Possibilities after the Gaza war

No one knows when this war will stop, including the direct parties involved in attack and defense, but the law of life says that it must stop.

During the war, the term “political horizon” and the two-state solution revived remarkably, as no one who gave their input on its developments, whether from the camp supporting the option of Israeli military action, or those who had reservations about it, did not adopt the idea of the inevitability of finding a political horizon, and most of those who spoke about it and a solution The two states are President Biden.

It is not logical, and perhaps not useful, to go too far in proposing detailed scenarios for the political path, while the results of the war have not become clear, not even in an approximate way, so talking about what comes after the war does not go beyond the possibilities.

The first possibility, which rises to the level of automatic axioms, is that the current American administration will make a serious effort to extinguish the burning and latent fires in the Middle East, with a political initiative that is supposed to be fairer and more effective than all previous initiatives from the first Camp David to the recent Oslo, because the American talk The two-state solution, without being accompanied by a tangible effort in this direction, and without seeing its positive impact on the Israeli position, must automatically lead to the second possibility, which is crisis management, which the administrations went to and worked on, after the door to Palestinian negotiations was permanently closed. The door to fighting of varying intensity was opened on the West Bank and Gaza fronts, which produced a severe weakness for the Palestinian Authority until it turned into a burden on its people and those betting on it, and brought the extremists of the right in Israel to power, according to the established rule... The further away the chances for peace are, the higher the chances of the right to rule. Israel.

America's incursion into crisis management policy produced a feeling among the Palestinians that their issue had become merely economic facilities, when Washington talked a lot about aid that should be provided for the well-being of the Palestinians, and then it descended into wishful thinking, when America sponsored many activities under the roof of security understandings between the two sides. Finally, in light of the impact of the destructive war on Gaza, coupled with the war suffocating the West Bank between the army and the settlers, the term humanitarian solutions appeared, which, despite their necessity, especially in Gaza, remain far from what the Palestinians are asking for, that is, a political solution.

What doubles the Palestinians’ anxiety about the policy of managing the crisis instead of treating it in a way that leads to its solution is that it has settled in this place over a long period of time, and several successive administrations have adhered to it, including Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, who made the last attempt at a political solution and announced its failure, blaming Israel. Then The Trump administration is the owner of the initiative that was stillborn due to Palestinian, Arab and international objection to it. Then the Biden administration, which promised during the election campaign to modify paths but failed to fulfill its promise.

The war on Gaza and the West Bank is difficult and extremely cruel to the Palestinians. However, what will be more difficult politically is when America, the godmother of Israel, the settlement, and the remnants of Oslo, returns to the policy of crisis management despite its admission, albeit in a faint voice, that it has created a dangerous vacuum not only on the Palestinian-Israeli track, but also at the regional level. Entire.

The Biden administration has become a direct partner in the war on Gaza, and has mobilized its fleets in the region for fear of expanding the scope of the war, which would ignite the entire region.

The most important outcome of this direct military effort was the strengthening of American influence over the Israeli decision, which was the main obstacle to any progress on the political track, after the far-right government in Israel expanded the scope of its rebellion against many aspects of American policy.

The course of the current war has revealed a deep and wide difference between America and those who are supposed to be its friends, if not its “allies.” They have all taken decisive positions not only by condemning the destructive war on Gaza, but also by declaring the inevitability of beginning an effective political path that will put an end to the wars that are raging or could be raging, in The absence of a lasting and just peace. Will what happened - which is large, costly and dangerous - shift the effort from crisis management to resolving them? This is what will appear before the war stops, as a preliminary premise, and after it stops, as a political path.