After the war, what kind of future awaits Israelis and Palestinians?

This “day after” question deserves primacy as negotiators work toward a cease-fire.

By David Ignatius

The quest for a cease-fire to halt the humanitarian catastrophe of the Gaza war has been so intense that it’s easy to overlook a deeper issue: What will the future look like for Israelis and Palestinians who have suffered so much in this terrible conflict?

As American mediators struggle this week to finalize a deal for a cease-fire and a phased release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, I hope they will give this issue the primacy it deserves. The one thing you can say with moral certainty is that Israelis and Palestinians deserve a future in which the hideous violence of war is replaced by stability and security.

This issue, whose shorthand description is “the day after,” has never seemed to interest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu very much. To me, that’s his deepest failing — that he is leader of a war that took the lives of so many Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers without a coherent plan for what he hoped to achieve once the fighting ended. That’s why Netanyahu should resign — not because he was responsible for the war but because he failed to prosecute it wisely and strategically.

Wars in the Middle East often end with a fuzzy ambiguity that allows both sides to claim victory. “Neither victor nor vanquished” is the phrase often used to describe such face-saving pacts. But that diplomatic approach won’t work in Gaza. Israel wants a win against Hamas, whatever the cease-fire agreement says. And that feeling isn’t held just by Netanyahu but also by most Israelis — and I’d guess by most Arab leaders, too.

So, let’s consider the elements that would provide a reasonable settlement of this war, including security for Israel and a new future for Palestinians in Gaza. Many of these goals are actually in reach if leaders act sensibly.

The most urgent requirement is to rescue Palestinian civilians from the famine and devastation of seven months of war. Humanitarian assistance in Gaza has increased sharply since Israel withdrew most of its troops last month, but more is needed. The floating pier being built by the U.S. military will help.

But who will keep the peace when the aid trucks roll into Gaza City? That’s the question Netanyahu has consistently failed to address. There’s only one good answer: Gaza needs an international stabilization force to provide security during and after the cease-fire.

If the United States and its allies can organize that force, Arab nations such as Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates will probably be willing to provide some troops. But they’ll do so only if Israel agrees that this is the first step down the road to a Palestinian state. Netanyahu balks, and so do many Israelis. But this is the pathway to a future in which relations with all Arab states are “normalized” at last. It’s worth some risks.

The leader Israel needs now is one who can begin this long transition. The ideal person would be someone with the toughness and vision of the now-deceased Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “He demonstrated the ability to make bold decisions, to go against his own grain, and to carry his people with him,” as Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, writes in his biography of Rabin.

Local governance in Gaza will be another urgent challenge. Hamas should never rule Gaza again. On that, there’s broad if unspoken agreement among Israeli, Arab, European and American leaders. Here, too, there’s an obvious pathway, but again it’s one Netanyahu refuses to consider. Hamas’s enemy in Gaza has always been the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank and, until 2007, controlled Gaza as well. The PA has nearly 10,000 security personnel in Gaza on its registry. They need to be vetted and trained; they need tight controls, in addition to performance metrics. But a revitalized PA could actually begin its rebirth in Gaza, with careful planning.

The demilitarization of Hamas is another inescapable requirement. Netanyahu argues that this is why Israel needs a bloody final assault on Rafah, to destroy the four remaining Hamas battalions there. But those battalions don’t threaten Israel, and they can be dismantled gradually — especially if an Arab-backed international force is securing Gaza City.

Netanyahu’s repeated insistence that he must invade Rafah is partly theatrics, to frighten Hamas into accepting a hostage release deal. But what would Israel actually gain from such an assault? Hamas fighters are already roaming Gaza, and they’ll be free to move north in any likely cease-fire deal. Israel accepts that, because it knows they won’t be able to regroup and rearm in a way that would truly threaten Israel. That’s true with the Hamas remnant in Rafah, too.

For Israel, success in this war would be the confidence that Hamas will never again be allowed to build the force that slaughtered and terrorized Jews on Oct. 7. That goal is closer than it looks. And Israel knows it will retain the ability to pursue Hamas’s leaders unless they surrender and leave their underground kingdom in the Gaza tunnels.

As negotiators exchange drafts of a final cease-fire plan, they should keep in mind the image of a postwar Gaza in the benign chaos of rebuilding — aboveground this time — as construction rigs and concrete trucks build new apartment buildings, municipal facilities and office blocks.

That’s what peace will look like — maybe many years from now, but it’s time to begin.