformational regional deal.

Rebuilding Gaza—physically and politically—would require enlisting all positive actors available. Egypt, which fears that the war could saddle it with responsibility for Gaza—a fundamental fear for a country that occupied the strip between 1948 and 1967—or with an influx of Palestinian refugees, would need assurances from Israel to play a positive role in Gaza going forward. Yet with proper assurances, Egypt could be brought into a broader Arab coalition with secular Palestinian voices, and its intelligence services could also provide unique influence over what happens in Gaza, where they still have sway, even among remnants of Hamas. A full Arab-Israeli effort cannot advance fully in the short term, as Israel is mired in its war and in sorting out its domestic political puzzle. Yet building this Gulf-Egyptian-Palestinian-Israeli understanding should start before the war ends, even if it falls well short of a full regional realignment.

EYES ON THE PRIZE

Even if a solution to the conflict is currently unavailable, aimlessly kicking the can down the road is not a reasonable strategy. That approach was not conflict management; it was a strategy that allowed the conflict to manage both sides. Effective, solution-oriented conflict management can look very different. It would set a clear horizon of political independence for both parties—something akin to a two-state solution—toward which all should work, and produce a genuine effort to steer things toward less violence and fewer grievances in the future. It would be extremely difficult, yet far easier and less bloody than any of the alternatives.

Solution-oriented conflict management would take very seriously Israelis’ fears about security, exacerbated on October 7, while taking a hard stance toward Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank that fuels Palestinian fears. The goal of this approach would be to gradually reunite Gaza and the West Bank under a constructive PA that had real civilian authority, including enhanced territorial contiguity of Area B without additional ability to threaten Israel.

For years, negotiators, including Palestinians, have discussed a demilitarized Palestinian state as a component of a two-state solution. It is time to take demilitarization more seriously, even as all sides work seriously to revive the prospect of Palestinian independence.

None of these steps would produce lofty visions of enduring peace. In fact, the United States should be wary of promising to achieve ambitious solutions any time soon, when so few people believe they are available. Yet grandiose notions of peace should not be the enemy of improvement, which is so direly needed at present. The United States is naturally, and perhaps justifiably, weary of managing this conflict. It also has genuinely more important issues and regions to contemplate. But if 2023 is any indication, it would be far better for pragmatic U.S. policymakers to use American power to shift the course of events in the Holy Land than to hand the situation over to extremists and to the bloody dynamics they encourage.