The New York Times reported on Sunday that the last best chance for a peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians was in 2008, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was willing to give up land in the West Bank, allow some refugees to reclaim their lands, and even cede control of the Old City of Jerusalem to an international commission as part of recognizing Palestine as a sovereign state.

Then the potential deal collapsed, for reasons Olmert still struggles to explain. “This was something that would change the Middle East,” he said in an interview about his failed talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “He wasn’t willing to take the risk.”

For his part, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he had not been given a proper opportunity to examine the proposed map of the West Bank and asked for more time. Days later, Olmert resigned under a cloud of corruption allegations, and the deal was dead.

No one in Israel today is considering such peace talks, amid fears that a sovereign Palestinian state would find it easier to launch another attack like the one Hamas launched on October 7, which killed 1,200 people, including 311 soldiers, and “ignite the fuse of war in Gaza,” according to the newspaper.

The newspaper’s analysis points to “diplomacy’s retreat from military force, a shift in Israel that reflects years of mistrust and failed deals, such as the failed effort in 2008, that have reinforced the belief among adversaries that neither side will negotiate in good faith. Officials and experts doubt that these attitudes will reverse anytime soon.”

“Among democratic countries, it is widely agreed that Israel has the right to defend itself from the so-called ring of fire it faces from Iran and its proxy fighters in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen who seek to destroy Israel,” the newspaper claimed.

But last week’s deadly pager and walkie-talkie explosions against Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, including scores of civilians — followed by Friday’s strike in Beirut that targeted a senior Hezbollah commander and killed at least 45 people, with many more still missing — have raised concerns that, as the war in Gaza drags on, Israel is moving away from cease-fire negotiations to free hostages in favor of military action that could ignite a wider regional war.

“The right path and the right steps are definitely to make a hostage deal, first and foremost, and nothing else,” Efrat Reitan-Marom, a left-wing member of the Israeli parliament, was quoted as saying in an interview on Wednesday by The New York Times. “We have to do everything we can to bring them home now.”

Her son, a soldier, is deployed on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, where more than 60,000 Israeli residents are waiting to return home after leaving last year when Hezbollah began shelling the area in protest over the war in Gaza.

“We have to deal with the north because Hezbollah is there,” said Rayton Marom. But “there was a plan and a strategy to end the war in the Gaza Strip, first and foremost, and then deal with the north.”

Diplomacy no longer seems a priority, she said, given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly belligerent policies. “I think this reflects the opinion and policy of this government in general,” Reiten-Marom said. “Netanyahu, along with his extremist coalition partners, has chosen this path and continues to choose it.”

Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment last week. On Wednesday, in response to reports in the Israeli media, his office said it strongly denies “the allegation that he torpedoed any deal at all due to political considerations.”

However, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant stressed a few hours ago that “the center of gravity is moving north,” referring to the new focus on Hezbollah.

The sophisticated attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday killed dozens of people — Hezbollah members but also many civilians, including children. The explosions wounded thousands, spread panic across Lebanon and raised international concerns that Israel could risk escalating tensions in the region. Following those attacks and Friday’s strike, Hezbollah responded on Sunday with a barrage of rockets that penetrated deeper into Israeli territory than most of its previous attacks. “I find this situation extremely worrying,” Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, said in a statement on Wednesday. He called on “all stakeholders to avoid a full-scale war, which would have serious consequences for the entire region and beyond.”